I don't recall any AD&D advice saying that talking to the guards "is not fun". That is the issue being dodged here.
No. It had advice talking about what "skilled players" do: for example, they plan their mission in advance of the session, organise the equipment they will need in advance of the session, choose suitable PCs out of a stable of PCs in advance of the session, and then actually undertake the session in "operational" fashion, with a caller, a main mapper with a couple of backup mappers, etc.
I've GMed and played a lot of AD&D, but never a session in which these things were done. The implication being, I guess, that I and those I played with are not skilled.
AD&D may have been a broad church in play. It is not a very broad church in its text.
It wasn't just those specific words it was also all the other words in the DMG and the overall system. It just seemed like a game built around encounters with GM advice that focused on a more narrow style of play.
Yes. It is a game built around encounters. It doesn't hide that fact, it advertises it.
AD&D has equally narrow advice, for a game built around operational play focused on the "skillful" exploration and looting of dungeons. If you want to run a situation-based, player-driven, story-generating game (say of the sort that Burning Wheel might be expected to generate if played in its default style), you won't find helpful advice in the AD&D books.
This isn't a criticism of AD&D. It's just a fairly basic point - that 4e is not unique in D&D editions in presenting a certain way of playing the game. It's just different from much of what came before.
I've always gotten the sense that that point that was trying to be made was more, "Bypass mundane encounters. This doesn't mean you can't have an engaging discussion with gate guards or the like, but if you have a scene without any conflict and with the players not interested in it, its ok to fast-forward through it."
But that point wasn't exactly elegantly expressed and produced a lot of lines that sounded all the worse out of context.
I think putting so much focus on two specific sentences, and ignoring dozens of other pages of advice in the book - and other sources - is a bit much.
Agreed (but can't XP you at this time). The rest of the DMG, plus the PHB, provide plenty of context to (in my view) make the meaning clear.
You description of what makes for a good game is all well and good. Take the words in question and put them in front of 1,000 random people and then have a poll. Your interpretation won't come close to being the conclusion of what was said.
Perhaps. Although the relevant sample wouldn't be 1,000 random people, would it, but 1,000 actual or potential players of D&D.
Here is another quote from Wyatt's DMG (p 103):
You should allow and even encourage players to come up with their own quests that are tied to their individual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. Evaluate the proposed quest and assign it a level. Remember to say yes as often as possible!
Again, there are criticisms to be made. For example, player-designed quests are likely to produce the need for improvised encounters, and while I think 4e can handle these fine there is little advice in the DMG on how to do this.
Nevertheless, when
I look at 4e vs PF and it's adventure paths, I don't think "How could WotC have made such outrageous suggestions about how to play the game!"
Instead, I think "Who would have thought that pre-packaged plots, in which the main way players can introduce their own priorities (mostly colour) into the game is by having essentially meaningless interactions with bit NPCs like two guards at the city gate, would turn out to be more popular than a game aimed at player-driven, situation-focused play, where the players don't need to introduce colour through meaningless interactions because they are driving the encounters which are dripping with colour as well as meaning?"
I'm happy to accept that WotC, with its access to market research, should have known better than just to follow along with Ron Edwards' intuitions. But I nevertheless feel the force of the intuitions, and find their refutation by experience fairly surprising.
Maybe if WotC had produced better advice in the DMG (drawing on the available examples like Maesltrom, HeroWars etc) or produced adventure supplements that exemplified, rather than contradicted, their own advice (like player-driven quests and avoiding meaningless encounters), 4e would have been more popular. But my overall impression of the response to the game, reinforced by what some posters in this thread are saying, is that those sorts of improvements wouldn't have addressed the underlying issue.
