On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 7:08 AM, Timothy Collinson <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:

names would be one of the first things any such encounter would establish.  (From guilded name plates on the desk to cut glass window labels, through name badges to handshakes and introductions... 

And then the PCs come upon the very harassed young sophont with a desk nameplate composed of a raggedly-cut bit of packing case with what is a (apparently) common family name scrawled across it using what appears to have been a child's crayon . . . 

Smart PCs with an appointment ask if this unfortunate has had lunch yet, then when they get the inevitable "No time" response, ask what the bureaucrat would like to eat and then order this for delivery, declaring that their appointment time is no lunch period.

Smart PCs without an appointment ask to schedule one at a later date, picks from the available times the one that's nearest the local lunch hour, researchs what this bureaucrat usually orders for lunch then brings this meal with them for the appointment.

Ooooh, nice. Snipped for a moment when the players need a nudge.

(They’re still pretty new to the whole role-playing thing [1] so they can fairly reliant on hints from me to know what to do.  And I’m still struggling to get them to interact much with each other rather than me or do set their own agendas conversations, but we’re getting there.)

[1]  One brand new.  Another computing lecturer joined us for the first time last time.  He rather took to it I think.  His total previous experience of role playing is as one of the lawyers/solicitors grilling Masters digital forensics students in our university’s mock court room (usually used by the law students) as they do an assessment on evidence they’ve found on a criminal’s PC seized in a police raid.  (I get to play the judge and keep the two lecturers in line with regard to leading questions etc.)