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[ehren37]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

As has been stated earlier, I think there is a certain chutzpah to Mr. Heinsoo's statements regarding wrongbadfun in earlier editions of the game.

I've tried 4e and what I've found (so far) is that it makes it extremely difficult for a DM to be able to run a gritty, low-magic campaign.

D&D has NEVER been low magic. Unless you ban spellcaster classes from the players, they use magic more than they poop. Player wizards make any game a "high magic" game IMO. D&D magic is almost always a safe, known commodity. Aside from a few spellls, there's little chance of magic backfiring as I would expect in a low magic world. Its always been a poor system for this type of play.

Frankly, the idea that 4e fixes the sweet spot that existed in 3e is a fallacy based upon the fact that players (and DMs) don't really have a decent toolkit in 3.x to allow them to go from being one of the grunts in the trenches to becoming generals of armies and eventually political movers and shakers. There are smatterings of help in the DMG2 and Power of Faerun, but you'll also have to adopt rules from something like MMS:WE.

It amazes me that there aren't rules as good as what is in 1e AD&D or BECMI D&D to do something as simple as acquiring landholdings, attracting vassals (to work the land, provide income, etc.), directing armies on the field of battle or allowing for political intrigue. D&D's War Machine mass combat rules and its dominion rules are elegant and allow players and DMs to quickly and easily play out all of those things that high-level PCs should be doing instead of slogging through every 2-bit dungeon.

That stuff should really be in a supplement, IMO. Not everyone wants their game to become Axis and Allies at 10th level, and it shouldnt be the default assumption. I actually picked up MMS for this reason, but the player that is interested int hat sort of thing handles it between sessions, because the other 4 are bored to tears with that sort of thing.