Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
I did admit that the "I don't care - where is it headed" line of conversation makes more sense for a fire than most any other example, so at least we're seemingly on the same page that far. But in my neck of the woods, while fire is definitely a threat, my area (most of my area?) isn't known for major wildfires, so we're not as poised to hear, "where is it heading?" in quite the same context. If you moved here, and someone called you saying, "my house is on fire!" and your first response was "where is it heading?", I don't expect them to take it as well as you seem to expect. And while a "there is a fire that doesn't affect me" prompt could certainly have a "how big is it, which way is it headed" type of inquiry, it would be mixed in with questions about how long, anyone in danger, who's doing what to take care of it, etc, without violating social norms. But that moves us further away from the original scenario.
Sure. But it's your analogy. And the analogy works better with the assumption that this is a wildfire and there is a concern about it spreading. We are, after all, talking about werewolves and Fae factions. So while the Fae may not care much at all if a "fire" (ie: werewolves) is just in some tenement building in the city, they would be very much concerned if that "fire" (ie: werewolves) is going to spread to areas that they do care about. So where your analogy breaks down is in the exact difference between how you and I are interpreting it. Yes. If it's just a house fire and has zero chance of spreading, then the response "where is it heading?" would seem strange.

But... The only reason the Fae actually care about the werewolves at all is whether the werewolves are "spreading", right? That's literally an assumption baked into the scenario Talakael has presented to us. They don't care about werewolf activity in town (a house fire), but do care if the werewolves are going to expand outward and attack areas outside the city (a wildfire). So if we are to use a fire based scenario, then "wiildfire that might spread to affect us" is absolutely the relevant model to use here, and thus the question "where is it heading?" is not only not strange, but absolutely what would/should be expected. This is literally the *only* question (related to the werewolves) we should expect them to be asking about.

Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
So, yes, while I may agree with your priorities, especially given your experience, it still violates "expected social norms" enough to merit investigation - a red flag to poke at when my house isn't burning down. Once the smoke clears (heh), and I learned of your background, it would make sense, and the "pod person" red flag would be cleared. But, until then (to mix my metaphors or whatever), I'd expect the PCs to slowly back away from the Fey and their odd focus on this (comparatively) irrelevant question. Or (as I've mentioned) for different PCs to view it as the Fey trying to get free information, and to be cagey about giving people who have already said they aren't helping them anything. Or other perspectives, none of which make this a productive line of questioning.
Well, and this is where the whole "have open conversations/dialogue" bit comes in. I guess maybe I'm a bit chatty when I GM (probably more than most). I would never just have my NPCs sit there and give short direct short answers to direct questions and nothing else. If I was running a Fae noble/whatever, and someone came up to me asking for help with a pack of werewolves in thier building, I would not just stop with "that's not important/interesting to me". I would have the Fae ask about the werewolves, and then explain that "We don't normally intervene in werewolf problems in the city", but then I'd follow it up (cause... chatty) with "You see. We Fae are mostly interested in areas outside the city. We maintain various areas based on our individual factions and abilities and how they relate to these various areas. Lord Bulwig over there controls the fields just to the south of town <insert additional information about his area, followers, etc>. Lady Gerring over there controls the area around the river all the way down to the lake <insert more information about her people/area>. And Baron Dodad over there, he's mostly interested in forests and woods <insert info about his stuff> and there are rumors that he's set up a new enclave in Muir Woods". See. Now we've given some infomation, and a subtle hint to the players by reminding them about the woods. I'd then follow that up with more conversation "And while we don't normally involve ourselves with activities in town. We will do so if those things threaten to spill out into our own areas of interest" (another not so subtle hint). And if those hints aren't enough, follow up with: "We would be greatly interested in your werewolf problem if we knew that their activities may lead to actions that affect us in our areas, so if that is the case, I would suggest that you go speak to the various lords and ladies who may be impacted. If that were the case, of course! Oh! I see the buffet has opened up. Can't miss the stuffed artichokes! Ta ta!".


Obviously, you don't just rattle this off like a script, but encourage the players to actually engage in dialogue. But you want to make sure you give the players some kind of guidance and direction if they at all appear to be lost or have forgotten what they are there for, or don't seem to be able to clue in to what they should be doing to get what they are there for. Ideally, each step in that conversation would include the PCs asking questions like "what do you guys do?" and "where do you guys have influence/interests?" and "what sort of thing might make you interested in the werewolves activities?". Again though, that's "ideally". Sometimes, players are just a bit passive. When that happens, you can't be passive as well, or it'll be like two wallflowers on a date at a school dance, both standing next to each other akwardly saying nothing. If the players aren't asking the obvious questions, then lead them a bit.

That last bit is highly table dependent. Some tables have players that are super active and inquisitive and will practically drill you with questions about everything, and engage every single NPC, and try to get every scrap of information they can out of them (they're "chatty" as well). But some tables will not. In the later case, the GM really has to take the initiative here. Otherwise, social encounters like this will siimly fail. I've also found that if you engage in this kind of "guided social encounter" a few times, the players will start to become more comfortable with them. They'll get the feel for what sort of stuff should be talked about, and what kind of information they should be looking to get, and they'll start actually being more proactive themselves. But that will never happen if both sides are just barely talking to each other.