Any RPGs that focus on roleplaying instead of combat?

[Argyle King]

No, I am of the opinion that a player cannot perfectly play the mentality of a character separate from the mentality of the player, especially when it comes to matters of intelligence and insight. It's easier for example for an intelligent person to adequately play an intelligent person with a different belief and ethical outlook than their own, than it is for them to play someone who is always clueless. And it's easier for a DM to do this with respect to an NPC, than it is for a player to do with a PC, because the player invests his ego in the PC and is generally emotionally committed to the PC's health and success. When it becomes a matter of victory or survival, it's easy to convince yourself to fudge and pull a Forest Gump trope - where the 'stupid' character you play has an intelligent person's insight but is by convention of the story unaware of his own insights and understanding.

All I can really do in response to this is to try giving an example.

As a player, I have a very good grasp of tactics when it comes to combat. That is due to having a military background in a combat arms MOS, and due to having used those skills in action. Likewise, one of my big interests is historical warfare and tactics. When it comes to that sort of thing, I would dare say I'm rather skilled.

In contrast, one of the characters I currently play has very little in the way of experience when it comes to combat. In fact, the character started the campaign as an escaped slave who had never even gone on an adventure. There have been times when his (the character's) decision making progress was very different from what mine would have been given the same situation. A big reason for that difference is because of my view that the character would not have some of the knowledge available to him which is available to me; as such, there were things I did not think about or consider when viewing the game world from his point of view.

I do recognize that I'm possibly an outlier when it comes to being able to do that. All I can say is that I've never had a problem separating myself from the mind of a character when I've really wanted to. It's not something I always do, but it's certainly something I can do. I've done it both as a player playing a PC, and as a GM playing the part of a NPC.


As far as your Forest Gump example, sure that happens. However, how easily that can happen might depend upon the system. There are systems which have mechanics to prevent a player from choosing actions opposed by the mentality of their character. In such a system, I might choose a disadvantage such as Honesty during character creation which makes it difficult for me to lie. In that same hypothetical game, there may come a time when I want to lie to the town guard about something my adventuring companions are doing; depending on the severity of the lie, I may be required to make some sort of roll to overcome my character's usual personality.

In general, let me address everyone that denies mental skills are of a different character than physical skills.

Suppose you wanted to run Tomb of Horrors for your group. And, upon floating this idea, you learned that one player had prior to your suggestion bought a copy of the module and memorized the text. However, the player says, "Don't worry. I'll just role-play my character and pretend that I don't actually know anything about the module."

Would you agree that the player could do this so perfectly that his play during the game was exactly the same as the play and experience the player would have had he not already known every detail of the module? That is to say, the successes and revelations the player (and therefore the character) has would be simply and exactly the same set of insights the player would have had they never encountered the text, and any failures would be exactly the same failures that the player would have had made in ignorance?

Because the only way you can argue that mental skills and physical skills are exactly the same, is if you can sustain the belief that metagame information never informs a player's choices. A character's intelligence is different than a character's strength because the character's intelligence - unlike his strength - is supposed to inform the choices that the character makes. But the character is in fact only an avatar of the player, and it is always the player that makes those choices. You can therefore dissociate completely a character's physical skills from the physical skills of the players, because these are pure action resolution, but you can never completely dissociate a character's mental skills from the mental skill of the player. A player's physical body does not extend into the game world, but the player's volition and insight does because ultimately the game world is a shared mental space.

I do not believe metagaming proves much of anything about mental character skills being different. It's just as possible for me to metagame my character's physical skills. For example, I know that in D&D 4E I can survive falls which would likely kill me (or at least cripple me) in real life. As such, the metagame informs me that I am willing to take physical risks that I otherwise wouldn't in a different system or in reality. As such, those are times when metagame information has changed how I used physical skills.

To answer your question, I do suspect many people would be tempted to use knowledge they have. However, it's very easy for a GM to work around that by simply changing parts of an adventure; even trivial changes can lead to a world of woe for someone who relies too heavily on metagame information.

Now, I would agree that it is difficult for a GM to enforce mental stats and skills on a player. It is difficult because such things are not strictly measured in the same way a physical score measures encumbrance thresholds and things of that nature. However, I do not believe it is impossible. One of the ways I believe it is very possible is by training your players to expect that relying too heavily on metagaming can lead to bad consequences. A second way is by doing what many game systems do; that is to reward roleplaying rather than encounter solving. There are systems which reward roleplaying with character points and character advancement rather than strictly equating success with XP.

