Unwise Entanglements
Unwise Entanglements, Longspear Games, 2003
There's a period of gaming history where people were starting to get sick of games that spent absurd amount of space on physical combat while totally neglecting social interactions. Unfortunately, we had no damn idea what to do instead.
Unwise Entanglements (UE) is focused around a king's court, with the king recently dead and no clear heir. Naturally, everyone is angling for the throne, or at least for the power behind it. A few minor characters are detailed, with the major roles left for the PCs, an excellent choice in my mind.
There are six stats: Charisma, Manipulation, Stubbornness, Wits, Perception, and Body. They're a nice inversion of the usual D&D set. There are also a bunch of skills, with some names clearly taken from White Wolf (Subterfuge, Presence, etc.) and some from D&D3e (Diplomacy, Gather Information, etc.).
Here is where things... I don't know if it's going off the rails, running into a wall, or falling off a cliff, but it's definitely a mistake. Your character has Resolve, which are social HP. They have an Integrity score, which is their social AC. They have social "techniques" which are weapons. They have saving throws and area-effect social magic and letters as ranged weapons and who thought it was good to bring in a grappling equivalent I ask you. No no no no no no NO. No. Bad game designer. No Ennie.
The result is a game where you're battering down someone's HP until they're taken out, just with words and stuff, and with all the entertainment value of "Can I just roll to hit?" It is all the worst of "social combat" systems packed into one game. It even had the inversion where instead of being able to circumvent a fight with one massive Diplomacy check, you could circumvent a long argument with one massive Assault check.
Ironically, if the game had come out while D&D4e was in vogue, it might have leaned more into the tactical maneuvers that game had and ended up with some more interesting moves. Instead, it was just a combat system with social-sounding names.
Coincidentally, Unwise Entanglements came out the same year as Dynasties & Demagogues, the social-rules supplement for D&D3e which in fact did win an Ennie. That book you can still find in PDF format; this game is long gone.
