http://mythcreants.com/blog/five-destructi...eplaying-games/
It's a long article so I won't repost in quotes here but basically it cites a number of tropes from role playing games that aren't really realistic. It actually mentioned the "Great Man Theory".
Personally I wonder if "Great Man Theory" would have been more true in ancient times. Today things are much more complicated but back in say the dark ages there were fewer players and fewer resources, so maybe all you needed was a savvy forceful leader to tie stuff together. The maximum size of bureaucracy and government would have been restricted by the fact there were no computers and given that the leader might execute you if you displeased him these organs of the state would be as responsive as possible to him. You could argue that whether Hitler lived or not German was going to re-industralize and kick off World War II sooner or later due to the public sentiments and weakness of the Weimar republic. You could argue that Bismark may have succeeded in delaying World War I but that it was going to happen eventually anyway so on the whole he wasn't really that important. But can we really say that European history was completely inevitable and would have been pretty much the same if Charlemagne had died as an infant or something?
The other interesting thing about the article is how it points out that most RPG characters exist in a strange social void where they don't always get along well with each other, have no family, have no friends, and exist only for battle and spoils. In reality that wouldn't work on many levels because social relations are necessary to make anything happen, i.e. get a job, know about what is happening behind the scenes in certain contexts, whatever. Even a boxing champ whose skillset centers on fighting would need to be able to manage social relations with promoters, trainers, and fans.
So it's interesting to consider that the idea of Diplomacy as "roll dice to con someone or make them act against their interests without realizing it" is probably a totally surreal and perverted mechanic. The unrealistic combat system is probably more realistic than the social-skills-as-mind-control trope. I guess that would be all right for a "fast talk" type roll that should be pretty limited in its power especially in the longer term, but if you think about it building social or diplomatic relations is more of a long term process, so the character allegedly good at Diplomacy would spend time talking to others, would reciprocate favors, would offer free help every now and again, etc. It's almost like instead of rolling the dice you'd have a table where you could input time and money from the character into "relations, group X" in order to get bonuses when interacting with that group or something.