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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5035588" data-attributes="member: 2205">The only reason combat rules have such primacy is because of the genre conventions on which most roleplaying games are based.If roleplaying games had been based on Jane Austen novels instead of sword & sorcery short stories mingled with a handful of high fantasy novels, they may not have had combat rules at all.I think there's still an awful lot of that element which has led to roleplaying games being what they are.  People don't want to roleplay sitcoms or court room dramas nearly as much as they want to roleplay action.That said, I think some roleplaying games are lacking in rules that emulate action situations, including some editions of D&D.  D&D hasn't ever really had an integral chase mechanic that's anywhere near as robust as its combat mechanic.  The skill system, arguably, addresses a number of other action type situations, but arguably it's also done so in a less robust manner than the combat rules.Then again, also arguably, the combat rules are too detailed and there's too much focus on them because of Gary Gygax's background in tactical wargames.I think you do the question a slight disservice by binning things into either combat or social interaction.  There's plenty of other types of situations that can come up, too.  Social interaction is tricky, though... in a roleplaying environment, you can, well, just roleplay a large chunk of the social interaction without needing any mechanics to do so, and in fact I'd wager most players see that as desireable, at least to some degree.As to my personal opinion, I think the 3e game (I'm not very familiar with 4e, so I can't comment) had too much in the way of combat rules, and the reliance on tactical grids and minis made the combat scenes suffer; they tended to drag and grind, and the way the rules are written, there are too many incentives to play "boring" rather than adventurous in combat; run up and full attack as much as possible was almost always the best move for a combat character, for instance.  I tend to handwave away some of the combat minutiae, and giving decent benefits and easy DCs for more adventurous, swashbuckling types of actions PCs might want to try.The skill system was pretty good, especially tweaked as Pathfinder or Trailblazer did to consolidate some redundant or overly specialized ones.  I still insist on roleplaying out social interactions, coupled with a roll, unless we're in a hurry to move on, in which case a roll is fine.  I'm also still unhappy that no chase rules of any kind appeared until the DMG2, and they were kinda an anemic afterthought even then.</blockquote>

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