There is a certain sort of snobbery (generally on the part of people who don't venture far outside of 'dungeons&violence' in their games) towards games which focus mechanically on social interactions and/or emotional states.

"You don't need mechanics for that, just freeform it"

I don't understand that line of thinking. You tie mechanical incentives and feedback structures to the stuff your game cares about. This is why we mechanise 'XP for Gold' and don't just expect our players to 'just roleplay wanting treasure'.

So if you want a game about social or emotional stuff, you build the game to have structures that care about that stuff.

Here's the fun thing: you can just freeform violence and magic and exploration and all the stuff that normally has mechanics attached to it! I've done this in the past, it works absolutely fine!

A significant problem is that many people are only really used to D&D, which lacks any meaningful social mechanics; so they see 'mechanics for social stuff' as 'jamming a pointless yes/no charisma check into the freeform', which... yeah that sucks. But better structures exist.

There's also the problem where, let's be frank, RPGs which actually focus on feelings and relationships are seen as ~less manly~ because they require a measure of emotional vulnerability from the participants.

So a lot of people are turned off those games without trying them.

But it is absolutely possible to build games that are better because they tie mechanical structure to social or emotional stuff, and wouldn't produce the same experience without them.

since this often happens when I post this stuff, I am preemptively going to ask that, if you want to reply to argue with me, please don't. I'm muting this thread as soon as I post it regardless.