Feb 26, 2018, 5:30 AM

I think one of the biggest things is just the inadequacy of the systems we use. People compare 'I shoot you!' and 'I lie to you', but these are games that devote dozens if not hundreds of pages to combat and often barely a few if any to social mechanisms. Including social skills in a list means nothing on its own. And even the tacked-on 'social combat' systems are obvious for what they are.

And this is a fundamental problem. It affects perception, buy in and legitimacy. Even if we say we honor both, is it reasonable to grant equal agency to the person who's spent 20 xp maxing one social skill to the person who's spent 500xp on twelve different combat skills, stats, merits and powers? And whether it is or not, people rarely do.

So I'm kind of with @Thenomain (and curious about that other system!). I don't see how the situation is salvageable when we're stuck trying to jury rig combat-is-king games with hundreds or thousands of xp worth of character growth space for murdering and maybe a couple dozen for 'social stuff.' People will play a wargame like a wargame.