Banquet Bingo

Some time ago, I read an article by Tabletop Atelier about using a bingo card to gamify a social-heavy session of D&D. I eventually put that technique into practice, and it worked very well. The scene was a great banquet in Calimport to celebrate those who recently helped save the city. All the player characters were there, as well as the most important NPCs from the campaign:

I also gave the players the following bingo card:

The session lasted two hours, and if they checked off every square, they could level up. Stakes! To give the evening some structure, I had a menu with various courses and entertainments in between. After every course, I asked each player in turn who they wanted to talk to, which gave everyone plenty of opportunities to act. The session ended with a character throwing up over the head of the Goldsmiths Guild, checking off the final square as he did so.

Everyone had an absolute blast, and it helped us quickly propel a number of the character arcs. The banquet was mentioned frequently over the following sessions, and was later raised as a highlight when we did the campaign retrospective. I recommend you give "Banquet Bingo" a try in your own campaign. I also think there must be a way to turn this into a general carousing or tavern system, though I'm not quite sure how yet.