Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7759080" data-attributes="member: 6873517">I don't think I've even looked at the Basic Rules, but given my proclivities I don't really care what they say anyhow. I do think the social interaction rules are a bit weak. 4E was actually better in a lot of ways---they had some nifty powers that gave you a boost for a time and weren't "when this power runs out the target automatically knows something was used" which nearly all charm spells in 5E do.  Like a lot of things, I think an intermediate position works between a fully filled in dungeon with all the moving parts worked out and just several scenes and set pieces. For example, set out an area the PCs can explore that has a number of different potential events or encounters depending on what they do with maybe a few different set pieces or encounters that will show up. I find that seems to work in that it gives the players enough choices but not so many they either have too many or being on rails between preplanned set pieces and, of course, keep the DM's life sane. I ran something in the spring where the PCs ended up in a town that had serious problems due to the town wizard having been messing around with planar portals he shouldn't have been (not that the PCs knew exactly what was up). Another wizard had been hired to take care of it by a merchants' guild the PCs have tangled with in the past, but he decided to take over the keep outside of town and set up shop as a necromancer (again, not something the PCs knew). When they got to town they were faced with a few different directions they could go. They chose to confront the gates first, figuring that that problem was more immediate and that the wizard could hang loose for a bit. So this led to a relatively small location, essentially a mini-dungeon they explored and finally confronted the problem in the laboratory. Having closed the gate and freed a potential ally (a storm sorceress who lives outside of town trapped in the gate), they rested and then went to deal with the wizard, which ended up involving them storming the keep, again a mini-dungeon, although due to the way things went down they had to take it in one go. I knew they'd do both of these areas, but let the players decide on their strategy.</blockquote>

Verification