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I'm not sure what you had in mind, but it seems to me that all WotC editions have been modelled after MtG, 4e especially.

I only really want #1. I guess #2 is OK for non-critical scenes that we don't need to focus on, but only occasionally. Players that can't/won't do at least some of #1 aren't welcome in my game.

This is a factor of game design. Modern D&D is built around players choosing multiple combinations of largely flavourless technical ability packets in a way that's akin to building a Magic deck. It's natural therefore to try to build something that is mechanically effective. It's natural then to...

The point isn't that virtually no-one does, it's that virtually everyone doesn't. But I'm not going to go over the context again, you may not have seen all the posts in the line of discussion.

'The NPC intimidates you. There is no-one else in the room. You don't have to back away, but if you swallow your fear and continue to stand up to him, you will have a penalty to your attacks/other rolls'. 'The NPC persuades/deceives you. There is no-one else in the room. You don't have to go...

I repeat the way I handle this stuff in Other Worlds: if the NPC makes a successful diplomacy check against you in the royal court, saying we should invade Mordor, it does not mean you are convinced that this is a good idea, or that you must go along with it. It means that you were...

Soviet trivia: I've gone by this user name for nearly 30 years, it's taken from a song I liked by the band Electronic.

I agree. Again, this is an area of inadequate game design.

So propaganda, advertising, social media operant conditioning, and all that stuff are wholly ineffective? They merely bring something to a perfectly rational person's attention that they can choose to accept or reject from their position of perfect self control?

Being persuaded, intimidated, deceived etc aren't decisions you make.

Bronn in GoT just sprang to mind. Chris Claremont's X-Men as well. I think in reducing combat to a mini wargame, that's often so complex and long-winded that describing every action would be a significant time sink, a lot of RPGs miss out on the very simple narrative technique of showing a...

I am, yes. And I do. I don't necessarily have a full mental model of how my character would react to every possible situation, at least without it too-easily slipping into the perfect self control thing I described earlier, so I think that a 'save versus fear' type mechanic can sometimes be a...

No, the basic building blocks of the internet are packet switching, the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) communications protocol, and client/server computing.

'My character can never be tricked, persuaded, entertained, intimidated, or scared, he has perfect control over his emotional response to all external stimuli' does not strike me as verisimilitudinous. Unless your character is a robot I guess.

I suppose one way you could do it is to have the NPC make their Persuasion check and then the resulting score is the DC of Wisdom saves for the PCs to not be impressed.

Thank you!oneeleven

I think you can certainly make an argument that any travel through foreign lands in a fantasy setting has huge potential for interesting (if not necessarily impactful) moments and is worth spending more time on.

Isn't this just 'Baseball doesn't work'?

Once again: no-one is advocating for it. The point is simply that it is possible. And by choosing not to do it, by choosing to skip parts of the adventure because they are not interesting, one is making a decision for narrative reasons.

I don't think that 'all encounters are beatable' is a safe assumption in any edition of D&D, much less other games.