The SR4A book has a contradiction when it comes to the Leadership skill. In the table listing the Opposed Tests for social skills, it says that the player rolls Leadership + Charisma and the target rolls Leadership + Willpower. In the text of the Leadership skill, it says the target rolls Leadership + Charisma. Which one of these is right? I think it would be Willpower, since it seems to make more sense, but Charisma is a possibility as well.

I could see both actually, depending on the relationship of the parties. A commander´s orders are resisted based on willpower, while business leadership is resisted with charisma, as the leadership is based on social negotiation.

Social skills are resisted with willpower, so the Charisma one is probably a typo. The test is to see whether the target succumbs to the persuasion, it's not to see if the target persuades the speaker. Willpower decides whether you can resist a social skill, not charisma.

It's usually better to roleplay social skills when possible. Then you don't have to worry about things like that.

That makes too much sense and the number crunching munchkins from hell that make up the DSers Whiners Brigade (headed by a pornomancer of course) will now proceed to bash you into oblivion.

I will temporarily grant you moderation protection for such a wise and obviously good post, +1 to you.

For Leadership, I am a believer that PCs use it on NPCs and not the other way around.

No more so than any other skill in the game. The entire point of a Role Playing Game is to play as someone or something else - aka you probably do not possess the characters skills.

The rules are there to determine the level of success of the character. Ignoring the rules in the manner you suggest punishes players with low social ability who wish to play a character with high ability, & rewards players with high ability playing characters with low ability, creating an unfair & unfun playing environment.

I am not saying rolling dice should be used in place of role-playing, but in addition to it. You are suggesting dice should not be used at all.

Role-playing shouldn't be replaced by dice rolls, but having social mechanics in a game can do a lot to cover the distance between nerds in a basement and suave smooth-talking heroes. There's a common conceit in fiction where if a character gives some monumental speech that wows everyone the details of the speech aren't shown. Just the set up and the results. If the writer can't actually produce an appropriate monumental speech the whole enterprise will fall flat, but if they skip it properly, then the drama carries on without distraction. Social skills are often well used in the same fashion. Have enough description to move the drama, but skip the details of dialogue/monologue and use the dice to do the talking in the moment. That way people aren't pulled out of the fiction by bumbling reality.

I say use Willpower as default resistance for Leadership tests unless the objective is to determine who is the leader in a group, then Charisma would be appropriate for competing leaders.

I disagree. Why are there social skills if they don't work? Roleplaying can be an element, or it might not be, depending on your style. But disabling your PCs' social skills is a pretty unfriendly thing to do as GM. If there aren't going to be rolls, you'd better warn them not to waste their points.

This, this right here.

Social skills should be roleplayed to the same extent as every other skill - which is to say, sometimes you don't need to roll.

Should a gunslinger need to roll in order to hit a man-sized target at ten feet? Probably not, no.

Should the rigger need to roll to negotiate normal traffic at legal speeds? Not really.

Should the Face meed to roll to convince a Humanis member that orks are inferior savages? Nah.

But when PCs and NPCs are at crossed purposes, the dice should be used, else this sets precedent and things get silly, quick.

I, the player, can describe the planting of explosives at key structural supports in excruciating detail - this should NOT make my technologically illiterate luddite any better at actually doing it.

Daishi enunciated pretty well why I like having social skills in the game. I think they should be reserved for the relatively narrow range of functionality that they were designed for, though, and the GM needs to be careful in how they are used on PCs. Given how loosely they are defined, applying the effects of social skills on PCs can be a minefield.

Personally, I would say leave con for things such as telling a convincing lie, negotiation to see how far the Johnson will raise his offer, and such. Avoid dice rolls for things like as a PC seducing another PC, a PC obeying an NPC, and such. Otherwise, you have players who feel like the GM or another PC is taking control of their character away from them, in which case, there's not much point for them to be sitting at the table.

Social skills and roleplaying are guns and orks. They play best together.

Boldness added for emphasis.

Please do note that no one said to throw out any rules, nor that they have no purpose, nor that they should never be used.

If you're concerned about your players/GM being uncharismatic nerds, this is even more appropriate. Not only will you become better at roleplaying, but you might begin to develop some social skills of your own*. I understand that many people do not agree with me on this one. That's alright though.

Hypothetically, if one were to attempt to roleplay social skills sometimes as opposed to rolling, the NPC's responses should be based on the GM's knowledge of the player's character. Should the PC be socially akward (not unlike how you think of your players) with one point of charisma and no social skills, the GM should not allow him or her to smooth talk a con man. Obviously that doesn't make sense.

Also, I would like to note that I do have social skills on my character sheets. And more than that, I roll them sometimes. I can't always think of what to say either.

Hopefully this clarifies my previous post some.

*The author is not suggesting that anyone go out and try to fast talk a cop out of a speeding ticket because they did so in a game, nor anything like that.

What a lot of people who make the whole "you should roleplay social skills" argument is that social skills are at least 25% body language. At least. A lot of people claim that the number is closer to 90%.

We, the players, are not in a smoke-filled opium den bartering for the world's smallest mass-production pistol still capable of killing a Troll at 50m. We don't have the niggling doubt that the Elf we're talking to is packing heat and has partaken of the produce of this den. We don't have the dawning realisation (derived from his cheerful demeanor and incredible grin when he splatters a fly amongst other things) that the man we're talking to is not Dave, longtime friend and pacifist incapable of harming a cockroach (and also regular GM). We don't have mental images of this man putting a bullet through the back of our heads in a dirty alley, giving us a fragmentary glimpse of our own blood and grey matter forming a semi-vaporised plume before we begin our eternal sleep.

So let's stop pretending that we can reliably roleplay how much nervous worry gets injected into our voice. Because we can't.

No one's disagreeing with that, though. "You should roleplay social skills" is a strawman. No one has advocated doing away with the dice. Rather, some of us advocate roleplaying up to your comfort level, and only breaking out the dice to supplement it, or to resolve impasses.

Personally, I like when social skills are described at least as well as combat skills are. In other words, you may not describe all of the cinematic details (although it can enhance the game if you do), but you say things like "I do full dodge as I sprint behind partial cover, then aim for my next two actions. Next round, I'm calling a shot to bypass his armor". Similarly, I like detail beyond "I fast-talk the guard", or "I try to look like I fit in in the club". Sometimes that's all you can do, just as sometimes all you say is "I shoot him." But I like some minimal descriptive detail, such as "I try to convince him I'm a new hire, and they had trouble with my ID" or "I try to look like I'm some harmless slumming sarariman out to soak up some excitement from a nightclub a few blocks from the barrens."

As far as PCs with low Charisma and social skills who attempt to be smooth-talking, I let them play how they want, but have the NPCs react accordingly. If you have ever read the Myth Adventures series, Aahz is a good example of someone with a low Charima and social skills who often tries to be smooth-talking. And he is an intelligent person with a forceful personality, so it isn't really out of character for him. But his attempts aren't that successful - people are intimidated by him (when he's not trying to intimidate them), distrust his oily manner, or rudely dismiss him if they see they are in a position to get away with it. That's how it should be for low-Charisma characters. Not to say they shouldn't be able to function, but they should have to work for things that the face can get simply by smiling and saying hi.

I read most of them a long time ago. I see them in stores sometimes and always want to get them to read again, but I never do =(

And I also agree with the rest of your post. Thanks for the good explanation.