 

[Balesir]

We could have the DM and the PC negotiate over what the PC said, fortune at the beginning, but this still relies on the DM deciding what works and probably involves (as the next example will demonstrate) passing meta-game information to the player. True roleplaying, in the sense we'd want to make social skills match the decision to attack something with a sword, open the door on the left, or climb the north wall involves greater specificity over the player's actual choice.

If a skilled swordsman character's player rolls a "1", what happens? There will be some reason why the attack failed here, too, but we don't typically decide it beforehand. I don't see why a range of unknowns cannot be subsumed into the die roll in social encounters in exactly the same way.

In other words, there is a "third way" in addition to those you outlined, and it works like this:

- game setup determines DC from situation. level of encounter, or whatever

- player decides what will happen if the roll succeeds (possibly by stating what the character says, or just by describing the story that the character tries to sell)

- GM decides what failure vectors might exist, which might include any of the above

- roll the dice; on a success the guards buy the story described by the player (possibly, on a "partial success", with some twist or complication added by the GM)

- on a failure the GM describes why the attempt fails using one of the "vectors" selected earlier (and, possibly, on a partial failure the player gets to add a twist or mitigation)

If pertinent facts are known by both GM and player beforehand these may modify the DC, but unknown complications generally don't need to. The direction of the modification can be pretty moot, actually, since knowing the Baron likes young goblins (for instance) can either mean the story just won't be tried or may allow a bonus for a disguise kit...

Universalis has, perhaps, the most comprehensive system like this. Successes and failures both earn story coins that can be spent to define/describe consequences by both the winner and the loser players (there is no "GM" in Universalis). It works pretty well once the players get used to the paradigm.

 

[ThirdWizard]

The jump example is an interesting one. "Jumping" is a description of the fiction. When you say you're jumping, what you're saying is that in the fiction you're going to attempt to jump. That just happens to also be represented by a very specific skill in D&D 3e that only pertains to the fiction of jumping. Look at some other RPGs, perhaps FATE. In that system, you have the Athletics skill that encompasses most physical maneuvers. Suddenly, the fiction of jumping is separate from the mechanics of task resolution.

You can't just say "I athletics my way past the obstacle." How are you using athletics to get past the obstacle? Are you climbing down and back up? Are you trying to move across the wall? Are you jumping? You don't know unless you describe the fiction. Each different application of the fiction onto the world will lead to a different outcome. Are there dangers at the bottom of the pit? What are the walls made out of? Is this dungeon known for illusions? Traps? All of these will help the player determine how they should approach the situation.

Moving on to a different system that handles things fairly differently is Apocalypse World. In AW, you describe the fiction, and that fiction is what triggers a move. The thing being here that a move might be or might not be triggered, or a different move than expected might be triggered. It will be determined by the fiction of what is going on around you. And, as the game continues, the fiction described will affect how you have to act and react.

So in AW you have moves like Act Under Fire and Go Aggro. You can never just say you're acting under fire. That doesn't mean anything without the context of the fiction and an explanation of what you're doing. If a you're pinned down by a bunch of knuckleheads with full autos, Jimmy's lying in a pool of his own blood out in the open, and your pickup's tire has been blown out, then shooting back, pulling Jimmy to safety, or patching up the rubber might all be acting under fire. The fiction's the thing.

To take it to a more familiar milieu, take Dungeon World as another example. Lets say you're sneaking up on a goblin to try and take him out. Depending on the fiction of what's going on, maybe the GM declares you just kill him. Maybe you get to roll for damage. Maybe you have to roll Hack & Slash. Maybe you have to Defy Danger to get to him. You state what it is you are trying to do, and the fiction as set up by the group determines what rolls are going to be needed to accomplish the task.

The same holds for attacking a roaring dragon. If you say you're attacking the dragon, the GM is well within his rights to ask how! How are you going to reach it? How are you going to get through its hide armor? Describe what you're doing, because in Dungeon World there isn't really an "attack" action like in D&D. You don't move your mini adjacent, roll to hit and damage, and call it a day. The GM might just say that your sword isn't enough to pierce the dragon's scales. He might say you have to perform some tasks to get into place, or maybe you can get where you're going fine. All based on the fiction.

