Short answers today...
That resource game doesn't depend on tracking time as Gygax describes it. It depends on knowing when an encounter ends; and knowing when the PCs take a long rest.
You can amp it up if you want to - nothing in 4e stops you from tracking rations, for instance, or tracking travel time across the wastelands - but the game doesn't require it. For instance, a trip across the wastelands can be framed as a skill challenge, and thus a single encounter and so no reuse of encounter powers, and the game will work fine - in fact, I would argue, better than it would if you actually tracked the time Gygax-style.
Unless the design intent of that trip across the wastelands is to drain the PCs' resources such that they're at less than full pop when they get to wherever they're going. The problem here is the amount of auto-recovery the game as written bestows between 'encounters' and-or on a short rest, unless and until one starts heavily houseruling.
Time is part of resolution
AD&D: healing, travel, wandering monsters, rations, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting, are all related to the passage of ingame time, and just as Gygax says managing time is an aspect of skilled play.
For AD&D another big one is spell and-or effect durations.
But my subsequent experience with 4e and other systems without this headache mean that I would personally never go back to such a system. (The few times in the past few years when I've run a session of AD&D have been pure dungeon-crawl, which doesn't have the problem because there is no pacing to manage in such a game.)
Even in a pure AD&D dungeon crawl there's still loads of time-related things that need tracking: movement rates, spell durations, wadering monsters if you use 'em, and even something so simple as whether it's day or night if some monsters only come out at night...
Nonsense. This goes back to fiction first as a feature of 4e compared to other D&D editions.
I don't need game mechanics to tell me that an ogre is a huge bruiser that can kill most ordinary people with a single swing of its club. That's the fiction. I only need game mechanics if something happens at the table - eg a player declares that his/her PC tries to beat the ogre in a fight. And then I can adapt whatever mechanics will give voice to this fiction. If the PC is low heroid, I will probably stat the ogre as a solo or an elite - which, mechanically, gives voice to the fiction that a low heroic tier PC probably can't best an ogre on his/her own. If the PC is upper heroic, then I can use a standard ogre straight out of the MM. If the PC is on the way through paragon tier, then I will probabl use one of the ogre minions from the MM - Lancelot cuts down anything less than a full-fledged giant with a single blow from his sword!
As I was discussing upthread with @Sadras, this is all about fiction first, mechanics second and in direct response to that prior fiction.
So, three ogres: one an elite, one 'standard', and one minion. Sounds fine...until you ask how that 1-h.p. minion possibly managed to survive growing up in a colony of might-makes-right ogres, or how it's lasted this long without suffering the one little scratch or accident that would do the one point damage required to kill it, and so on.
More broadly, if the fiction works in a particular way when PCs are involved then it also has to work the same when the PCs are not around: the 1-hit-point minion has one hit point. Period. Without this the fictional setting and background becomes nothing more than internally-inconsistent - and thus worthless - garbage.
And in this I AM putting fiction first, because if the fiction doesn't work right then the whole game kinda falls apart.
This seems a complete non-sequitur. I don't care about resource attrition, in the sense that I think it is one of the least interesting features of RPG play. But I certainly care about action declarations, and the capacity of players to impact the fiction by declaring actions for their PCs.
Hence I try to avoid games where some players get more resources than others unless the GM plays (what I regard as) a tedious game of resource attrition.
It's not a non-sequitur at all.
If a resource is limitless then it's only natural to use it as if it were - you guessed it - limitless! Resource attrition is meaningless when the supply of said resource is infinite, and this endless availability is going to inevitably affect what actions the players declare.
As soon as resources become limited, however, those actions come with choices regarding resource use vs resource conservation. Far more interesting, and - yes - sometimes far more challenging.
