AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well... I think this is an area where we may not totally agree. I think, on the face of it, the simplest way to color the way things work in AD&D is a bit more like what you often see in legends. You really DO NOT see some sort of progression commonly spelled out. Not a steady one for sure.
What I think works with 4e is that you are very free to interpret a LOT of the mechanics in various ways, narratively, so if you are clever and focused on creating a specific sort of story, you can probably do it very well. Some sort of something will fall out of a sufficiently well-run AD&D campaign, but its definitely less easy to just naturally make it happen in a reliable way.
So, maybe 4e demands a good bit of understanding of how to use it to get exactly what you want (think how @pemerton narrative comes out of the games he has described). AD&D will sometimes generate some fairly cool narrative, kind of just by dint of how it works, but it also produces a lot of crap.
What I think works with 4e is that you are very free to interpret a LOT of the mechanics in various ways, narratively, so if you are clever and focused on creating a specific sort of story, you can probably do it very well. Some sort of something will fall out of a sufficiently well-run AD&D campaign, but its definitely less easy to just naturally make it happen in a reliable way.
So, maybe 4e demands a good bit of understanding of how to use it to get exactly what you want (think how @pemerton narrative comes out of the games he has described). AD&D will sometimes generate some fairly cool narrative, kind of just by dint of how it works, but it also produces a lot of crap.