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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8447685" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Just a quick thought on this conversation and a peculiarity of D&D and now 5e culture.A long, long time ago, I brought up and broke down 5e’s Social Conflict mechanics. I described them as giving social play a structure and feel similar to Pictionary/Charades + Wheel of Fortune. From a read, I thought this was a very solid bit of game design not because they’re the best Social Conflict mechanics I had seen (at that point or since). I said that because they worked holistically with the rest of 5e’s design and play feel (solving various puzzles and integrating various pieces of fiction to trigger mechanical advantage).When I ran the game, I was pleased (enough) with the results. I praised the game and design for this. This was a good long while ago.I came on this board to express that sentiment and, to no big surprise, to a respondent pretty much everyone either didn’t have a clue what I was talking about (they didn’t read this section of the DMG or perhaps they didn’t read the DMG much at all) or (the very few) felt it was rubbish and weren’t using it.It’s mistaken to chalk this up as a case of  “system doesn’t matter.” System very much did matter to all those folks way back when. They were subbing out 5e’s “system’s say” for:* Procedures they had accreted over the years from other games (including past D&D).* “GM decides” based on extrapolation of the fiction + unrevealed backstory.* “GM decides” based on the GM’s storyteller mandate and/or AP requirements.* Negotiated imagination via some type of table consensus achieved.++++++++++I frowned then that a coherent piece of 5e design was being ignored and subbed out for something else with the play culture being ignorant of the Social Conflict rules or brazenly asserting they’re either crap or not worth the effort to assimilate in play without even trying.My takeaway wasn’t that D&D fans don’t care about “the system’s say” (as every 4e edition war proved that premise to not be true). My takeaway was that D&D fans deeply care about it (and care about it in a way I find frustrating…particularly because this would be bizarrely misattributed to design being irrelevant!)!</blockquote>

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