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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8283230" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's certainly true that RM is not rules light! At least in my experience, though, I don't think it features that much skilled play in the strictest sense. It has elements that in principle contribute to skilled play, like detailed spell durations, encumbrance rules, etc. And it has intricate rules that, at least in some cases, correspond to the fiction and hence allows for a high degree of operational optimisation. But it has a tendency to mandate checks - through a much more sim-ish version of if you do it, you do it - which excludes full-fledged skilled play.Of course it's a matter of degree and focus. As far as recoveries are concerned, it does allows the sort of skilled-play approach (eg through the use of transportation magic) that [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] refers to in his OP, and hence generates the risk of bad pacing/story-anti-climax that is identified in the OP. But it's not full-blooded Gygaxian in its orientation.To link this directly to the OP and [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER]'s question about what might skilled play look like in 5e?, I would say that one thing RM and 5e have in common - at least at mid-to-upper levels of play - is that they give players a fairly high degree of control over framing if the GM is not prepared to manipulate/leverage off-screen fiction to retake control. This is the result of control over resource recovery, use of extradimensional spaces or transport magic, and in RM some aspects of its divination magic. So skilled play in those systems - while perhaps not constituting full-blooded Gygaxianism - certainly encompasses exercising that sort of control. A contrast here is with systems where the GM has much stronger control over framing and hence that does not become an avenue for players to engage in skilled play: eg 4e D&D (given its well-known "nerfing" approach to non-combat magic), Burning Wheel (no teleport spell in that system), Prince Valiant (no player-side magic at all other than possible bonus weapons), Cortex+ Heroic, and (I think) PbtA.</blockquote>

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