tl;dr: if you feel the players are missing opportunities to talk and role-play, you can give them either NPCs to talk to, choices to discuss or problems to solve with in-world clues.
Following up on some thoughts I had in response to a reddit post a while ago: "if the whole party is lawful good and they agree on the 'right thing', how to create situations that will result in more conversations and RP" because "they're always in agreement and this reduces RP especially for the quieter players".
Reading this as "how to create RP/conversational opportunities when there is no in-group conflict" my answer at the time was "give them puzzles and poor information and leave them to struggle against the world. No need for conflict within the party" but I would like to revisit and expand on this.
In my view there are three channels to bring conversation/RP opportunities to such a group:
- interactions with external parties
- internal character-to-character interactions
- collective discussions
Interactions with external parties are always a way to offer more chances for RP. The DM can run a world of NPCs who need to be persuaded, questioned or managed. The downside of this is that it is a narrow channel - only a single conversation can happen at a time and if some of the players are quiet then maybe the 'faces' of the party take all this time. Balancing this kind of continuous external interaction so everyone gets a moment in the light can be a challenge.
My advice for this is to set up specific interactions so that everyone gets the option to step into the spotlight. Again, check to make sure that everyone *wants* an equal time doing the talking and tune your game accordingly.
Internal interactions within the party can be encouraged by giving the party something to talk about - plotting and planning future moves is the classic. Again there is the issue of the quiet players being sidelined and one way to address this is to visit those characters backstories. Having the party in a characters back yard gives that character reason to take point with people they nominally know better than the others.
Finally there are collective discussions where the group as a whole is engaged on a topic. At my table the most player to player interactions are chewing over clues and problem solving. I tend to encourage this by using session zero to set up a group that nominally shares a goal. If the group makes great decisions, move the challenge to determining what the problem is. Depending on your table the players will have these conversations in or out of character but I have noticed a tendency towards talking in-character once these are in-universe puzzles as opposed to player knowledge or high level planning and logistics.
As a sidebar, there is an assumption in the original question that more RP is desired and the party is feeling the lack. There may not be an actual problem because 'the team smoothly crushes challenges' is a perfectly valid play mode. If everyone is enjoying it then just feed them more missions, quests and challenges and continue the good times. If you, the DM, are not enjoying this mode of play, change it up - make it domain level, give them holdings and vassals to look out for and develop
- have people come to them for answers i.e. the Superman problem of every problem in the world turning up at their door.
Of course try this out on a small scale and see if the party enjoys it, then continue to ratchet up the challenge as opposed to dumping them in it immediately. Similarly, if after a while people are getting frustrated, they can always get a seneschal to manage their lands and return to their carefree questing. Decisions are not irrevocable, you can try something and keep or drop it, depending on how it goes.
For me, I love when the party is functioning as a well-oiled, unified machine. In my view it is awesome as you can crank the throttle on external danger mercilessly. The challenge is not dealing with internal group tensions and "can they get it together in time" but knowing the right direction, knowing the long odds, can they still win out against them.
On the micro-scale, this can be the classic dungeon crawl - highly hazardous environment, the team has to work together to get in, survive and get out. On the macro-scale - throw big, clear threats at them - impossible odds, crushing time-tables - the kinds of things that challenge steadfast heroes. The types of 'we cannot be everywhere at once' challenges where they have to do the most possible good with the resources available.
I have previously run my games assuming the party is a well oiled machine - there is no margin for them to mess around with in group tensions or they will be steam rollered by events. For max impact, make sure they are the last line - have all other heroes eaten, exiled or turned so "Only They Can Save The Day". With an entire multiverse worth of excitement out there I am always happy when the party turns around to ask 'so that is that solved, whats next...?'
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