This system spends most of its word count on combat rules

>This system spends most of its word count on combat rules
>It sucks because that means every campaign has to be wall-to-wall combat

Can someone explain this line of reasoning to me? Do you people not understand the concept of roleplaying? Do you actually WANT extensive social mechanics? If not, then what else should the rule book go into detail about? It can't be skill challenges, since this argument usually comes up in the context of D&D hate, which mainly centers around 3.5 (aka skillcheck edition).

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>Do you actually WANT extensive social mechanics?
As long as they're well made, yes.

We're not a singular entity.

Know the 20 guys who bitch about the things you mentioned? The hypocrites?

There are 1000 others on Veeky Forums alone who don't share their stupid reasoning.

I'd think you would spend the most pages on what's most important in the system. And if that's combat rules, that implies the system is meant for running combat-heavy games.

Usually, the people who will bring this kind of arguments are the kind of people who disdain any game system that doesn't allow them to automatically succeed on everything and be badass mary sue characters.

So I don't really care about what they want.

What's most important in the system is what it rewards.

It's pellet mentality.

If players are rewarded for getting treasure, or overcoming encounters no matter how they did it, that's non-combat.

If they're rewarded via combat, that's combat-heavy.

How many pages it dedicates just indicates the complexity of something.

Seconded.
Mechanical abilties are a reward as well. If all my cool new abilties are combat related, I will want to do combat more often so I can use them.

It doesn't mean that I can't play a social game with the system. What it does mean is that the GM now has to do the /entirety/ of the heavy lifting making incentives to do it.

Few complex things get the same treatment as combat. Sailing is incredibly complex, and yet in most systems it's relegated to a skill check. IIRC 7th Sea has intricate rules for sailing, and that's because it's a core facet of the game. You wouldn't spend pages upon pages explaining something if the players weren't going to be doing much of it anyway.

I really don't see the difference between
>I want this guy to tell me something, so I'll roleplay my character trying to convince him
and
>I want this guy to tell me something, so I'll use the social interaction rules and see if I succeed in convincing him
The GM has to create nearly all the incentive either way. The means don't really change the ends

But what else could you do that with? What other complex tasks come up frequently enough (in a standard medieval fantasy game, since I don't see this complaint often about other genres) to justify having a huge number of rules that are also made more fun by them?

You would be wrong. Some things can be handled perfectly with very few rules to govern them.
Others are complicated and finicky, and need a shitload of "micromanagement" from the rules side to work.

Combat happens to be an example of the latter. Social interactions happen to be an example of the former.

Human beings happen to be fairly good at modeling and imagining social interactions just in their heads. Having to write things down and tally points and do arithmetic to keep things believable and fair isn't necessary or helpful.

Even games like Vampire the Masquerade, despite stating pretty plainly that the game wasn't about combat, actually spend an enormous amount of rules text on how to handle combat.

Some games are more clever than others, or use less pre-made (text heavy) content and more emergent/dynamic (text light) content when it comes to how they implement mechanics to handle these things, but some things are simply complicated and hard to implement well compared to others.

>I really don't see the difference.
Hmm, go outside really quick, pretend you're an elf, and talk to someone.

Then come inside, sit on something, and roll a die, then see how well you talked to him.

I prefer rolling to see how they respond rather than rolling to see how well the PC does.

That's a silly argument. You wouldn't go outside and swing at someone with a stick, then roll to see if you hit them. Without dice to generate results you're just LARPing.

>That's a silly argument. You wouldn't go outside and swing at someone with a stick, then roll to see if you hit them. Without dice to generate results you're just LARPing.
Wait, isn't that contradictory? If you don't roll the dice, then you're LARPing?

Also, I was just explaining the difference because you expressed confusion between the two acts.

>isn't that contradictory? If you don't roll the dice, then you're LARPing?
Not as far as I know. If your role play relies wholly on live action to generate results I would classify it as live action role play. If it relies on dice, then I wouldn't.

>you
Why would I be the user you were replying to if I was replying to that user myself?

