Quote Originally Posted by Koo Rehtorb View Post
Not only do I think this is wrong, I find it distasteful. I'll never understand this tendency of some people (usually people who play D&D), to believe that the GM is the "boss" of the group. The GM is not the group's babysitter, teacher, or therapist. The GM's job is to play the world.
In a perfect world I would agree with you; it would be really really nice if I could just play the world and forget about all the social stuff.

Unfortunately, rule books keep giving the DM more power and authority, and gaming culture puts more and more expectations on them to be the referee, social coordinator, and conflict mediator.

Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
That is still just an artefact a the rule system which has no increased costs for higher skills and wonky assumptions for DCs.

I could as easily point to the 210k xp 2E 7/8/7 fighter/thief/mage that contributes more to most parties than a fighter 8, thief 10 or mage 9 of the same xp. And there are many systems where it really would be a bad idea to just push your primary skills to the maximum and ignore secondary ones.

That depends on a lot of things, not least the actual system used.
Yes, it is system dependent.

Again, I am not saying generalists or specialists are bad, merely that most systems have a sweet spot somewhere between the two and deviating too far from it can, depending on overall group composition, make for drastically weaker characters.