Hmm... You've obviously filled in a number of blanks about me (incorrectly) that are making this more difficult than it should be. Let's try and address some of this in turn.
Sigh, again with the blatant double standard being applied that any mechanic must just be utterly superficial and disconnected from everything if it's for social or emotional stuff, but the rest of the mechanics really have heft and bite and depth such that they, without ever addressing the social/emotional stuff, have such impact that they encourage all the fun character stuff. Those other mechanics are awesome, so awesome we don't need stupid mechanics for social stuff.
I mean, it's very hard to have a discussion about these things when the immediate response is a gross caricature laid on bad assumptions.
Not at all. Those other mechanics suck too, and if there were
any other reasonable way to resolve them other than rolling dice and engaging with (hopefully unobtrusive and fade into the background) mechanics, then I'd obviously prefer them. (Assuming, of course, that you want to introduce an element of risk that can't be modeled any other way. I suppose you could always just talk through action scenes, but few people would find that entertaining in the same way that rolling dice to see if you succeed or fail on various elements is.)
In terms of character exploration and development and (many) social interactions: THERE IS another and superior way to handle it, so I have little interest in a mechanical solution to something that doesn't need a mechanical solution. I'm neither making gross caricatures (or even pleasant caricatures) nor bad assumptions, I just have a very strong preference for non-mechanical solutions whenever reasonably possible. You, I presume, see it as a double standard because you don't have that preference, and like to engage with clever mechanics, so clever mechanics that do something interesting to you in a scenario in which I have no preference for ANY mechanics, especially not overly precious ones seems like fun. I don't think that it is, and it's not because I have a double standard. I just have a different standard than you do.
I also take exception to the egregiously untrue assertion that you've repeatedly made that you can't explore character, or learn anything about character without having mechanics to introduce a random element into the equation, because without the random element giving you results that you don't expect, you can't actually learn anything.
Ahem...
that is, in fact, a statement that requires a bad assumption and is therefore a gross caricature. In fact, it's that bad assumption and gross caricature that I believe is almost solely responsible for this tangent being dragged on as long as it has been. That's the kind of thing that people DO take exception to; being told that they're not even doing what they claim to be doing, because if they're not doing it the way you proscribe, then they better come up with a different label for it.
Look, I really like playing 5e. I'm saying all of these things about my own play -- play that I like. This isn't an attempt to denigrate or reduce your fun or anyone else -- I'd have to be doing that to myself, and I very much feel I'm not. Instead, I'm trying to get to a core distinction about a difference in fundamental approach to roleplaying a character. The kneejerk move to somehow protect your own play isn't necessary - I 100% think it's a great and fun way to play and I engage it wholeheartedly. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about a different way you can also play and what makes it different. You keep turning it into a complaint about semantics and complaining about my word choices. Oh, and badly construing how systems that do it differently work.
Wow, I'm... not doing that at all. I honestly have no idea what you're talking about now. I don't even play 5e. I've never even
read 5e. I'm not at all protecting my playstyle against some perceived attack. I am, however, taking exception to your characterization that certain things can only be done if you do them the specific way that you think that they should be done, and everyone else who says that they're doing exactly what you're claiming that they can't be doing just fine without those mechanics should probably be taken at face value.
And this unawareness of large parts of the hobby space is pretty obvious. What's not great about this take is that you're unaware of the impacts this space has had on the D&D hobby over the editions, and how 5e isn't independent of them, but made conscious choices in design that acknowledge the other approaches out there. That it was dissatisfaction with how D&D does roleplaying that led to White Wolf almost taking the crown in the '90's. About how popular PbtA games are, that work in this space of mechanics being able to affect character -- and how one of the largest ever kickstarters for RPGs (and boardgames for that matter) is a PbtA game system. It's a take that's very, very uninformed, but not surprisingly so because of how much market share 5e has -- you can easily go decades of gaming and never really run across a competing approach to play.
I don't play D&D. I've been dissatisfied with D&D since 1985, a least, if not earlier. I leaned heavily into White Wolf in the 90s, and eventually lost interest in them because the games were written and played more like D&D than they pretended to; they were just more smug and pretentious about it. I was heavily exposed to competing approaches to play long before 3e was even released or I discovered ENWorld in its earliest incarnation several usernames ago.
I just take exception to the fact that in your advocacy for PbtA (or Dogs in the Vinyard, or Fiasco, or whatever other Forge-esque game you care to refer to) type games you're making claims that people aren't actually doing what they think that they are doing, because without PbtA type mechanics, they aren't doing jack squat with character. That's patently untrue AND insulting, which is why you're getting so much pushback for making that assertion from so many people.
But, still, this gross appeal to popularity does nothing to support your claims.
See, even that you mischaracterize. I made a throwaway reference to the fact that maybe if a bunch of people are telling you that they're doing something just fine without your mechanics that it is, in fact, possible to do so without your mechanics, and all you see from that is a gross appeal to popularity?