>3.5
>skillcheck edition

Lolwut. 3.5's skill system is all but irrelevant, because the vast majority of skill uses are either trivially replaced by spells and/or items, and/or are a royal pain in the ass to work into a session because only one person in the party will ever have the ranks to attempt it so everyone else is left sitting on their thumbs.

This is a really funny fallacy that assumes there is never urgency and always unlimited resources in any scenario.

It's always funny watching someone fail climb and swim checks and die horrifically.

>Do you actually WANT extensive social mechanics?
Yes.

More over the problem with many systems is that they half ass it instead of just leaving it alone. Like dnd has diplomacy/intimidate/sense motive which are kinda sorta social mechanics but not really. This means that just doing pure roleplay isnt an option, it all just sort of boils down to 'make a diplomacy check i guess'

>Do you actually WANT extensive social mechanics?
Yes I hate metagame

>Yes I hate metagame
Change that to
Yes I hate to metagame

>This gun spends most of its design process on killing people
>It sucks because that means every time I use it I need to kill someone

This logic is fucking retarded. You can acutally roleplay without having to constantly do battles. This isn't worlds largest dungeon, you are playing a tabletop game. Keep your fucking dick in your pants and acutally try to roleplay instead of coming up with limp-dick excuses for why you can't minmax a simpler form of social system.

In reference to dnd/pathfinder its not just the mechanics. As far as im aware all the published adventures are just combats strung together with plot cut scenes.

Literally not true from the moment Ravenloft was published.

...

3.5 is about 1/3 combat rules, 1/3 magic, and 1/3 everything else in the CRB.

The combat is extensively designed and sucks, so most of the time is spent trying to either fix it or figure out a way around it...

Which leads to the broken magic system that might as well say "don't bother doing anything else." Magic circumvents everything else and their specific rules break all other rules in the system.

Basically, 3.5 isn't annoying because it's primarily combat. 3.5 is primarily tracking down the magical resource you need, or just doing it yourself. The problem is that combat in 3.5 takes for-fucking-ever and so most sessions spend the most time actively in combat.

> Do you actually WANT extensive social mechanics?

Fuh-huh-huck no.

I like highly social games, I like more talking than fighting. But the more social "mechanics" there are, the more they get in the way of roleplaying. You ever tried Burning Wheel? "Social combat?" It's awful. People spend their time rolling dice and working through mechanical tactics when they should be thinking of clever things to say.

I need a complex combat system because I am not going to whip out a sword and start fighting my players. I do not need a complex system for talking. I can just talk. Players talk, then roll a charisma check to see if their character is more convincing than they are. That's all you need, any more than that gets in the way.

In DnD if you want to do anything mechanical other than fighting, 80% of the time your GM is going to be freeforming any rolls or competitions or difficulties. The things that are covered usually have only the one rule regarding them.

Example - In social situations you'll do a charisma check. That's the rule. Maybe you'll get some bonuses or penalties created by an on-the-fly GM, but it's hardly its own game. Extended 'social combat' becomes dull. Other systems will have options in place for jokes and japes, lies, different approaches and relevant skills, manipulation and resistance, social class and status etc etc etc.

DnD is fun when it's room-to-room dungeon crawling, it's not a system built for much more.

There are some sure, but it doesn't matter when 80-90% are. People come to expect that that's just all there is to it

Ok, the fallacy here is "if your system doesn't have lots of rules for roleplaying, it doesn't care about roleplaying."

But you don't NEED lots of rules for roleplaying. You can just roleplay! You can lie to each other, joke, seduce, work out your acting chops! A shitload of rules just gets in the way of that.

Thats the problem. A smart system either A. has good well working systems for social influence or B. has no rules for social influence at all and leaves it up to role play. DnD does neither. It has diplomacy bluff intimidate and sense motive checks, none of which are systems beyond just one roll. Yet at the same time the fact that they're even their means most people are going to read them and assume that they're supposed to use them to resolve social situations.

How is that a problem, though? Relegating them to simple skill checks means they don't get in the way of roleplaying like actual systems would.
>Yet at the same time the fact that they're even their means most people are going to read them and assume that they're supposed to use them to resolve social situations.
People who can't be bothered to roleplay unless absolutely forced to are shit players, period. People who pretend you can't do anything beyond what the system has rules for are shit players, period. What shit players do with the system has no bearing on the system itself.

who here dm'd for their siblings on long car trips without rules, maps, sheets or nothing?

