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Context Switching Paralysis, or Why we Will Always Have the Thief Debate
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<blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8751191" data-attributes="member: 7030755"><p>This clarifies for me why the "social mechanics" question that sometimes comes up doesn't always feel quite right. 5e says the game has three pillars: combat, exploration, and social. So people see those as containers, and see that the combat container is very full, and think that perhaps they can 'fill up' the exploration and social containers in the same way. However, the three pillars are misleading; when you look at the game, there's actually two phases: free play, where you use the ability check system, and combat, where you use the ability check system but with a bunch of specific exceptions. From that perspective, the relative lack of options around a deception check is less glaring (though there are still spells and such that work at this level).</p><p></p><p>Similarly, games that are credited for handling social engagement well don't have more mechanics, they just don't switch the context. I'll take blades in the dark here because I'm most familiar, but within a score trying to intimidate someone uses the same mechanical structure for trying to knock them over. And thus the former can flow into the latter or vice versa without a lot of friction. In other words, and perhaps just to repeat what you are saying, it's not the amount of rules, but the context in which they come up in play relative to each other, that is more important.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Malmuria, post: 8751191, member: 7030755"] This clarifies for me why the "social mechanics" question that sometimes comes up doesn't always feel quite right. 5e says the game has three pillars: combat, exploration, and social. So people see those as containers, and see that the combat container is very full, and think that perhaps they can 'fill up' the exploration and social containers in the same way. However, the three pillars are misleading; when you look at the game, there's actually two phases: free play, where you use the ability check system, and combat, where you use the ability check system but with a bunch of specific exceptions. From that perspective, the relative lack of options around a deception check is less glaring (though there are still spells and such that work at this level). Similarly, games that are credited for handling social engagement well don't have more mechanics, they just don't switch the context. I'll take blades in the dark here because I'm most familiar, but within a score trying to intimidate someone uses the same mechanical structure for trying to knock them over. And thus the former can flow into the latter or vice versa without a lot of friction. In other words, and perhaps just to repeat what you are saying, it's not the amount of rules, but the context in which they come up in play relative to each other, that is more important. [/QUOTE]
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