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I was going to do one of those point-by-point analysis of your post posts, but I won't. I think the only part that really needs to be addressed is right here. In a word, no. The foundation for most of the things you brought up is the assumption that WotC is not telling us anything. This is...

I think this is a pretty neat idea. Here's a few things you may want to keep in mind. Any time you put players on a clock, 2 years in your case, they'll do their best to find any possible shortcuts. More than usual. Expect them to cheat you out of some really good fights at least a couple...

I think that depends largely on how many points there are in your setting. I may (and around here by "may" I mean "quite probably") be incorrect about the density of settlements, but didn't Europe and the Middle East saw their share of tax collectors visiting from Rome a couple thousand years ago?

I'd say, overall, the smaller a settlement is, the less likely it is to survive. However, you're usually going to need some kind of organized effort to actually eliminate a place. For starters, let's assume that magical critters generally act like real world ones. Yes, I know the dangers of...

There's a lot of good stuff above and I don't really want to duplicate on that. I liked the Gygax World Building series, published by Troll Lord Games, IIRC. I wasn't that big on Canting Crew, but the rest of the series is pretty handy. What I really liked is there are lists of practically...

There was a lot of this when 3e came out, too. I was resistant at first. Once I ran a couple games with a battle map and tokens for characters, I couldn't believe I'd done it "the hard way" for so long.

Work, WoW, D&D. Not necessarily in that order.

I like that it appears everybody will always have something interesting to do. That is to say, all the classes have options beyond "swing sword" and "cast spell". I will really like simplified monster creation, if it delivers as promised. Homebrewing monsters is one of my favorite DM jobs. I...

I think there will only be a handful of early-licensees and I'm pretty sure that's exactly what WotC had in mind. Drawing answers from my somewhat cloudy memory, Goodman Games is already in. I believe Necromancer was leaning heavily in that direction. Last I knew, the juries at Mongoose and...

You may if I may. :) Absolutely true, but in that context, I believe you were discussing content, not the license. I may be incorrect. Take a look at pages 220-221 in MMII. "We've decided to use some of the best new content created by another publisher - the razor boar and scorpionfolk...

I'd say it more flows "around" them. The overwhelming majority of open content is generated outside of WotC. Further, WotC has already taken open content and put it in one of their subsequent books. In MMII or MMIII (can't recall which), WotC included two or three OGC monsters from outside...

I agree with most of the stuff you said. However, I think I'm surprised at how much the DI idea has grown on me. The DM toolbox, character generator, and having online versions of my books and Dragon and Dungeon are really starting to appeal to me. On top of that, I'm not even planning to use...

I like what you've got here. The only thing I'd add is that you're using a lot of WotC artwork with no proper credit. I know it's only for us to promote their product, but I'd still put in something like "The artwork in this document is the property of Wizards of the Coast and no claims are...

What choice best represents, "I don't give a kobold's hindquarters what they do."? A talented writer can frame things in such a way that it never becomes an issue. In fact, one of my professors insisted on docking students points from their grades for using "he" or "she" in papers, correctly...

Well, I may be old, if not familiar. :) 4e has gotten the gaming bug back in me. In the last two years, I've moved 400 miles from my group, completely lost touch with gaming, and been stranded without any gaming outside of WoW. Now, I've finally got the fever enough that I decided to run...

Level Draining is a sacred cow of D&D, long overdue to become hamburger.

Its one of the things I really hope they deliver on for being easier. Homebrew monsters was my pet project, well, aside from DMing anyway. I liked it in 2e more than 3e. Assigning a CR was always such a voodooish endeavor.

Be careful with that one. They said wizards can cast 25th level spells, not up to 25th level spells. If they're looking to make things easier and give more choices per level, I think it's more likely that there are as many spell levels as character levels.

While the DM is the final arbiter, a written rule really isn't necessary. Optional rules and 3rd party material, or even stuff from Dragon or Dungeon, can pretty easily be denied out of hand. But when you start tinkering with the core stuff of the PHB, you should have a decent reason. As long...

To me, something being out of balance is when two classes just don't compare on usefulness. Not necessarily spellcasting or melee prowess. If you just have nothing useful to do with your character's abilities, your class isn't balanced. If you look at a class and say, "why would anyone play...