@Ghost said in Eliminating social stats:
The military structure and existence of rank may very well eschew(WORDSMITH ALERT) the need for social skills because the theme has a built-in construct for rank, expected IC behaviors, and ramifications if they are sent to extremes.
I don't think rank has anything to do with it (especially since everyone on BSGU is more or less on equal footing rank-wise), although as @Ganymede said, you could model a game where rank mattered. It's more that there's just not much to be gained from social combat. Some character might lie to another, but the impact of any lie in particular is muted by virtue of the nature of the setting.
In a physical combat system we acknowledge all kinds of variables: different effects from different weapons, armor, stances, tactics, degrees of damage, nuanced skills, varied attacks, etc. etc. There are tons of RPG systems and wargames that model these things, so they're pretty well understood. Yet most social combat systems boil down to "Con vs Willpower". It's crappy. It doesn't even remotely model human interaction well.
We also have a fairly common set of boundaries for physical combat. Everyone understands that you can't one-shot a dragon with a dagger or survive a direct hit from a missile no matter how well you roll. That's just dumb. But we lack commonly agreed-upon boundaries for social combat, as evidenced by a long line of creepers trying to abuse social skills in various ways.
To be satisfying, social combat needs to be more subtle. It needs to recognize that a gullible person is easier to con than a skeptical one. That a kind-harded person will fall for a sob story more easily than a get-rich-quick scheme. That a firmly-entrenched political or religious view is probably never going to be changed. That some people just aren't into (men/brunettes/whatever type here). Modeling this is hard because people are complex creatures. A punch, in contrast, is pretty simple.
Personally, I have a basic fundamental objection to having dice tell me how to play my character. By forcing me to base my character's behavior on some arbitrary system output ("you're intimidated and cower in fear"), you're essentially saying that you don't trust me to roleplay my character appropriately. I understand the counter-arguments, and I understand that there are people in the hobby who don't deserve that trust. It's still a deal-breaker for me.
