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It's not hard to understand. It is, however, hard to master and very unintuitive. Hard to master is obvious. Planning for what kinds of things you're going to see is not something a newbie can do. But reactively choosing from a relatively short list? If you have 2 brain cells to rub...

Yeah, sorry about that. That was me anticipating the potential ad hominem rebuttal.... (i.e. "I see. All your problems with 3e were caused by bad DMs"). I spent too much of my internet time in the last few years in the lawless wastelands. It's easy to forget that ENWorld is a little more...

Fair enough. I may be conflating you with some of the others here who have claimed such. That much is certain. But just thumbing through the monster manual, a LOT of monsters in 3e were simplified drastically by having a certain ability present, or were particularly nasty to deal with for...

That's exactly what I mean. They can't be tailored to a group. They have to be shipped out the door in one of two states: 1) Dumbed down to the point where any group can do them, regardless of make-up; or 2) Built for the expected party. This is writing towards the lowest common denominator...

True in one sense, and incredibly over-stated in the other. There are lots of creatures in the 3e monster manual who had a clear designation in a rock-paper-scissors relationship with certain PC classes. Remember that this is RPGA we're talking about. It's not a good DM designing (or...

What were they supposed to do? Throw out 50%+ of the monster manual and all of the traps just because they couldn't plan on having the assumed party structure? That would have made for some varied adventures.

Yes. But it is a carefully selected generic for maximum scare power and minimum applicability. We could have an intelligent discussion of the statement "4e is too similar to Tactics Ogre" with actual points to be made. "4e is too much like WoW" is a deliberate conversation-ender. It is...

You could have the exact same play experience today by protecting the guy casting a ritual. The only problem with a sustained combat like that is you run out of encounter and daily powers eventually and fall back on repetitive at wills. On the other hand, that's no different than the Fighter...

But WoW added fun. When MMOs weren't actually fun for more than .001% of the population, they weren't actually a threat. MMOs are actually the red herring, in any case. 4e has more in common with turn based tactics games (Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, etc) than it does with any MMO...

The Death Knight mechanics are actually very interesting, and might even be something to think about in games very different from WoW. It's actually a dual resource system incorporating 6 runes of 3 types used in particular combinations to power spells which in turn fills a separate power bar...

The constant reference to this quote is pointless and circular. One thing we might note is that every member of their adventuring party WAS special. Mr. Incredible didn't head shot every big bad fight, obviating the need for the rest of his family. They overcame things as a team once they...

Not much that really fits in the headspace of this thread, but tons that applies to what they're really good at: videogames. Example: Everyone in MMOs (and even many single player CRPGs) shamelessly uses a carbon copy of their user interface. Not particularly germane to this discussion, but...

Just scrub off the serial numbers (rewrite the flavor text) and you can use almost anything. If you allow for "alchemy" or "natural philosophers" learning to make explosives or mesmerizing light shows or what have you, you can even classify a great many wizard powers as coming from a...

Too distracting. You would be unable to monitor body language simultaneously and therefore lose information. The fact that human "language" is actually so multi-modal is why it's so rich.

Lots of good fantasy here, which is my usual milieu, but there are a couple solid sci-fi possibilities, too. Metroid, as of the Prime series. Finally some worldbuilding to go with that exploration. Yeah, the games have focused on a single character, rather than party, but a party would work...

Random thoughts about Erathis' portfolio: Other gods or powers could do one of two things: co-opt it or destroy it. Part of her portfolio is the concept of civilization. The gnoll god, for example, might simply destroy it, given the opportunity. At that point, cities and agriculture, and...

Just from a control perspective, the DM needs his own screen. This is especially important if he's going to make changes on the fly, adjust terrain, etc. Plus, I think it would be handy to have controls for your creatures that the players can't see, and so on. All of which would be easiest to...

That does not surprise me. When those two say something, there are a great many people who start taking notes... Mostly tech and creative people who are working on the bleeding edge. The DM screen seemed to be color-coded in some way. Specifically, I think it was terrain variation and walls...

Let me clarify: It was specific decisions made about Hal Jordan decades after he passed the torch the first time that flipped people out all over the joint. My only point was that people can accept Green Lanterns who are not Hal Jordan and any number of Flash characters, but they seem unable to...

Well, I disagree. The torch-passing in GL has not been the problem (it's happened more times than any other high profile character). It was specific decisions made about Hal Jordan that flipped people out all over the joint. And if some percentage of the audience does reject.... they can pick...