The Social Crawl Part 1

The Social Crawl is a hex crawl, but for people. Each 'hex' (we'll call them 'marks' because there's some funny convergence on con-artist terminology), each mark is a person of interest and their entourage. The marks are connected to other marks. Think of the nature of the connections as the landscape. You need different gear when adventuring in the mountains, and you need different approaches when trying to contact an estranged lover vs. a hated enemy.

Social Crawling is great at:

• City intrigue games, where there are factions ready to fuck with each other
• Mysteries about rich people having tea and someone like drinks poison
• Cults, crime bosses, and political jerkfaces

There are two parts here:

1. Building the Social Crawl
2. Running the Social Crawl

Both use a different process, and building it is way more in-depth than running it. Building out the map can  take a hot minute, but I've used maps I built in an hour for games that lasted three months, so the cost is worth it.

Building the Social Crawl

1. Decide how big a network you want. I build them in squares of 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5. The maps work for different situations.
• 3x3 works well for a small town, a locked room mystery, or the crew on a space faring vessel a million miles from nowhere.
• 4x4 is default, it works well for cities, conflicting government bodies, or vampires shitting on each other.
• 5x5 is weird, you have two ways to treat this. You can either have a massive mega city with a half dozen factions, or you can have a smaller area that is much more detailed. I have had a hard time running a 5x5 map because my brain is full of snakes.
2. Populate the marks with your NPCs. Marks closer to the top are higher status, harder to get in touch with. Those at the bottom have looser security or lower status.
• I love using the  Last Gasp Grimoire NPC Birthing Sacs to make up a bunch of NPCs.

3.  Start with the upper right mark, roll 1d4, 1d6, and 1d8  for each adjacent or diagonal mark. I move counter clockwise. Check the results of the d4 on the list below.

1. No Connection
2. Connection (None if diagonal)
3. Connection
4. Trap (denote with dotted line)

Diagonal connections are rarer, and I follow a couple rules to make filling out the chart easier. 

• Don't cross connections, like two diagonals that cross (it just gets messy).
• Don't re-roll connections you've already tested
• Everyone has at least one connection. 

The d6 determines the tenor of the connection, while the d8 determines the specific nature of the connection. Write the nature of the connection on the connecting line.

roll	1- Rivalry	2- Beneficent	3- Complicated
1	Estranged lovers	Lovers in a torrid affair	Love-hate relationship
2	Courting the same person	Childhood best friends	Witnesses to horror
3	Old friends grown sour	Stood together through battle	Lovers, both beholden to others
4	Financial competition	Trusted business partners	Trapped in deep debt together
5	Opposite sides of politics	Members of fringe sect	Both outcasts from family
6	Social climbers at odds	Friendly rivals	Excommunicated together
7	Family, always fractious	Scheming allies	Political outsiders infiltrating
8	Professionally trump each other	Trusted confidants	Owes life debt / Holds debt

roll	4- Occult	5- Covert	6- Malignant
1	Bound by holy destiny	Honeytrap / Mark	Toxic lover / trying to escape
2	Both followed by dark forces	Unknowing co-conspirators	Deep hatred from old grudge
3	Dabbled in demonism together	Rival crime bosses.	Loathing of each other’s failures
4	Cursed to kill each other	Spies wary of each other.	Financially dependent/ exploiting
5	Cultists to forgotten gods	Eager ally / Con artist	Opposite sides in clan feud
6	Possess one soul between them	Formed cartel together	Heretic  / Religiously intolerant
7	Haunting  each other’s dreams	Secret lovers	Schemes spiral out of control
8	Eager disciple / Disappointment	Blackmailer / Target	Usurper / Superior

4. Finally, remember those trapped connections? We need to figure out what kind of trap is there. Roll 1d10 twice on the chart below for each trapped connection to find the trigger for the trap and the reaction of the trigger.

roll	Trigger	roll	Result
1-2	Inquiry- The character directly asks about the connection without disguising their motives.	1	Ambush- The characters are attacked by forces appropriate for the mark.
		2	Decoy- The mark deploys a decoy to distract the characters.
3-4	Etiquette- The character has breached etiquette before following up on the connection.	3	Clam up- The mark refuses to speak to the characters until amends are made.
		4	Warning- The mark issues a warning to not engage. Ignoring the warning brings violence.
5-6	Leave- The character leaves the mark to follow up on the connection.	5	Cut-out Contact- The contacts do not speak directly, but through a third party who will be targeted for assassination.
		6	Lies- Nothing the target says is trustworthy.
7-8	Approach- The character is following up on a connection.	7	Duel- A third party challenges a character to a duel on the contact’s behalf.
		8	Unholy Attention- Known or unknown to the contact, a demon, undead, or aberration intervenes on their behalf.
9-10	Attention- The character has attracted third party attention and attempts to follow up a connection.	9	Histrionics- The mark panics and draws attention, shouting, crying, and carrying on until the characters calm them down or leave.
		10	Roll Twice...

When you place the traps, decide which contact will get the trigger. It matters for Approach and Leave triggers.

Now take a minute and look at the map. Begin to chart the lines of influence and antipathy. Think of it like a circuit, where a charge can move across some connections and not others.

We can imagine a player talking to Harbunger ibn Uleg about their "Tea" business. If the players have a lot of heat on them from making a scene, they'd let them know that Harrow Mordhend is a good friend and to keep away. If they somehow figure out that Harbunger is in league with Ghurghoura, any visible approach (asking about the connection, not covering their tracks) will make Ghurghoura just lie about everything. "No, I have no idea who Morvul is. Morrouvorchus? Never heard of them."

In Part II

In my next post, I'll talk about how to use this map at the table, how the players navigate the map, and all the different games you can run with the Social Crawl.