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Seeing as how one of the development team actually read Csikszentmihalyi, it's not surprising that you've had this experience. I've had it in earlier editions of the game, but I think 4e will make it easier. "Grinds to a halt" moments should become more rare.

Weren't those done already in d20 products? I don't use the d20 Modern line, but don't d20 Apocalypse and d20 Past cover those? I would think they'd be moderately easy to adapt to 4e.

Poor verisimilitude, probably. But more fun. I always hated the "magic item tax" of 100 gp (minimum) to identify stuff. I hated the fact that you needed a day + an hour to do it if you had a wizard or magic domain cleric in the party (since they have to prep it), or an hour + 25 gp for...

The thing that's interesting, although it isn't new news, is that you're encouraged to "assign" quests to get your players to do certain things. For instance, I was in an RPGA game recently where we went into the dungeon and by chance went straight to the plot-based goal. We didn't explore the...

Why? A spell that takes a standard action is the same as a weapon that takes a standard action. To paraphrase: Orc1: Uh oh, that ranger over there is surely going to shoot us. Orc2: Or worse... Orc1: What can we do? We know it's coming. We're smart enough to anticipate it. Surely we can do...

M. Mearls can correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall reading one of his blogs (I think it was his) where he talked about a player putting the dragon to sleep (despite the puny chance of success, due to its +5 save bonus), and the entire party battering on it with auto-crits for a round, leading...

Now I'm torn... with so many fighters out there, I'd rather be a paladin if I want to bring a defender to the table, and now that it's clear that paladins have at-will and encounter Cha-based attacks, it seems possible to dump Str on a paladin. So a tiefling paladin with wizard training might...

But that's not true in 4e. Making the save wakes you up. Taking damage does not. I saw this multiple times at DDXP; you can wail away on a sleeping critter (yes, even a slime or a skeleton), dealing automatic crits every time, until it makes the save and wakes up.

Another almost a full round. Say you have an opponent with an at-will healing ability that your party is having a hard time keeping up with--you attack, it heals, and you're back to square one (illustration). So to break the cycle, you ready to attack when it heals. So it heals, your readied...

Back to the OP's point: I think you're going to be out of luck, completely. If the main gimmick that you're looking for is summoning, there just won't be any. It goes into the "economy of actions" notion, as well as the "everything a player needs is in the PHB" principle. There may, at some...

Interesting that the "get two attacks in a row" aspect of readying is still there. I tend to abuse the heck out of that one.

...or they could just update Ravenloft. With the 1 setting/year policy, they're set for a long time. Eberron in 2009 is a given; after that, there's high demand for Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Dragonlance. At that point, they can either go into lower-demand properties (e.g. Planescape...

I think that there are a couple of rituals that you can use here. One is the Disenchant ritual, which is the magic equivalent of turning a sword into scrap metal. The other is something like Transfer Enchantment, which lets take a +4 flaming burst war pick and a masterwork longsword and end up...

Sure, if they want to take that -2 attack penalty and give up the option of moving around, or an opponent breaking through the front lines. It might work well if you're a healbot and don't need to make attack rolls, but otherwise you're doing more harm to yourself than good.

They are? 3e errata was a fiasco, ultimately including it only in published products (e.g. Complete Psionic and the Special Edition core rulebooks). The folks at WotC undoubtedly have dozens if not hundreds of reported errors that they never got around to investigating, confirming, and...

For my RPGA Beguiler, I made a simple document in landscape format with each spell, 2 lines each, with the relevant attributes (range, etc.) and a brief description. If you use shorthand, and memorize some very generic rules (e.g. Divine Challenge), I'm sure you can fit all your powers on a...

The paladin's Bolstering Strike and Shielding Smite seem to be Cha vs. AC, not Str vs. AC. Not only are the attack bonuses wrong for being Str, but it's highly improbable that an attack will use one stat for accuracy and another for damage.

Phooie. It's easy to tell that dwarves make the best rogues.

The PrRC says that lava kills anyone instantly. However, Peter Schaeffer's blog has this excerpt:

I always had trouble running campaigns in DL--the world is, for the most part, fairly small and well-explored. I always had to be fairly contrived to create adventure areas.