I was very enthusiastic at first, and I joined the 4SRD wiki and started eagerly adding stuff.
However I very quickly realized that it is far more trouble than it is worth to rewrite things to make them legal and compatible with the SRD and OGL. How are people going to readily find any information if it is all hidden under different terminology?
As long as the old downloadable Character Builder is available (and happily it is highly customizable unlike the new one) as well as all the books, I do not see a whole lot of need for another on-line resource.
I do acknowledge that many new houserules are needed to fix the infelicities of the Fourth Edition, but I think that a collection of houserules is better than rewriting everything from scratch. I very strongly recommend the thoughtful houserules at the Square Fireballs blog.
...and that is my cue. I'm the guy from
Square Fireballs, and while I've been suggesting (hopefully thoughtful) houserules for a few years now, I, too, have been tempted by the notion of
a full-on 4E revision. Interestingly, when I laid out the design goals for my project, they turned out quite differently than what is discussed in this thread. The most notable divergence is the position about OGL, so I'll talk a bit about it.
We want a continuation 4e to be OGL
Is OGL really necessary? While it undoubtedly has some advantages, it also brings some critical drawbacks that need to be taken into account. To me, the dealbreaker was the need to keep all material in the SRD without modification. Furthermore, while the 4E GSL allows you to cite and reference stat blocks and rules under the SRD, you can't really reproduce any definition of game terms, nor redefine them for that matter. In my case, I knew I wanted freedom to tweak and improve any little rule in the book, and the ability to eventually produce a unified ruleset for the revised game - both options that are forbidden by the GSL.
The flipside, of course, is that the license allows you to work in the game without actually needing to rewrite every rule. In my case, I thought the extra effort was worth it, but your mileage may vary.
Mechanical compatibility is absolutely necessary (...) player needs to be able to play their old 4e character in the same way they did (...) a DM needs to be able to pick up a monster manual and use it with no more difficulty than using the MM1 currently takes.
Another point where I disagree is in the issue of compatibility. To me, the absolutely necessary part boils down to races, classes (including powers) and adventures. The current catalogue of feats, paragon paths and magic items is as much a burden as a blessing, and I think there are a lot of ways that the game can be improved by cleaning the slate an starting over again. I can see many players disagreeing with this view, though, and it's definitely another ton of extra work, but that's my opinion anyway.
The issue with monsters is more complicated. I chose to update monster stats, meaning that current stat blocks will need to be converted in order to be useful. This is far from ideal, but, again, gives me freedom to work on the math and balance of the game at a higher level. On the other hand, the most compelling argument to go this route is that this conversion effort is arguably already necessary for most monsters in the game (except those in the Monster Vaults and the MM3), since the original math was so flawed.
