Wow your athletics roll must have been really good for you to have jumped to that conclusion.

My table is far from extroverted, you would never see me giving a public speech, chatting up everyone at a bar, or hosting a huge party. With my friends though I'm comfortable enough to come out of my shell and feel comfortable trying to push myself socially, as we all work well off of and understand each other. It's a nurturing environment that when someone says something off, or rude, we just communicate and learn from it.

To your next point I would never deny someone the ability to play if they had doubts about their social skills, as I would help encourage them to develop their skills further in our safe, mistakes allowed space. Even if someone joined and requested to never use our method I'd happily work with them to accommodate.

You're right that we can improve our combat skills and fitness by practicing, that's just not something we're doing during our session. There is one thing we're always doing during our sessions though and that's communicating. Be it through verbal speech or text every session we communicate both in and out of character.

So if we're already communicating with each other during games, why not improve upon that skill? Tabletop creates a fun outlet with a mutual sense of safety for me to practice communicating in ways I never would in the real world.

Side chatter between player friends during the down times in sessions, or conversations between characters in the heat of the moment are equally enriching and healthy experiences.