So, I think looking at roleplaying itself from a broader perspective helps establish how physical and social skills are not that dissimilar to each other, and how fiction and how we think of it is inextricably tied to the rules of the game. It's kind of like how our thought process is influenced by language, even though you don't need language to think, and learning a new language can help you think in other ways sometimes. In other words, this is why I think the way I do.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can certainly see how some folks wouldnt find any difference between combat skills and social skills. I think you need to play the game in a way that makes sense for you, so if these things feel similar to you, then that is your experience and how play functions at your table. I guess for me, i don't want combat and social skills (or mental skills) to function the same. I am okay letting random rolls determine some of the stuff that goes on in combat (though I would still like my descriptions of what i am eying to do to factor in) but for conversations with NPCs, interactions with the environmeent, etc I want to handle those details directly and avoid abstracting them as much as possible. I dont think my way is better than others, or the only way to play an rpg, but it is the way that works best for me. That doesnt mean no rolling for non-combat situations, just that there are times where i find skills like diplomacy and evn detect intrudig on my interaction with the setting and its people. As I said before, i really tend to notice it during things like investigation adventures or puzzles, where the fun for me is figuring those things out, not having the system simulate my character figuring them out.

 

[Celebrim]

Good post ThirdWizard. The whole thing is worth reading.

You can't just say "I athletics my way past the obstacle."...Depending on the fiction of what's going on, maybe the GM declares you just kill him. Maybe you get to roll for damage. Maybe you have to roll Hack & Slash. Maybe you have to Defy Danger to get to him. You state what it is you are trying to do, and the fiction as set up by the group determines what rolls are going to be needed to accomplish the task...The same holds for attacking a roaring dragon. If you say you're attacking the dragon, the GM is well within his rights to ask how! How are you going to reach it? How are you going to get through its hide armor? Describe what you're doing, because in Dungeon World there isn't really an "attack" action like in D&D. You don't move your mini adjacent, roll to hit and damage, and call it a day. The GM might just say that your sword isn't enough to pierce the dragon's scales. He might say you have to perform some tasks to get into place, or maybe you can get where you're going fine. All based on the fiction.

So, I think looking at roleplaying itself from a broader perspective helps establish how physical and social skills are not that dissimilar to each other, and how fiction and how we think of it is inextricably tied to the rules of the game.

Ok, you've established a very key point, which is one of the ways that physical and mental skills in the game are similar to each other in depending on the fiction. In that sense, I've agreed from the start of this thread that you can't simply say, "I use diplomacy to get past the obstacle." You have to engage in and with the fiction of the world. If a player does say, "I want to use savoire faire to get past the obstacle.", the DM is in his rights to say, "Yes, but what do you say." because the player is engaged not in the fiction but with the rules. And even as a rules proposition, "I use combat to defeat my opponent." is only a vague declaration of intention, and not an actual action.

But while I agree that in this sense the mental and physical traits of a character are similar, there is another sense in which they are very dissimilar and its also pointed out by your examination of the interaction between rules and fiction.

Suppose my character has within the fiction the trait of being 'strong' - however the rules implement this trait. There is nothing I need do as a player to create this trait within the fiction. He's either strong or he isn't. If I am strong in real life, my ability to bench press 400lb doesn't add to the fiction of the character's strength. If I am not strong in real life, my inability to brench press 400lb doesn't subtract from the character ability to lift things and shove people around. The character's capabilities are completely separate in that regard from the player's abilities.

But, in PnP games player character's are avatars of their players. Regardless of whether you play pawn stance or actor stance or author stance or anything else, the character's choices and actions are based on your decisions as a player. Now suppose you state that your character has within the fiction the trait of 'makes good choices'. Like 'extraordinarily strong', this is a common trait of protagonists in heroic fiction. Does it follow that it is as easy to create in the fiction the trait of 'makes good choices' as it is the trait of 'extraordinarily strong'?

No, because regardless of the skill being used or the system being used, engaging with the fiction requires making choices and the player can still make bad choices. Having mental skills might make the character more perceptive and knowing, and the DM might be able to convey that additional knowledge to the player, but unless the player is capable of putting that knowledge together, coming to the right conclusion, and making a good decision based on that knowledge no amount of on paper skills will realize the fiction of a character that makes good choices if the player doesn't. In this sense, any trait that depends on the character's mental ability differs in character from traits based on the character's physical ability because unlike the player's body, the player's mind intrudes into the fiction. After all, the fiction is occurring inside the player's mind. The character isn't external to the player's mind, and can't act independently of their choices.

