Celebrim, I don't think that everything that is hard is suffering and I don't believe that I asserted that, nor implied it (I certainly didn't intend to imply it).
Some hard work is suffering (eg I think that I would suffer if bound into physical slavery). Some work that is not hard nevertheless involves suffering, or at least tedium (in my own working life, marking papers is the main example). Some hard work is not suffering (eg mostly, for me, writing pieces for publication). Some training is tedious (when I used to practice my guitar more regularly, I found doing scales tedious). Some training is not tedious (I "trained" to be a philosopher by, among other things, reading Kant - this was probably worthwhile, certainly involved suffering, but was not tedious).
Some of these phenomena involve delayed gratification (eg practising scales). Others do not (eg for me, writing articles - I get payed to do this, which is gratifying, but most of the time there is also a complex pleasure in the writinig experience).
Some pleasures require tedious training to experience them. The pleasures of playing the guitar is, in my view, one of them. Others do not. And some pleasures require little or no training at all - I would include in this the pleasure of listening to music (unless you count the cultivation of taste as a type of training, but I'm not sure about this) and the pleasure of RPGing (this involves a bit of training, but not much).
You may or may not have had similar experiences to mine, as to what causes pleasure, what tedium, what suffering, and the relationship between them. But if your RPG play involves (i) a large deal of training, and/or (ii) a large deal of tedium, and/or (iii) a large degree of delayed gratification comparable to that which I experience when I get paid for marking papers, then your experience of RPG play is very different from mine. Perhaps it is. But I still don't see where the ego-gamer thing comes in. What is egoistic about looking for an RPG that doesn't require much training and doesn't involve tedium?
You posted upthread that AD&D was designed for wargamers by wargamers. I agree with this. I think it is obvious that 4e was designed for gamers with different preferences, in particular those who find certain elements of traditional wargaming, and/or the manifestation of these elements in RPG play, to be tedious (being deprived of the PC as a means for interacting with the gameworld is the most obvious). But what is the reason for describing such players as egoistic?
As to 4e and indie games, I assert the connection in part because Rob Heinsoo has expressly stated that it is there, in part because Mearls was a participant in the indie scene in earlier days, in part because Robin Laws has written 4e stuff which is partly cribbed from his HeroQuest work, and in part because I see resemblances.
The resemblances I see are in respect of (i) a more-or-less coherent set of mechanics that, when played as the box tells you to, more-or-less delivers the game experience the box promises, (ii) a game that relies quite heavily on fortune-in-the-middle mechanics (eg hit points, attack rolls, saving throws, skill challenges etc), (iii) a game that separates details of narration from mechanical details in a way that differs quite markedly from traditional D&D or mainstream simulationist games but looks quite a bit like HeroQuest or The Dying Earth (this is also related to (ii) above), (iv) a game with non-traditional conflict resolution mechanics in the form of skill challenges, and (v) a game that has a defined endgame via epic destinies and destiny quests. There may be others as well that I'm missing here.
4e has a tricky relationship to shared narration. The player gets to narrate power usage and effects (and this has caused some opposition from simulationist-minded gamers, eg in respect of Come and Get It, and martial encounter and daily powers more generally). The rules are ambiguous on who has narrative authority in a skill challenge, but I doubt that ours is the only group in which players exercise at least some authority in skill challenges (including by adopting directors stance for at least limited purposes). The players have a high degree of authority over the general tenor of the endgame, because they get to choose their epic destinies and the GM is obliged to deliver (this is a very big difference from the superficial resemblance to immortality in Menzer Basic D&D).
4e also has a tricky relationship to its gameworld. Played out of the box the world is tightly defined - their are gods, a history, specific monsters, etc. Furthermore, a GM who uses the monsters in accordance with the encounter-buidling guidelines will have a game in which the players, one way or another, experience the "story of D&D" - start with humoids, work up through drow/mindflayers/githyanki, finish with demon lords/archdevils. (There is some discussion of this by the designers in Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters.) This focused attention on the world and setting as part of the play experience fits with indie design tenets, but also a certain sort of traditional design as well (eg Pendragon, Cthulhu, RQ played in Glorantha). The paragon path and epic destiny rules push it a little more definitely in the indie direction, by obliging the player to make choices that will locate his/her PC in that world, but it's not quite Nicotine Girls or My Life with Master.
