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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 808342" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, to be perfectly frank, I think that this is one of those complaints based off totally false assumptions.The assumption being made is that the reason that there is alot of combat rules and not alot of social interaction rules is that the game tries to emphasize combat.That's actually irrrelevant.  People will emphasize or deemphasize combat as they please.  The real evidence that the game engine encourages combat is that it is fairly consistantly survivable, NOT that it has detailed rules for it.   Even games which don't emphasize combat spend the better portion of thier rules on combat and are much more likely to tightly regulate access to combat abilities than other skills.The reason that there is not alot of crunch regarding social interaction is that it would unnecessarily slow the game down and wouldn't improve the enjoyment of the game.It is perfectly possible to create just as detailed rules for social interaction, internal emotional struggle, and so forth as we have for combat.Who would want them?  Who would enjoy slowing every conversation to a crawl as you rolled dice to resolve every characters contribution?   Who wants to roll ten dice and consult 5 different tables to find out whether there character can overcome thier shyness, fight off thier apathy, calm thier emotions, temper thier price, and charm the princess enough that the princess accepts the invitation to dance over that of your rival?  Such a system would be interesting as a case study in simulated personality, but would not be that interesting as a game.I've had characters go several sessions without drawing a weapon in combat.  But one thing I have learned is that when it all boils down to it, if the antagonist wants to insist on being totally ruthless all the wit in the world isn't going to do anything but temporarily amuse him as he does whatever diabolical thing he does.  If you can't contribute to combat, you are going to have a hard time contributing to any story which features at least some unresolvable conflicts.</blockquote>

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