Roleplay Vs Mechanics in the Adventure Path

[Flamingcloud]

Question 1. Roleplay vs Mechanics. The two main things I was thinking of are the Social Rounds and the Persona Rounds. This will be my first time GMing a campaign and I am confused how these are supposed to be implemented.

How mechanical is influencing/social rounds supposed to be? (aside from normal introductions/questions/rp of course)
Completely mechanical?
Some sort of RP influence statement from the player?
A couple back and forths per influence?
Even more RP than that?

Either way this seems even more difficult to do with the persona rounds because the mechanical impacts of the missions seems to be very insignificant and a ton of RP for no payoff seems crazy. Having 4-8 PCs roleplay out separate missions to gain a +2 on some situational skill/save is dubious at best. The whole persona level system and having agents of your own facet seems really cool but the time/overhead vs payoff seems to make no sense.

Question 2. Each of the first five books has a Succession Loyalties page/map. What time is this supposed to reflect?

At first I thought the end of the AP, seeing as their is no succession loyalties until the end of the first AP.. However Meratt County/Birdsong Palace/Stachys appears to either be in Lawsus or Pythareus territory in the 2nd AP map. If it is supposed to reflect the beginning of the AP than what is the map in the 1st book supposed to represent?

[Darrell Impey UK]

Question 2 first; I interpret them as at the end of their volume too.

Second half of question 1; personally I treated the persona phases entirely as mechanical effects going on in the background.

First half of the first question; this is a bit more difficult. It probably depends a lot on you and your players. If you/they are not into "heavy" roleplay, it could easily be done through just dice rolls, but this is an AP about social interaction. Conversely, you could base it entirely on your interpretation of the players role-playing ability, though this does raise the problem of just how you judge an exceptionally gifted player, who speaks for ages, but is playing a low-statted character with no applicable skills...

Personally, I'd just go with the idea of "a couple back and forths per influence", and reward particularly good play with a +1 or +2 bonus. (Whilst remembering to apply a penalty for anything particularly crass.)