I am running an "intro" to the prince of redhand adventure right before the champions belt. Basically my players have to smooze with the high class in Free City in order to get a peace treaty between Greyhawk and the Lizard folk. I am doing this to show my players the importance of roll playing.... to get them "ready" for the prince of redhand....
As expected two of the players (the ones who play warriors) said they will stay back at the bar while the other 2 attend the party.
This kind of got me thinking, what rewards do the PC's actually get for doing this mini adventure (as well as the Redhand adventure).
Should I dock them XP? That sounds a bit harsh... Maybe I should give the players some magical items at the dinner? That sounds a bit made up... But I basically want to do something so that the other two say, "Damn we should have went to that dinner party!"
I'd say minor magic items. Like... something really little. Maybe a bag of tricks. Those are always fun.
http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=130
There should definately be an XP award for negotiating the peace treaty. Just decide how challeging it was for the party to achieve their goal and assign a CR to it. If it was easy I would go 1 or 2 under average party level (APL). If it was challenging I would make it equal to or 1 higher. Difficult 2 or 3 higher than APL. Then divide the reward only by the players that participated.
Look to Spire of Long Shadows and Prince of Redhand. Both adventures assign CRs to events that don't involve beating an enemy in combat.