Post originally by Wulf Corbett at 2005-04-21 02:11:09
Converted from Phorums BB System

I was responding directly to the point raised by James A Beggs that this was roleplay not rollplay - but I have always been very clear that, without the rolling and the pre-defined social/mental skills, attributes and abilities, you cannot be playing a role, because no such role has been defined.

Your contention was slightly different, that rules for social interraction should be 'lighter' than those for (for example) combat. I disagree with that too, but for a different reason - the problem here is the 'game' in roleplaying game - it's only a game if you are following rules. If social interractions are not governed by rules, it's just making stuff up. If the rules are less strict than other areas of rules, that's an inadequacy of the game. And that doesn't mean they have to be strict rules, just 'as' strict - HeroQuest, Trollbabe and even SilCORE all have strict social interraction rules that are not significantly different to the combat rules.

There are reasons why a player might not WANT equally strict rules on social interraction:
1) The player doesn't want to be restricted to playing the role defined by the character, but wants to make it up as they go.
2) ...erm... that's about it, really.

It's as though someone wanted to play D&D but ignore their BAB and just describe hitting the enemy.

Wulf