So while a trait like 'smashes things' doesn't require a player actually skilled at smashing things to the extent that a quadriplegic or an invalid player is perfectly good at smashing things, 'negotiates peaceful settlements between ancient enemies' or 'quickly produces brilliant tactical plans' does require the player to have some minimum amount of mental capacity. I mean, if mental ability didn't matter at all, then surely six year olds could successfully play characters whose actions, maturity, and cunning matched those of adult players in every way? Or four year olds. Or two year olds.

There are ways to say, "Your own strength, speed, and health don't matter to the game." You can't really also say, "Your own wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and planning ability don't matter to the game." The player's body isn't in the game, but their mind is.

 

[ThirdWizard]

No, because regardless of the skill being used or the system being used, engaging with the fiction requires making choices and the player can still make bad choices. Having mental skills might make the character more perceptive and knowing, and the DM might be able to convey that additional knowledge to the player, but unless the player is capable of putting that knowledge together, coming to the right conclusion, and making a good decision based on that knowledge no amount of on paper skills will realize the fiction of a character that makes good choices if the player doesn't. In this sense, any trait that depends on the character's mental ability differs in character from traits based on the character's physical ability because unlike the player's body, the character's body intrudes into the fiction. After all, the fiction is occurring inside the player's mind. The character isn't external to the player's mind, and can't act independently of their choices.

I think this sums up what you're saying pretty well.

In the end, what happens in the game is a result of, and constrained by, the ideas, imaginations, and experiences of the people playing the game. I think the big reason for social skills have been added to games has been to attempt to curtail this reliance on a player's own ability, whether that be mental or social. That's why in modules you see everything from "Make an Int check to solve the puzzle" to "Make an Int check to get a clue" to "Perform a skill challenge to solve the puzzle." There's been a sort of resistance to the idea that our character should be limited by us, the players of the game. Maybe social skills being added is because gamers are thought of as anti-social creatures, and designers are trying to build a better system for introverts. Well, I'll leave the theorizing as to why for another day. Suffice to say that I see where you're coming from in this regard.

I would definitely point out that deciding what to do can be just as crippling for someone who is not tactically minded when dealt a tactical situation as someone not socially minded when dealt a social situation. If you someone isn't good at wargames, I have to admit that as much as I love it, you won't be "good" at D&D 4e (fuzzy quotes because good is a relative term). It's just not as obvious that your mental skills aren't up to snuff when you forget to use your minor action in a clinch situation than when the DM looks at you and says "The pirate captain looks at you expectantly after finding you stowed away on his ship, a deep growl starting to form in his throat. 'Why are ye on my ship? Give me one reason I shouldn't keel haul the lot o' ya!'"

There's, I think, also a tendency when a player isn't sure what to do to look to their character sheet for ideas or answers. It's sort of the spoken 'um' that comes out, where without a fully formed thought, they reach for something. So, they might see that they have a high diplomacy and want to use it! "Aha," they think, "I bet this high skill can get me out of this mess!" After all they sunk a lot of points into it, as opposed to all those other skills like Use Magic Device or Jump. They know they can use those skills. But, they don't know they can use Diplomacy.

All this is to say that I think its easier to answer the question "What should I do now" when it pertains to a physical situation, because physical problems usually have straightforward answers, whereas mental/social problems are usually far more open ended. I don't think this is a problem strictly for physicality, and I still don't think it social aspects of the game are a wholly different animal than physical aspects, but I wholeheartedly agree that the two aren't on equal footing, mostly based on the nature of available options for a given situation.

 

[Celebrim]

There's been a sort of resistance to the idea that our character should be limited by us, the players of the game.

I definitely can understand that, but as a guy whose spent 95% of his career as a DM, the realization that the world is limited by my understanding talents and capabilities is something that impressed itself on me in a hurry.

