Twisted Thought

Here is something I have been bouncing around in my head this morning.

John Wick once said somewhere (I want to say on his YouTube channel, but I can't remember), that he found it odd that in D&D you would do all this complicated stuff for combat, but if you want to persuade someone of something, you just make 1 die roll with a modifier. Can anyone really say that human social interaction is that simple?

Trollsmyth once argued with me long long ago that OD&D is about exploration, not combat. And if you look at the mechanics, they are designed to encourage it. For example, killing a monster is worth less XP than raiding it's lair, so you are really encouraged to avoid the combat, slip in and grab the treasure, and escape.

I used a screencap for Dungeon Keeper on this post because it represents, to me, a way to take the idea of dungeon crawling and totally turns it on it's head. So here is my twisted thought, why not make a game with complex exploration and social mechanics, but simple combat mechanics? Would that turn the tables around and make a unique experience like Dungeon Keeper?

Just a thought.