But for those players who don't play straight out of the box - making up their own world, reskinning monsters etc - then the game itself provides little more to the world than is given by the character build rules. This is pretty traditional.
The loot system, at least as printed, mixes indie and traditional sensibilities. Loot, according to the DMG, is based on pre-determined parcels and player wish lists. This suggests that it's an element of character build that emerges out of engaging in gameplay - indie! But it is also a reward for success in encounters - traditional! I wouldn't be surprised if this is an area of 4e which different groups approach quite differently in actual play, depending on what sort of play experience they are looking for. It's also one site of lurking incoherence.
I see two main mechanical differences between 4e and the quintessential indie game. The first is that the combat mechanics are hived off from the other conflict resolution mechanics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is also (in my view) the aspect of the design which puts the greatest pressure on coherence - at least at present, the rules (even post-DMG2) don't do enough to support the interaction of skill challenge mechanics and combat mechanics.
The second is that 4e has no mechanics that directly express PC passions or relationships. Rather, the expression of these is mechanically indirect, finding expression potentially through skill challenge mechanics (eg players calling on relationships to make checks easier), through quest rewards (eg players working with the GM to establish quests that fit their PCs' passions), through certain powers (eg narrating the warlord's Inspiring Word), and at the character build stage through various feats, powers, paragon paths and epic destinies. Still, it's interesting to note that these potential indirect expressions of these aspects of a PC are firmly located in the players' hands as much as, if not more than, the GM's. This is a marked contrast with traditional RPGs, especially D&D (where alignment is perhaps the most notorious example of a more traditional approach).
The main non-mechanical difference between 4e and the typical indie game is the publishing strategy. But the publicationo of player options doesn't necessarily undermine coherence, because it simply reinforces those aspects of the game - powers, epic destinies etc - which are the tools for players to use to drive the game in their preferred direction. The publication of modules and worldbooks, on the other hand, does threaten coherence, because these tend to shift authority away from the players and into the hands of either the GM or the sourcebook author. My response to this is to not use the modules as written, and rather to use them simply as sources of encounters and other interesting gameworld elements. I wouldn't be surprised if other groups have different responses, thereby changing quite considerably their play experience.
Would Forge-ites play 4e? I don't know. I've read threads on the Forge discussing fantasy RPG play, including D&D, so some of those posters might play it. I can imagine that a player who likes The Riddle of Steel, or Burning Wheel, might find something interesting in 4e. Or they might not. It's a bit hard to make these sorts of generalisations.
EDIT: Look at the sorts of complaints one hears about 4e from those who like AD&D: too much player entitlement (HeroQuest has more); too many mechanics and too little GM arbitration of the situation; too little resource management (HeroQuest has almost none); mechanics that guarantee a heroic story at the expense of verisimilitude; Come and Get It would be OK if it allowed a Will save; etc, etc.
These aren't complaints about a badly-designed traditional game (they're not, for example, the complaints one hears in a debate between players of traditional AD&D, traditional RQ and traditional RM). They're complaints about those features of the game which marks its difference from a traditional RPG.
Now look at the main complaint one hears about 4e from LostSoul, one of the posters on these boards who clearly has a lot of play experience with indie games: potential incoherence in 4e's relationship between challenge and player narrative entitlements. This is a complaint that (in my view) arises from some of the areas of lurking incoherence I've noted in 4e's design, where it straddles traditional and indie approaches.
I think the tenor of these complaints is consistent with my view that 4e is heavily influenced by non-traditional approaches to RPG design. They're complaints that I think need to be taken seriously by someone wanting to get the best out of 4e: don't play it if you want an AD&D experience, and be careful playing it for a more indie experience given the potential incoherences (in my own GMing I look for ways to try to avoid those incoherences - it's a bit too early to tell whether or not I've succeeded). But none of them suggest to me that 4e is a game designed for ego-gamers, and that this is the explanation for the potential unsatisfactoriness of its design.
