NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8282867" data-attributes="member: 16814">Well, you're calling out a moment in B2 that's outside the normal play loop, and so advice is offered.  How GM's ran the "safe spaces" and "quest givers" in B/X was very open ended.  This part of play, free play if you will, is not really part of the ruleset but something you just do to add some depth and color to the game.  It's not part of the designed play loop where skilled play occurs.  It's kinda related but also kinda orthogonal.Blades in the Dark has a similar phase of play, called Free Play, where you do similar things in that system to prep fiction for the score.  It's outside the normal play loop, but still important to have, but it's purpose is to feed fiction into the Score play loop.  Similarly, the keep in B2 is meant to feed fictional setup into the actual play loop of the dungeon(s).And, sure, 5e has a few more tools on hand to do social engagement that B/X doesn't have, but this isn't an argument that 5e does skilled play as well as B/X (or better?) because, in a certain case it can be more systemized.  Overall, 5e's structure is one that acts to reduce the resource game (5e provides more resources with an easier recharge rate so it's not nearly under as much pressure) and doesn't really integrate many of those resources into the game.  Look at spell durations -- 5e is all over the place whereas B/X is tightly tied to the exploration turn lengths.  This matters because how much time has passed between encounters in 5e is whatever the GM says -- there's no exploration timing mechanic to track -- and so whether or not your spell is still up is just what the GM says.This isn't the say that 5e can't do skilled play -- it can.  However, the pressure points for skilled play are much softer in 5e than in some other games, so the experience is fuzzier.  This is in part due to how 5e puts how everything works in a "ask your GM how this works in their game" paradigm with the rulings not rules approach.  A GM can use this to establish clear procedures and enhance skilled play, or diminish it by leaning into the rulings not rules approach and keeping things loose.  You can't really do this in B/X without it being immediately apparent that you're dealing with house rules, but it's just normal 5e.So, sure, you can absolutely do skilled play in 5e, but the way the system is presented it's going to be less tight than in a system that structures play from the ground up in a skilled play paradigm.  If you do some work, you can improve this, even without house rules.  This isn't a dig against 5e at all.  5e's design goals were to support a wider range of play approaches, which is why it's embraced the rulings not rules as a way for tables to lean the game towards their preferences.  5e can't succeed at this design goal and deliver a game tightly tuned for skilled play.  But, because of that design goal, you can very much lean 5e towards skilled play and get a reasonable result.</blockquote>

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