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It's true that 3e has a crap load of keywords (e.g. "undead"), but you point at the monster manual for good reason. Most of the keywords are dumped on the DM. Sure, a PC can benefit from knowing whether a Construct has a Con score and what the effect of that is his spells, but he doesn't...

I just want to weigh in on knowing your DM and players. Yes, part of these aspects is meta-gaming that doesn't really add to the game (although I'm not sure it always takes away from it either). But knowing your players and DM is also about knowing what's fun for the other people at the...

I don't think 4e has a lot of bad jargon (except for power and power source, which are out-of-genre), but there's just too much of it. I like a game with clear rules, but it's a cost-benefit analysis. WotC can't specify everything, so they have always face the choice of (1) printing more rules...

I don't think that's right. If you want modular add-ons to work right, you need to know what those add-ons could be and how they are supposed to fit in, but you can still experiment with a core without building out an iteration of every module for each iteration of the core. The real problem...

All of the 3e campaigns I played or DMed started at level 3 (except LG, of course). Most 4e campaigns I've been involved in started at level 1, although I think we would have switched to level 3 if we had continued starting new 4e campaigns. That's for the campaigns (about half the games)...

I don't see why the game needs a new term for "10 minutes", but I agree that it would be useful to have a time management framework that helps the DM figure out how long things take, and let the PCs make a cost/benefit analysis about how quickly they want to proceed. This will involve figuring...

What this conversation is missing is that dice also serve the functions of creating tension and managing the frequency of rare, interesting events. Dice can also have the effect of shifting the feeling of ownership over the result. For an example of tension, a DM could roll a search check...

This middle ground is important for adventurers, but including it in the game raises (revives? resurrects?) the game world issue of why don't rich people have themselves raised indefinitely until old age finishes them off. There is unquestionably a big difference between a 1-day raise dead and...

I think keeping track of the PC's capabilities is an important part of good GMing. You don't need to be perfect about it, but it's a good idea to target PC resistances and present enemies vulnerable to PC strengths. Anyway, half my players ask for help in selecting character options. I need...

I suppose 3e's PCs may have been worse -- it was rare in my experience for someone to take one from outside the DMG. But that just emphasizes a huge advantage for PCs: they were optional and you could play 3.x fine by mostly ignoring them. PPs are mandatory if you want to play paragon level...

This seems like a good idea to me. 4e made the mistake of making everything about the paladin unique to the paladin. That's too much material and doesn't do justice to the commonalities that clerics and paladins should have in divine power or to the commonalities that fighters and paladins...

Not only did paragon paths have greatly differing levels of effectiveness, but fluff and crunch were often barely connected. I like 4e a lot, but PPs could easily be 4e's most finicky, hard-to-choose and disassociated set of mechanics. -KS

I've had success with an ibook angled down so the camera pointed at the map. I doubt a battlemap would be satisfying, but it seems to be adequate for a "here's which room you're in map." There are occasional audio problems, but it's totally dominated by the remote player forgetting to unmute...

Yeah, with prestige classes and paragon paths, there has been a lot more bad material published than good material. Overall (except for kits), the mechanics have rarely been a good match for the concept. With paragon paths and epic destinies, you had the major problem that they were...

I agree that bad PR/community-relations hurt 4E, which is why I give WotC some credit for attempting a very different strategy in their roll out of D&DN. Obviously, we don't know whether it will work or not, but -- as a starting point -- it seems like a good idea to try an approach closer to...

I always liked the idea of the ranger as the "smart" fighter with a lot of skills and "trick/knowledge" abilities (which could be spellcasting, snares, terrain bonuses, primal utility powers, animal companion or something else) to complement a somewhat more lightly armored set of fighting...

I don't think this is a bad option, so long as the niche classes aren't rules heavy. A niche class with a few class abilities and a list of existing spells / maneuvers / powers is a perfectly reasonable way of handling a narrow concept that isn't addressed head on by one of the broad classes...

I think the first step in fixing wizards is making sure that fighters and rogues get enough at middle and high levels to keep up. Whether that consists of cool exploits or simple bonuses, at 15th level fighter needs to be a serious badass, not just some guy with a high BAB and a bunch of hit...

I think this is a fun area of experimental design, but I wonder how it translates to play. If the differences are large enough, then fighters will want to carry a comically large number of weapons. There may be some fun to be had by limiting the number of weapons conveniently available in...

I think the problem with 4E jargon is that (1) some of it is out-of-genre, and (2) there is so damn much of it that matters. I don't think it's "game-y-ness" is a major issue on its own. It's hardly a positive, but it's not that different than other systems. 3.x also has an awful lot of...