White Box Combat and Beyond

The Rest of the Story...
White Box provides rules for combat, moving, surprise, encountering monsters, really all the things one might expect given its wargame roots and dungeon crawl setting. When the main in-game activity is exploring an underground, fighting hostile "monsters" and grabbing their treasure in order to "level-up" between dungeon delves, combat is perhaps the most important activity. What White Box doesn't give are rules for interacting with NPCs. Well, there is the Loyalty Base Charisma modifier, but that is about it. The rest is role-play.
Playing White Box, it won't be long before some enterprising player will propose to "trick the monster out of his treasure rather than risk a fight". Enter role-playing. Some games give extensive rules for social interaction, some I enjoy like Luke Crane's The Burning Wheel. Other games seem to go half-way allowing for social skills like "persuasion" and "diplomacy" which can be rolled against in order to change an NPC's mind about something. White Box leaves all that "talking stuff" up to the players and referee to actually "talk out".
Skill-based systems include many "skill" activities other than those involved with social interaction. White Box doesn't have "skills", but the idea does show up in Supplement I Greyhawk under the Thief class abilities. The same concepts covered by "skills" in some systems can be handled by discussion between player and referee followed by a die roll if deemed necessary. I personally favor allowing players to state their PC should have some skill in the area because of something specific to the PC's background. If the argument sounds reasonable, I allow it as referee.
There are no rules in White Box for backgrounds or personality traits beyond alignment, which I see as more "what team one plays for" rather than as a definition of personality (although it certainly can be used that way). It's White Box, so alignment is also open for interpretation. Putting alignment aside, personality can develop through play as players "get to know their PCs" through their in-game actions, or personality can follow a preconceived character concept. Backgrounds can be briefly stated or written out extensively. Often a few words are sufficient. "Born on a farm and ran away to sea at the age of 14." gives one a pretty fair idea of a PC background.
In White Box it is perfectly acceptable to hand-wave all pretense at fleshing out the PC and playing the game with characters as little more than a series of stats on paper and a marker on the game table for spacial reference, similar to a ship in a naval wargame. It's also possible to bring the imagination into play and mentally construct a fully rounded avatar or alter ego for play. White Box encourages making the game your own, expanding where you like and that's one of the things I like best about it.