Is it time to cut the war game roots of role-playing?

[kyoryu]

To my understanding FATE treats social encounters almost as combat!

I would argue it's the inverse - Fate treats combat the way it treats everything else.

The way a stranger explained it to me, should you wish to woo someone you draw up a map of metaphorical zones and then attack them with arguments and posturing to get them where you want. It sounds completely unlike any social interaction in real life, but I often see indies who try to tackle social rules using combat interactions as their guideline.

I believe that's Diaspora (based on Fate). That's not how most Fate games deal with social encounters.

I'm of the opinion that D&D should profile itself as the dungeon crawling game rather then the big roleplaying game, that or try to develop more in the direction of not fighting stuff. This game probably shouldn't be everyone's or even a majority's first journey into tabletop roleplaying.

It *is* the big roleplaying game, regardless of its suitability for the task (which I am not placing any statement on, one way or the other).

As far as the OP goes - cut the wargame roots if you want to. Others won't if they don't want to.