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Message: <blockquote data-quote="buzz" data-source="post: 3741570" data-attributes="member: 6777">If it's a mechanical disincentive to include social resolution rules, then one would think D&D players would choose to avoid physical combat at all costs, given that 90% of the rules are about that.Social mechanics, if anything, are an incentive to include social scenes in your games.Save for freeform, RPGs have rules. There's no getting around that. And as was pointed out by LostSoul, these rules can be simple enough that mastery should really not be an issue.IIRC, Gygax's Lejendary Journeys RPG did away with all non-physical stats, based on the assumption that players were going to run their PCs at their own level of aptitude regardless.All I can keep coming back to is something that's hard to express without coming off like an elitist jerk (which is not my intent), but it's true nonetheless. The idea that social mechanics "get in the way" or eliminate roleplaying is wrong. Period. It really shouldn't even be an issue of debate. Games that use them have been around for practically a decade now. Plenty of people in this thread and elsewhere have played them and can give concrete examples of play that, if anything, feature more "roleplaying" than games that don't feature these mechanics.*By including these sorts of mechanics, D&D4e is simply catching up to current RPG design. The only question in our minds should be whether 4e's implementation is enjoyable and productive, or not. Unfortunately, it's hard to talk constructively about that until we actually see the rules.* Noonan's example of the party convincing the lich to help them fight the dragon is a good one. Under 3.5, this would not have happened unless you already knew that your DM was predisposed to allow that sort of play. By 3.5 RAW, killing all the monsters is a far, far more viable option. The presence of the social rules in 4e, however, turned diplomacy into another viable option, thus creating a facet of the adventure's "story" that would probably not have happened otherwise.</blockquote>

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