>Relegating them to simple skill checks means they don't get in the way of roleplaying like actual systems would.
Those...are actual systems. Im not sure i understand what you're saying, you either roll diplomacy to determine whether you succeed or fail or else you dont do that and roleplay.

>People who pretend you can't do anything beyond what the system has rules for are shit players, period.
Nope. I regreat to inform you that when people are presented with a system for resolving things, the majority of people are going to only think in terms of the system. That may not be the best way of doing things, but its how the human mind defaults. Game designers have to take that into account when making the system or else bad shit happens, or at least they need a place where they mention that people shouldn't always be using the systems, though even then thats usually not enough.

This.

All of this.

Including the ass-clutching skeleton.

Me, sometimes we had dice or a coin to flip, but most of the time I judged how well they did based on how well they described it.

I was a lot more arbitrary than that. I spent most of the time opening up plot threads I could close later, so they got to do whatever they said as long as it didn't shut those down early.

youtube.com/watch?v=W0CYJNw9YJQ

There is another way.

My favourite system, Legends of the Wulin, is an imperfect example of how you can build a compelling set of combat mechanics which actively supports the social and narrative side of the game.

LotW is a game of Wuxia action, with high flying heroes duking it out for honour, pride or ideals. It makes every conflict not just a battle of arms, but of personality, a clash of wills as much as blades. The consequences of each combat are similar- Sure, you might get a little stabbed up, but you can also leave your opponent with a special insight, a social influence or even a mystical curse. Combat becomes intimately tied up with the other elements of the system and storytelling, so having a fight isn't a break from roleplaying, it's a way to directly advance it.

It also works amazingly in PvP. I've told the story in detail before, but one of my most amazing RPing experiences was a duel with a rival PC in LotW. They'd never seen eye to eye and tensions came to the head, prompting the duel, but through it they reached a mutual respect and understanding- And it was supported completely by the mechanics.

>Those...are actual systems. Im not sure i understand what you're saying, you either roll diplomacy to determine whether you succeed or fail or else you dont do that and roleplay.
I meant more sophisticated systems
>Nope. I regreat to inform you that when people are presented with a system for resolving things, the majority of people are going to only think in terms of the system. That may not be the best way of doing things, but its how the human mind defaults. Game designers have to take that into account when making the system or else bad shit happens, or at least they need a place where they mention that people shouldn't always be using the systems, though even then thats usually not enough.
How does them being a majority make them not shit players? 95% of everything is crap, and that doesn't exclude people. And I'm pretty sure D&D outright says in the rulebook that you don't have to use the rulebook for everything. You can't fault the game designers for other people being too lazy to read the rules.

>Do you actually WANT extensive social mechanics?
I like it simple. What I don't like is diplomancy, no matter how many rolls it take.

>How does them being a majority make them not shit players?
It doesnt necessarily. Im saying the guys making the game need to base their decisions on how things are, not how they should be

Technically you could whip out a sword and do every fight in real time. Problem is you're playing a character who is a better fighter than you. Same thing with social stuff. Your charisma modifer idea is good but thats really hard to pull off well. Going 'imagine what i just said but better' wont work in most groups.

I'd love some clever social mechanics. Diplomancing doesn't cut it for me.

Sounds like fun

This. Early editions of D&D are an example.

XP used to be how much gold you got, so the best way to go through a dungeon is to steal things and avoid fights.

Then they changed it so you got XP for killing monsters instead, and so the perception became that fighting monsters was the way to play.

Even switching it so you still get XP for circumventing the monsters in another way still puts too much focus on the monsters though.

Ideally, if you don't want combat to be a major part of the game, make all physical challenges behave the same way.

Need to cross a chasm? Same deal as if you need to cross a room of goblins. Somebody good at climbing can do the first, somebody good at fighting can do the second.

That's just one way to handle it, but the key is that if you don't want the campaign to center around fighting monsters, then don't make the primary way to challenge your players and for them to level to fight monsters.