Yes, the playtest absolutely gave me the freedom to play D&D the way that I like to play it.
As the DM, that means that I can present an adventure as a set of situations and obstacles and then let the players decide how they want to approach. I prefer it if the player's don't choose to attack everything on sight, as it bores me. If they do, I usually have the monsters response appropriately, instead of waiting in their designated encounter areas to be methodically dispatched as the PCs work their way through one room at a time.
In this playtest, the players were able to engage in all three "pillars" of gameplay:
[sblock]
The players waited to enter the ravine until midday when the sun was highest in the sky, to take advantage of the daylight sensitivity that most of the humanoid monsters possess. This allowed them to scout out the ravine (using the clumps of trees as cover) and find all of the ground-level cave entrances without being spotted. Upon re-reading the Caves of Chaos booklet, only the kobolds are identified as having this sensitivity; I had just assumed it was still there (looks like goblins lost it in 3e).
They explored the ogre's cave first, as its entrance was hidden from the view of any lookouts on the other side of the ravine. When they encountered the ogre (counting his coins, which took a long time because he had to keep starting over), they tried to negotiate with him, but ultimately refused to pay what he was asking for so they fought their first battle of the session and won. They posted a lookout at the cave entrance while the others searched the cave, in case anybody came to investigate. I had a band of six goblins go to investigate from outside, so as not to reveal the secret entrance to their lair from the ogre's cave. The PCs found the secret door, so they slipped through and shut it just in time.
After sending a patrol out the front entrance to investigate, the goblin chief and a few of his guards returned to their side of the secret door in order to keep an eye on the situation; unfortunately for them, the PCs had already come through and were waiting for them. Instead of risking a fight with an entire tribe, the PCs proudly proclaimed themselves the slayers of the ogre and demanded that the goblins put down their weapons. My wife's fighter rolled a 20 on her Intimidate check, so the goblins decided that attacking the ogre-slayers would not end well for them.
The PCs got some information from the goblins about what other tribes lived in the caves and where their lair entrances were. The goblins, seeing an opportunity, also told the PCs about the hobgoblins above them who bully them and steal their supplies and treasure. They exaggerated the amount of treasure stolen by the hobgoblins, of course. The PCs asked how supplies kept disappearing from the storeroom without them noticing, and the goblins didn't know, so the PCs asked the goblins if they could inspect the storeroom, suspecting a secret entrance that the goblins were unaware of.
The PCs found the secret door in the storeroom and cautiously entered the hobgoblin lair. They found the sleeping hobgoblin guard near the secret door and bound him for questioning. Their attempts to intimidate him failed, and he yelled to alert the others of the intruders. He promptly died. Four hobgoblins soon came to investigate. When one called out to the guard, the rogue made a bluff check to try to impersonate the hobgoblin's voice. He managed to succeed on that, but wasn't able to answer their questions convincingly, so two of the hobgoblins rushed to get reinforcements while the other two stood firm at the top of the stairs. The rogue cut off the dead hobgoblin's head, and the wizard cast light inside its mouth, then the rogue threw the head out into the hallway while the wizard used mage hand to levitate the head into the air, trying to scare the hobgoblins. It didn't scare them, but I ruled that the way the light was directed towards the hobgoblins made it such that they couldn't really see where the rogue was behind the head, granting him advantage when throwing his daggers.
This turned into the longest combat of the session (about 20 minutes), with four hobgoblins returning along with the warchief. They inflicted heavy damage on the party, bringing the rogue, cleric and fighter down to about 2 hp each, but the party was ultimately victorious.
The party retreated back to the goblin lair in order to rest up and heal. I thought about having the goblins betray them and attack them during the night, but decided that the goblins saw the PCs as their best chance of eliminating their hobgoblin rivals and would save betrayal for later.
After healing up, the party returned to the hobgoblin lair through the secret door to find that the doors at the top of the stairs had been barricaded from the inside. The two strongest PCs succeeded on strength checks to break down one of the doors, where they quickly dispatched the guards that the hobgoblins had placed there -- the guards behind the other door fell back to the armory when the PCs broke down the one door. The rogue found the secret door leading into the armory and opened it, to find three hobgoblins with their longbows ready and aimed at him. The rogue quickly found himself at negative hit points. We ran the combat between the other PCs and the three hobgoblins without the grid, resolving it in under two minutes.
[/sblock]
We played for three hours, including a number of short breaks for snacks and to put in a new movie or video game to keep a toddler and a six year-old entertained. So probably about 2.5 hours total play time.
As a group, the players were able to engage in a significant amount of exploration, fight in 5 combat encounters, interact with NPCs, avoid unnecessary battles, and do some creative problem-solving. In about 2 1/2 hours of play time, we were able to play through a significant portion of the adventure (despite all of us learning a new set of rules) and experience a variety of gameplay "modes." Nobody got bored because one particular activity was taking too long, and nobody had to sit out and watch everyone else play for more than a couple of minutes. Everybody felt like they were able to meaningfully contribute to the game. We didn't have to stop the game to look up rules or recalculate modifiers.
In short, the system was lightweight and flexible enough to allow me to react, in the moment, to whatever the players came up with, without having to spend an inordinate amount of time on any single activity.
I don't think I can ask for any more than that. This is exactly how I want D&D to play.
