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="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6530707" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Yup.You get full xp whether you succeed or fail.  The only thing on the line is what is at stake in the fiction.Yup.  There is always a rub.  In such a case there is still a disparity between proficient and non-proficient and natural affinity and no natural affinity (and a greater disparity when the two are compounded).  Its just that there is disparity moves a step closer to parity.I found that it works pretty well as a unified noncombat conflict resolution scheme in 13th Age and it did the trick well enough when I used it during the playtest and the one-off I ran of Basic 5e.  Disadvantage and Advantage is a solid, elegant mechanic.  It achieved the sought dramatic momentum and codified campaign wins/losses.  Protagonizing the PCs comes in figuring out correct subject DCs as bonuses accrue.  Awarding xp only for failure reduces the tension between gamist interests and narrativist interests, relieving the inclination of players toward the feedback loop of win at all cost to progress their PC.  This leads to a higher likelihood of thematic, heroic risk-taking in play.I ran a one-off and some combats/noncombat scenes for each of the playtest iterations.  Further, I ran a 4 hour session of the Basic set where we picked an old session and took it from the top to see what would come out of it with 5e.  The thing is, it doesn't matter even if I would have just skimmed the rules.  I have GMed so much in these last 30 years, GMed so many varying systems and understand the nuance of the practice to such a degree that I can look at a set of rules and easily extrapolate what kind of play it is trying to produce, what type of play it will actually produce, and how it expects to get there (from system procedures to GMing principles and techniques).  The other day I estimated how much TSR D&D I've run.  I was shocked.  I have run somewhere in the vicinity of ~ 5500 - 6000 hours of it.  That is almost 2/3 of a friggin year!  I have run perhaps a 1/3 of that much in 3.x.When I read the design articles that Mearls was putting out, when I listened to his podcasts, when I listened to the refrains that harkened back to the AD&D 2e culture that was so metagame averse...I was certain we were going to see a very TSResque 5e.  As the playtest began, it started to not seem that way.  However, as it progressed and evolved through the packets towards its final product, I was certain that this was basically AD&D 3e.  And sure enough, when it finally came out, it looked like AD&D + 3e + a smattering of 13th Age.  And when I ran it, that is exactly what it was.That is all true enough.  However, I've found that my interests have honed significantly as the years have gone by.  In order to get those very specific experiences, I want an unabashedly transparent system that says precisely what its trying to do and is tightly focused on doing it.  For most games (save Cthulu or Dread), I don't want to be juggling dozens of balls in the air.  I certainly don't want the conflict of interest that comes with being heavily involved with establishing/interpreting the resolution mechanics in-situ and "being a fan of the PCs" and simultaneously bearing the responsibility of being the primary facilitator of fun/story (this tempts and often leads to GM force and illusionism).  I want very specified mental overhead and I want minimal table handling time because the mechanics are elegant and intuitive.   I just want to frame thematic scenes, push back hard against my players' thematic interests, follow clear play procedures and find out what comes out of it.This goes back to the adage (you may not be familiar with it) that "there is no such thing as a bad day on the links."  You're with your buddies.  Its a beautiful day with greenery everywhere.  Wonderful, right?  Not necessarily.  If you love playing golf, expect to play well, and are looking for that beautiful feel in your hands/body of flushing shot after shot (eg have a specific experience)...and you're shanking shots left and right and slowing up play for your pals and the people behind you...its 4 hours (or more) of hell.  And you've just paid 30 dollars to do it.There are enough systems out there and enough competing leisure activities where people don't have to settle for average or "just barely enough".  Its not a necessity that people tolerate slow or uninteresting game sessions for the sake of the prospect that the great one down the line will be all the better by comparison.If someone is just looking to hang out with pals and don't give a crap what you do.  That is all well and good.  The buy-in becomes minimal at "hang out with pals, yuk it up, etc."  The actual minutiae and nuance of the TTRPGing experience becomes mostly or wholly irrelevant.  However, if you're looking for experience x and you get experience x - 2 or experience y, you're going to have an issue if experience x is actually out there, waiting to be had...or if experience x isn't out there but experience n is and its better than x - 2 or y.I think, at best, a ruleset that purports to being designed around the premise of reproducing the feel of experience x, y, and n isn't going to be capable of producing them all or, at best, can produce them all at - 1 (or so).  I've always felt that way, the moment that they announced the design goals.  I think 5e produces a better AD&D (lets say x + 2), produces a better or worse 3.x depending on what you're looking for (if you think LFQW, brutally heavy mechanics - PC side and resolution-side, and brutal GM prep is a feature...then you're going to be disappointed with 5e).  However, it comes nowhere near reproducing 4e or Dungeon World.  And while it does 13th Age almost exactly from a noncombat resolution side, the two are dramatically different elsewhere (especially combat).</blockquote>

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