ways to interject more social encounters.

[Brendanicus]

So I'm going to run The World's Largest Dungeon with a group of new players, but tge module is a huge hack-n-slash fest and I want to break that up a bit. Does anybody have any ideas as to how you can make an isolated dungeon have more social encounters?

Ideas thusfar:

Make some enemies less aggressive, and more persuadable.

Adding in a traveling Gnome merchant for the party to trade with.

Throwing in human bandits in a safe room that the pc's want to sleep in. Thr bandits are wary but won't attack unless provoked. They just want to be left alone.

Lanteen Archon who provides plot background and maybe some scouting? I'll judge that as it comes up.

[Doc_Maynot]

The rolls for random encounters already have a decent chance of the creatures they com across being friendly or indifferent, with a few rooms offering social options.
I'd honestly be against the travelling gnome merchant, it's against the spirit of the dungeon, and potentially its lore. Seeing as those who enter cannot leave by any means, and someone with enough wares to constitute a merchant would probably have been robbed by one of the factions in the dungeon.

[Brendanicus]

The rolls for random encounters already have a decent chance of the creatures they com across being friendly or indifferent, with a few rooms offering social options.
I'd honestly be against the travelling gnome merchant, it's against the spirit of the dungeon, and potentially its lore. Seeing as those who enter cannot leave by any means, and someone with enough wares to constitute a merchant would probably have been robbed by one of the factions in the dungeon.I probably should have clarified this more. The Gnome is a cleric, not a merchant. In fact, she is a fanatical follower of Tymora, and believes that the best way to prove her devotion to the goddess of luck would be to live in the dungeon, ie depend on her luck. She has survived for auite a while, and has acquired loot to sell in the process.

[Darrin]

Add factions that are squabbling over the various "why's" and "how's" of the dungeon's creation and existence. Such as:

Truthbearers of the Maze Builder (ToMB): Fanatical proponents of the theory that the dungeon was created by the omnipotent and omniscient Maze Builder, who has a divine plan for all creatures within the dungeon. Truthbearers aren't "trapped" in the dungeon, they see themselves as divinely chosen to carry the "Truth" of the Maze Builder to all its inhabitants. The dungeon is the way it is because the Maze Builder is testing the inhabitants to see if they are "worthy" of the Higher Truths. They have a very rigid clergy structure of initiate/acolyte cells (similar to a multi-level marketing scam) who all report to a cell higher up. Proclamations frequently filter down from the higher cells, although it's not clear if the Maze Builder is an actual deity or a clever scam artist. If you're looking for generic cultists to beat up, then the ToMBers are easy to toss up as antagonists. They may also attempt to recruit the PCs: while thuggish, they are not prejudiced or discriminatory to any particular groups. Initiation tends to be costly or unsavory or both, but not explicitly evil. They aren't all that popular with the other factions, but they are intensely loyal to fellow Truthbearers.

Merchants of Ostentatious Providence (MoOP): An organized guild of merchants and traders that show up in odd places to barter with the PCs. They rarely accept coinage, although they will sometimes take gems. Their preferred payment is barter, although their appraisal methods tend to be impenetrable to logic or reason. The PCs may frequently offer their most prized possessions, only to be told they are worthless, and then the merchant will see some inconsequential piece of dungeon refuse that is suddenly now immensely valuable. The merchants see themselves as a "public service", collecting the random garbage nodoby wants and finding a use for it. The wares they offer tend to be unreliable or outright dubious. Continuous items frequently breaking down, wands that appear fully charged suddenly sputter out after only a few uses, and various powers may have limitations that the merchant "forgets" to mention. (Think Paranoia R&D.) However, while many merchants may try to deliberately screwed over the PCs, they are nigh-untouchable: any attempts to attack or break a contract with a merchant blacklists the PCs, and since every single faction depends on the merchants for some invaluable resource, every faction becomes hostile to the PCs. Even worse, the merchants appear to be prescient about what may be coming up for the PCs, suggesting they have access to information about who created the dungeon and what their motives might be... but don't ask them about it, because they might close up their cart and refuse to deal with you.

Deliverers of Unexpected Mutual Benevolence (uh... officially, no abbreviation): This is a loose collective of individual explorers who promise to aid members and other unlucky individuals who find themselves in tight spots. This group is popular with heroic do-gooder types, although many have a habit of arriving either too late or leaving too early. Even so, they do manage to show up enough in the nick of time to have a mostly favorable reputation. They get along well with most other factions, except the Truthbearers, who can't stand their agnostic stance on the divine purpose of the Maze Builder. The Deliverers on the other hand delight in saving the Truthbearers from certain death and then denying that the Maze Builder sent them as part of His Divine Plan.

Collective Luminescent Order of Dweomancers (CLOD): A collection of wizards and sorcerers who believed they were imprisoned for becoming too powerful too quickly. They believe they can pool their collective magical resources to escape from the dungeon, although putting this into practice rather than theory has been a lot more difficult than they initially imagined. Basically a bunch of stereotypical all-powerful wizards that believe they can brute-force their way out of the dungeon via Pun-Pun or Tippyverse shenanigans. They barely work together, and frequently fall into "Disney Villain" territory mostly out of shear frustration. Essentially every Mages' Guild in every fantasy world, only now they think they're being deliberately picked on and are extremely butthurt about it. Exceedingly snotty to outright hostile to anyone who isn't an arcane spellcaster, and horrendously exclusive, refusing to offer membership except in the most dire circumstances. Rumor has it that the original creator of the dungeon started the Collective when he was betrayed and imprisoned in his own dungeon, and is using the other wizards to amass enough magical power to escape.

Transcendent Order of the Triumphant Sky (TOTS). An order of druids that attempts to care for the wildlife in the dungeon. Originally just a support network of disgruntled treehuggers that attempted to pool their resources, provide for animal companions and summoned creatures that frequently became trapped in the dungeon, they've recently gained enough power and influence to start wondering exactly why the creators of the dungeon had such a huge hate-hard-on for druids. Although frequently mocked as irrelevant and impoverished, they can be vicious opponents if unfairly provoked.

[Flickerdart]

Intelligent creatures frequently band together for protection. You could have orcs or whatever pool their wealth and try to give adventurers quests of the "go kill the hobgoblins that are encroaching on our territory and we'll give you magic swords" rather than getting killed and then losing those swords anyway.