i am curious how you handle social encounters in general and for finding out bits of information...

boggle said:

You can check my house rules in my signature. I have made some standardized (sp?) rules for social "combat".

It really depends on the situation. Sometimes we do it through straight role playing. At other times if characters have particular skills or actions that suit the encounter then I setup a tracker. Usually between 5 and 10 spaces depending on how much information they are trying to draw and how protective the person is trying to be that they are trying to get it out of. Then it's a race the players skill/actions vs the npc's. If the pc's get to the top first or at a half way point they obtain some or all of the information they were trying to get. If the NPC gets to the top first then he keeps the info to himself or might purposely mislead the characters.