Charisma, the Dump Stat
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The new trend (if you can call it that) seems to be driven by Bioware, and that is simply to provide some dialog trees with options that can only be successfully exercised by successful social skill rolls. Bethesda tried to do something different by adding a social mini-game in Oblivion (evolved from a simpler menu-based system in Morrowind) which sometimes opened new conversation options (though in practice, it rarely useful for me beyond getting better prices from merchants). This was abandoned in Fallout 3 in favor of a more Bioware-style dialog option tree, though I guess we'll see what The Elder Scrolls V might bring us.
The problem with this system is that it's value is left purely in the hands of the designers. Nowhere was this made more clear than with Bioware's Neverwinter Nights series. Social skills were mildly useful through Bioware's campaigns, but their value became wildly variable (tending towards utter uselessness) with player-created modules. This is unfair and frustrating to players. It's like giving us a "drive tank" skill for us to spend precious points in, only to never provide us with an actual tank to drive except for a short mini-game sequence near the end of the game.
Even in dice-and-paper games, we run into problems. Quite simply, some results are going to be utterly impossible through conversation alone, which makes players feel slighted when their stellar social skill rolls fail to achieve the desired results. On top of this, the game master feels obligated to provide the players with all the information they'll need from NPCs regardless of their success or failure in social rolls, to prevent the planned adventure from going down the toilet.
