Hmm. Yeah, it's weird. I've been playing and loving D&D for, let me count, 35 years. Pretty much continuously. Every edition (although only a little 4th, I'll admit). But somehow that fact that I also play FitD and PbtA games (among others) or, worse, think that those playstyles can profitably inform D&D play, really seems to be the only thing some people see. Wacky. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming...
I agree that people are generally open to good faith criticism of 5e on these boards (and that criticism is generally actually much less severe than in dedicated 5e spaces.). I also agree that there are a variety of ways to play 5e. In fact, that is what people are trying to reference when they say there is a "spectrum" of 5e play (between sandbox and railroad, for example)...they are trying to say, in effect, that there are lots of ways to play this game. It's interesting because I interpreted the ensuing discussion in the other thread differently from you. Namely, that discussion become a (somewhat tedious) debate about the word "spectrum." The seeming effect was that a bright contrast was made between 5e and games like AW, Burning Wheel, and others, but at the cost of collapsing or minimizing the range or spectrum of play available within 5e. More practically, I perceived that the conversation had fewer participants as people dropped out, not interested in following lengthy discussions about a single word. So if the goal of communication is to expose people familiar with 5e to a wider array of gaming styles, the focus on categories and the refinement of terms can actually be counterproductive, even if that same terminology can be helpful to people already familiar with a variety of games and approaches.
Totally agree; this was what I was trying to reference in that thread. Aside from your responses, I'm not sure the discussion on that point was very open to thinking of that as a distinct play culture, much less one that has emergent, hybrid properties.
www.enworld.org
I don't see the thread the same way you do. The self-quote is only one of many posts by me in that thread, and others, making the same point.
My own feeling is different. It seems similar to @Campbell's although coming from a different place.
I think some people, myself included, were expressing the sentiment that the difference between a sandbox and a railroad was significant, especially in regards to player agency, and thus were opposed to that distinction and play experience being overwritten by a new set of categories that took priority. Actually it's surprising, because that whole discussion didn't strike me as 5e advocacy at all.
I think that I agree. For me, this was really brought out in the discussions of 4e D&D. But as was mentioned upthread, I think by you, we see it in other places too: eg the AW thread. I'm also reminded of a thread a while ago now where I asked What is Worldbuilding For?
I don't recall others speaking to it, but I did say that I don't think that 5e supports that kind of play. I don't think it forward to suggest it, I merely think that the 5e ruleset requires too much GM intervention to make it work that any attempt to actually play it more in a story now approach isn't possible. With some fairly extensive hacks, sure, but you're going to need to climb into the system for that and either rebuild some things or just take entire categories of play off the table. For example, 5e has quite a lot of rules for combat, but they are not encounter balanced at all. This effectively requires daily pacing if you want the combat game to have teeth, or overloading of the encounters which comes with other issues (very tippy). This kinda takes serious engagement with the combat engine off the table for situation framing without concern for pacing. It's the need to be concerned about pacing that kills the idea in my mind. And, if I'm taking the combat engine offline or downgrading it, I'm seriously wondering why we aren't just playing a different game!
I think another important part of this is the actual make-up of the party. The amount of magic and the potentially competing rest mechanics change the picture a lot. I also think this is much more doable at lower adventuring tiers when the party as a whole has less on-tap resources.
"More" is doing work here, and in saying you could do it "more" story now, I don't think I could disagree. There are places you can do it "more," but you can't just run it story now. Not without serious revisions. I mean, I've absolutely used skill challenge frameworks that were situation-framed and they work. But, overall, it's still very GM directed, and has to be, if you aren't ignoring large parts of the system in play.
I think that's why some see 5e as being more in the spirit of 2e-style D&D (and Dragonlance) than anything else.
My memories of 2e are pretty hazy. Do you mean 'trad', follow-the-adventure-path kind of play?
Pretty much. IMO, 5e leans into trad (and neo-trad) gaming a great deal. It's heavy into empowering GM-authority. Authority to do what? Curate story adventures.