You can't just have an NPC with Perform(Jokes) +20 or Wit +20, and say, "He tells a joke. *roll* It's very funny, and you involuntarily begin laughing", if what you want to achieve is the effect of the player finding the NPC funny. Or at least, you might, but they'd not be laughing at what you wanted them to laugh at, and the joke would get tired fast. If you want NPC's to have magnetic personalities, you can't rely on a roll of a die to achieve the effect, because by convention PC's usually aren't subject to behavior change by mundane charisma interaction and in any event forcing the PC to behave in some way against the player's will is a very different result than convincing the player to behave in some way of their own accord. One put's the player very much on their guard, and the other - almost by definition - doesn't.

So it's very very obvious to a DM that social skills aren't the same as physical skills. Your NPC's can easily tumble through the air and jump over small buildings in a single bound, even though you can't. But your NPC's can't be witty, entertaining, impressive, or even knowledgeable if you can't pull that off in your play. This isn't the result of the players being unfair to you. This is just the way it is. It's very obvious as the DM you can't blame the players for the failure of your NPC's to be what you imagined them to be.

There are limits to what you can pull off as a role-player. It's a learning process increasing your skills as a player so that you can pull off more and more sorts of improvisation and more and more different sorts of roles. You have to except that to some extent, RPG's are like other games - you get better at them through practice. It's a big skill set. I've been playing for 30 years and I've still got lots to learn.

Maybe social skills being added is because gamers are thought of as anti-social creatures, and designers are trying to build a better system for introverts.

Speaking as an introvert, the best system for introverts is learning to role play. Once I learned to do it in game, I started putting it into practice outside of the game. In fact, the name I go by in real life was very consciously created as a persona of a person who wasn't introverted, and began life with very conscious efforts to imagine what a non-introverted person would do and how they would behave.

Being who I am, this involved library research.

I would definitely point out that deciding what to do can be just as crippling for someone who is not tactically minded when dealt a tactical situation as someone not socially minded when dealt a social situation.

Definitely. I've had those players. But equally, it's very hard to address as a systems issue, because what do you really want as a player - the game to tell you what to do? To become an observer of your own character? To sit there while the DM fills in all the blanks for you, like the experience of a cRPG where when you select 'talk to the character' the game decides what you say and what you are allowed to say?

It's certainly tempting as a DM. There are times I can't resist going, "Are you really sure you want to do that?" There are even times when it's appropriate (the player is acting with a lack of information about the setting that the character wouldn't have). But if you stop the game for a 'wisdom check' or 'intelligence check' often enough, you might as well tell the story solo.

I've also had players that 'ego game' (seeking self-validation through the success they achieve in the fiction) who in every scene want desperately to pull off that shining moment of awesomeness, and so instead of waiting to let it happen try to push the issue, resulting in repeated spectacular failures because of the rash and unnecessarily complicated plans they try to implement. This leads to a lot of them getting frustrated, especially since their character often ends up becoming a figure of fun and comic relief, or jealous if another more relaxed player keeps getting moment's of awesome without apparently trying (which in turn can lead to accusations of favoritism).

Dealing with players who are frustrated because they can't be the character they see in their mind is always challenging. Some don't want to accept that they need to learn anything at all as if - just because there are no winners or losers - it is just intuitive being good at tactics, theatrics, investigation, dungeoneering, and systems mastery. You've got to be encouraging, understanding, and you have to mentor. It's fun watching the player level up though.

There's, I think, also a tendency when a player isn't sure what to do to look to their character sheet for ideas or answers. It's sort of the spoken 'um' that comes out, where without a fully formed thought, they reach for something. So, they might see that they have a high diplomacy and want to use it! "Aha," they think, "I bet this high skill can get me out of this mess!" After all they sunk a lot of points into it, as opposed to all those other skills like Use Magic Device or Jump. They know they can use those skills. But, they don't know they can use Diplomacy.

All this is to say that I think its easier to answer the question "What should I do now" when it pertains to a physical situation, because physical problems usually have straightforward answers, whereas mental/social problems are usually far more open ended.

Hitting something with a stick is intuitive even to a two year old.

