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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4081296" data-attributes="member: 710">In that case, there is a third part for me - let's call it acting/thespian or something like that. Which I always believed what people are talking about when they speak about "true role-playing". Rolling the dice according to the game mechanics is not what this is about. It's the stuff when you're talking in character, when you make decisions based on your characters motiviation and experience. Not when you use the mechanics to implement any of your characters decision within the game. I agree that it's possible to make a system where you might have "social powers" and "performance powers" or "craft powers". But personally, I would want to limit the mechanical subsystems of this non-combat stuff - with the primary reason that playing some of these things out purely mechanically over a long term just doesn't feel that entertaining to me. Especially if too many of these non-combat parts are not about the whole group interacting with each other and the world. The spot-light stays too long on a specific character, and that makes an unsatisfying game. (Contrived Example: Imagine you played Monopoly, and to get out of the prison, you'd have to beat "the bank" at a game of chess!)All types of encounters are most fun if all players are involved. If you use mechanics to resolve any kind of encounter, you need to be sure that every player has a mechanical ability to contribute meaningful to that encounter. Because using the dice to resolve the encounter will take most of the time then. If you have a complex social encounter system for a game like D&D, every class should have an ability that allows the character to contribute to it. That's something 3.x could easily fail at. For social encounters i can see a good chance that 4E could have that (if their is indeed a good social encounter system in the DMG). But it might get more difficult outside this area - Craft, Perform, Profession are normally limited to a single person completing the task, and a system for that should be simple and quick to adjudicate then.</blockquote>

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