It would be possible to design a social system which would be on par with a combat system. Some well meaning designers intending to encourage role play as a focus of play, and to empower players who were uncomfortable with social interaction to be able to live out the fiction of a high charisma character have tried just that. The problem with it is social challenges would then in turn tend to have game play that resembles combat, which means that they effectively are just more combat, and the entire goal of encouraging role play fails. I think the more pragmatic solution to this problem tends to be to make combat resolution more resemble social interaction resolution, emphasizing that this game really isn't supposed to be about combat at all.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I can certainly see how some folks wouldnt find any difference between combat skills and social skills. I think you need to play the game in a way that makes sense for you, so if these things feel similar to you, then that is your experience and how play functions at your table. I guess for me, i don't want combat and social skills (or mental skills) to function the same. I am okay letting random rolls determine some of the stuff that goes on in combat (though I would still like my descriptions of what i am eying to do to factor in) but for conversations with NPCs, interactions with the environmeent, etc I want to handle those details directly and avoid abstracting them as much as possible. I dont think my way is better than others, or the only way to play an rpg, but it is the way that works best for me. That doesnt mean no rolling for non-combat situations, just that there are times where i find skills like diplomacy and evn detect intrudig on my interaction with the setting and its people. As I said before, i really tend to notice it during things like investigation adventures or puzzles, where the fun for me is figuring those things out, not having the system simulate my character figuring them out.

I thought the highlighted point was pretty important. I most enjoy games where task mechanic are abstracted enough to be workable in the game, but no more than that. With combat, a high degree of abstraction is necessary because modeling it with high fidelity would take an inordinate amount of time and effort. With social interaction, that's just not so. We're quite capable of taking our characters' mindset and the other character's words and deciding what our character would do and say in great detail without abstracting anything.

Since abstracting mechanics aren't necessary for social resolution, I would need a compelling reason to include them, since additional mechanics always require additional effort. I really haven't seen such a reason. I'm intrigued by the idea of social mechanics and am interested in finding some that make the game more fun, but I haven't seen a set of such rules yet.

 

[Celebrim]

I thought the highlighted point was pretty important. I most enjoy games where task mechanic are abstracted enough to be workable in the game, but no more than that. With combat, a high degree of abstraction is necessary because modeling it with high fidelity would take an inordinate amount of time and effort. With social interaction, that's just not so. We're quite capable of taking our characters' mindset and the other character's words and deciding what our character would do and say in great detail without abstracting anything.

That's a really important observation, and I think it explains fully my own preferences in a rules set. I tend to like rules that are really crunchy when it comes to combat resolution, but really light when it comes to social resolution.

The reason is that the more crunchy you have in your combat resolution, the less abstract your combat tends to be. There gets to be a tighter and tighter coupling between the propositions made by the players, and the mechanics of proposition resolution and what you imagine in your head - what I call the game being 'cinematic' (though perhaps 'choreographic' might be a better phrase, given the many uses 'cinematic' is put to), in that the act of making propositions and resolving tends to encourage the player to make a movie in their head of what is happening. The only real limit here is a practical one - does the system resolve fast enough to maintain the emotional intensity and interest in the combat. A system that is so crunchy that it drags, tends to leave little time for or interest in imagining the scene. It becomes a series of dull still panels, rather that something dynamic and exciting.

But the opposite tends to be true of social conflict resolution. The more crunchy your rules, the more abstractly it tends to treat social interaction. This is because the crunchy rules are replacing the very concrete and not abstract process of role playing out the scene theatrically. Naturalistic role-play at the table is the highest degree of concreteness you can possibly have for choreographing dialogue. The movie of the game is being created right there at the table, without the need to substitute imagined dialogue for the abstract mechanics. The only limitation here is a practical one - do the rules help me as a DM adjudicate the NPC's actions in a way that is neutral, without bias, and fair to the players (and their character's abilities). So some social interaction rules are desirable, otherwise I must accept the large burden of refereeing social interaction without any guidance at all, but the sort of rules I want tend to be only minimal 'fork in the scene' sorts of rules that give me a 'yes/no' answer to questions like, "Does the NPC become more helpful or more hostile?", when the role play reaches a point where I have to choose which way to take the NPC's further interactions.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Definitely. I've had those players. But equally, it's very hard to address as a systems issue, because what do you really want as a player - the game to tell you what to do? To become an observer of your own character? To sit there while the DM fills in all the blanks for you, like the experience of a cRPG where when you select 'talk to the character' the game decides what you say and what you are allowed to say?

...Dealing with players who are frustrated because they can't be the character they see in their mind is always challenging. Some don't want to accept that they need to learn anything at all as if - just because there are no winners or losers - it is just intuitive being good at tactics, theatrics, investigation, dungeoneering, and systems mastery. You've got to be encouraging, understanding, and you have to mentor. It's fun watching the player level up though.

To a degree, this is something that caused some disillusionment with D&D post-2000 for me in the past few years, and what has me interested in the indie scene. I don't want to ruffle anyone's feathers, but I used to be of the mind of constraining the GM to give the players more power. That, to me, seems to be a philosophy that showed up around the time that D&D 3e came out. Reign in the powers of the DM. Limit the GM's power to alleviate some of the problems of bad DMing. It wasn't exactly present in the rules, perhaps, so much as an idea. I remember a lot of talk in the early ENWorld days of this, so I'll peg it around that time frame, though it could have started earlier and I just wasn't exposed to it. But, I don't think influence over the game is a zero sum game anymore. A GM can have full control, and should be encouraged and learn their craft. A good GM with an open system should be the end goal, after all.

The same should apply to players in my mind. Don't constrain them. Don't hand hold them. Let them learn the craft of roleplaying through experience, and trust that they'll figure it out. Trust the other players to help open up the socially awkward and the non-tactically minded. There's no set standard that they need to hit. There's no this high to ride. If you're muddling through, then you muddle through, and hopefully after years and years you get into a stride. That's the way I see it at least, and I agree with most of what you're saying here.

It would be possible to design a social system which would be on par with a combat system. Some well meaning designers intending to encourage role play as a focus of play, and to empower players who were uncomfortable with social interaction to be able to live out the fiction of a high charisma character have tried just that. The problem with it is social challenges would then in turn tend to have game play that resembles combat, which means that they effectively are just more combat, and the entire goal of encouraging role play fails. I think the more pragmatic solution to this problem tends to be to make combat resolution more resemble social interaction resolution, emphasizing that this game really isn't supposed to be about combat at all.

FATE actually has a social combat system that I really like. But, then, compared to something like D&D 3e/4e, FATE has fairly light gameplay. You're either attacking (dealing stress/consequences) or creating an advantage (creating a helpful aspect). And, in FATE when you're entering social combat, you're looking to create social repercussions. So you don't use social combat for something like convincing the king that you're right. You use social combat to create doubt in others about the king's decision to stay out of the Plague Wars, for example. So, your attack may be stating a fact about how the war is going poorly that the audience didn't know and seeing if the king can respond without losing face. Creating an aspect might bringing up something that might compromise his judgement, then making an attack by saying how that compromised judgement might hurt the kingdom. Of course, beware of petty kings who might throw you in the dungeon. But, if he takes a consequence from the social combat, maybe a young duke will decide to follow you.

All of that can happen freeform of course. But, in my opinion, the dice add a certain expectancy that I like as both a player and a GM. As GM I like not knowing where the story will go. I'm very much the kind of GM who loves to see the game unfold in front of me and thrives on unexpected twists. I guess I'm being somewhat selfish here in a way with social combat. It lets me see how things will play out, much as the players get to have that sense of the unknown, I get that as well. Will the king's aides in the above example be swayed against him? Will people start to whisper about the war behind the king's back? I don't know. The dice will let me know. And, I enjoy that. I love to roll the dice and see what happens instead of using my own judgement sometimes, because that moment where the players want to do something crazy and dice hit the table is why I play the game.

That isn't to say I want social combat in all my games or in everything I play. I love Dungeon World, as an example, and social combat would be terrible for that game. Absolutely horrid. It's all about context, expectations, and style.

I thought the highlighted point was pretty important. I most enjoy games where task mechanic are abstracted enough to be workable in the game, but no more than that. With combat, a high degree of abstraction is necessary because modeling it with high fidelity would take an inordinate amount of time and effort. With social interaction, that's just not so. We're quite capable of taking our characters' mindset and the other character's words and deciding what our character would do and say in great detail without abstracting anything.

Since abstracting mechanics aren't necessary for social resolution, I would need a compelling reason to include them, since additional mechanics always require additional effort. I really haven't seen such a reason. I'm intrigued by the idea of social mechanics and am interested in finding some that make the game more fun, but I haven't seen a set of such rules yet.

At his heart, "combat" is just a contest between parties with a winner and a loser. It doesn't have to be high fidelity. Generally, people are going to expect whittling away at some kind of resource until someone beats the other. In D&D 4e a social conflict would just be a skill challenge where that resource is failures. In FATE this is inflicting consequences on the enemy until they concede. Like I said above, social combat isn't about what the characters say - that comes through the roleplaying - but instead about the fallout of the conversation. It's about determining who gets what they want and who has to make compromises. Most social interactions, thus, wouldn't be social combat.

But what I really want to talk about is abstraction. Abstract mechanics don't mean you have to abstract the fiction itself. Quite the opposite sometimes. The more granular the rules system, the easier it is to let the rules do the heavy lifting for describing the fiction. When you've abstracted away the mechanics from the actions, you are forced to start describing the actions themselves, because the rules don't describe them anymore. The rules aren't a shorthand for what's going on.

For example, take D&D 4e, because I think I've picked on 3e enough for today. Say my rogue has the 1st level Encounter Power Impact Shot that lets him shoot someone with his crossbow and push them back. The power itself is descriptive in what happens, so its not that important to the game itself for me to have to describe what's going on in the fiction. The power itself conveys a lot of information within it. I shoot a crossbow. I deal damage. The target moves backward, away from me. It's all right there on the power. If I use it and the guy is on the edge of a cliff, he goes off the side (if he fails a saving throw!). "AEEEEEeeeee" splat

Then go look at Dungeon World. You're a rogue. You've got a crossbow. If you want to do the same thing, you have to describe why it happens. What did you do to knock him off the cliff. You might say "I lower my crossbow from his chest to his leg. I want to hit him so that he stumbles backward off the cliff." Or you might say "I'm going to shoot my crossbow so that I startle him, sending him confused off the cliff." Or maybe "I'm shooting him straight in the chest. The force should make him stumble backward just enough to push him off the edge and down." And, then the actual task resolution comes into play, which is going to be one of several abstract moves that the GM can decide between, depending on the circumstances. In this case the GM says the rogue si Defying Danger (getting rid of a dangerous opponent) and he rolls +DEX. "AEEEEEeeeee" splat

[Note: Not saying one way is better or worse. They're just different, and they emphasize different things. You're perfectly within your rights to not like how Dungeon World handles this situation. I'm using it to describe abstraction of mechanics and fiction. That's all.]

So, you can probably see where I'm going with this. If you abstract away the task resolution for social combat, you end up with something similar. You have to describe the fiction in order to figure out what the task is you're trying to resolve. In this case, the fiction is the dialogue. Without roleplaying the scene out, you have no basis for what you're going to roll or how you're going to resolve anything or what's even happening in game. There is no there there. It doesn't exist. And so, you roleplay the dialogue to create the task to resolve, full circle.

So back to Celebrim, I think we have some insight into our differences.

That's a really important observation, and I think it explains fully my own preferences in a rules set. I tend to like rules that are really crunchy when it comes to combat resolution, but really light when it comes to social resolution.

I'm the opposite. I don't like crunchy rules text. I like Dungeon World, where the fiction is described by the participants as if it is being played out in a movie or in a book. It goes something like this:

Player: Ragnar charges the orc leader lifting his heavy axe blade and slams it into the enemy's shield, yelling out a warcry! I want to break through his shield and cracking some bones.
GM: What's important to you here? Destroying the shield or dealing damage?
Player: Definitely damage. If I end up having to choose between the two, he's going to feel the pain.
GM: Okay, in that case, roll Hack & Slash.
Player: rolls 11! I deal 7 damage with my smash! Ragnar smiles coldly into the enemy's eyes.
GM: The blow is devastating and the orc's shield is shattered under Ragnar's might! It's just then that you notice four goblins sneaking up behind you. They obviously don't care about honorable one on one combat. What do you do?

The distinction being here that you can obviously and most assuredly play like this in D&D. It's just that in Dungeon World its the rules of the game to play fiction-first and task-resolution second. To me, that's what makes for cinematic combat and high action, which are two things that I want in my high fantasy experience. In effect, high fidelity is the opposite of what I want out of a system. I just want a system that resolves things quickly with a lot of leeway for the players and DM to interpret and improvise off of situations as they develop in game.So, when I say social combat, I'm not talking about creating feats that mimic various debate tactics and such. Because I don't want that in my physical combat either. I just want a way to create exciting, randomly resolving, conflicts.

So, perhaps that explains a bit why we see physical and social task resolution (and the differences between them) differently.