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I haven't seen anything like a full-on 4E tactical mode in the playtest material but in general I agree with you. This may be the biggest obstacle it has to overcome - apathy/satisfaction with other rules. If I'm happy with Pathfinder and running and playing in a PF campaign, how much interest...

I'm not talking about changing feats or heavily investing in them - just that with a magic bow, maybe a +1 stat bonus, and at most a feat or two like weapon focus a fighter can keep a bow in his toolkit. I don't think you have to pump Dex to keep a bow useful. I don't think you need 10 feats...

I never said it was odd, I was just making an observation that the hyper-specialization was mainly a fighter issue. For Rogues, finesse weapons mitigated the two-stat issue in a lot of cases. Martial classes did have a combat attribute that is the same for both melee and ranged: the attack...

Among 3E's other "gifts" to us was the concept of "builds" and optimization. Fighters went from being good at all combat (barring ability score issues) in older editions and using whatever magic weapon came to hand, to being specialized to some degree in 2E (depending on which options were...

I see this online sometimes but I think the number of people who will refuse to buy the next version of D&D because they're still mad about the last version is pretty small. I mean logically, if you dropped D&D because you didn't like the direction the company took it, well, you won! they're...

Oh I agree, and it was one of the most selectively applied things in the game. Fighting in tight quarters? "It's a 20' radius." A swarm of bad guys coming across a large open cave? "Well, with a 20' average ceiling height it should cover (math math math) the entire cavern right up to here and...

Not so sure about this - Fallout came out the same year, Might and Magic VI came out the same year, Diablo was new for 97, Ultima Online was new for 1997 - CRPG's were fairly popular at the time. No one knew who Bioware was - people bought it because it was D&D The city of BG was in the 1990...

Sunburst and Meteor Swarm are nice, but they are 8th and 9th level spells. Cone of cold is good too but it emanates from the user so it's a little different in practice, more like a flamethrower than a grenade toss. When using a grid a 20' radius can be limiting against large creatures, so it...

Couple of points: -The AD&D Fireball had no dice cap (15th level MU = 15d6 fireball) and covered considerably more area indoors because of the volume of the blast (as noted in the spell description). Outdoors it had a 20-yard radius instead of 20', which was nice too. -The AD&D Lightning Bolt...

HBO: I had the odd confluence of seeing a Boardwalk Empire preview while looking at an old Gangbusters ad and it occurred to me that I finally knew what to do with a 1920's campaign other than stick Cthulu in it Also, Game of Thrones has an RPG so there's one at least! MWP does do some odd...

Roboetech has had an RPG since the 80's so there's a fan base specifically for that at least, and some anime stuff in general. I'm a little surprised the avatar/airbender show never had an RPG. GI Joe, Transformers - there are knockoff RPG's, maybe that's enough, though both seem like strong...

The question I am really interested in will be how they're both doing a year to two years down the road, mainly after D&D (insert edition name here) officially releases. Based on Monte's track record (AU/AE mainly) I think it's safe to say Numenera will have support for a few years at least...

So, much like the in-game world, one of the downsides of organized play is dividing the loot! That seems appropriate. I've never spent time at an organized play event and I don't go to a ton of cons but I've been running home games for decades. I was somewhat interested in things like 4E...

I think another big obstacle for this drawn-out kind of public playtesting is simply time. Most players I know have trouble starting and maintaining one ongoing campaign. Assuming that's important to your group, how easy is it to start up a second group for "playtesting" (just calling it that...

I agree that it's not gospel - being a little bit sarcastic there. But if you recall the first time it was posted showing that Pathfinder had passed D&D the internet was buried in pronouncements on forums and blogs that D&D was dead etc - all from this one less than comprehensive source. Since...

Within the framework of D&D 4E, “success” is achieved by having the appropriate mix of classes. Wait, what? I do not see how this is "success" - success comes from playing the game, not from setting up the party. Assuming the right number of players, you need at least one leader, one...

I don't know - that ICV2 chart that everyone takes as gospel says D&D is still #2 in sales. Presumably that's mostly coming from the reprint hardcovers and there has been a steady stream of those. They're playtesting it - you can go download it for free right now. Looking at what they have...

"I think D&D has waited too long to release D&D next. They have lost way too much of the market to just barge back into the hobby gaming market and just assume their place as if nothing ever happened." Well first, I think there's a lot more emotion than reason in this statement. D&D is still...

"just as the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk lines rolled out parts of their respective worlds a piece at a time." What? Both of those settings were originally rolled out as a complete setting, not in parts, so I'm not sure where this is coming from. To me, at this point in the development of...

I was expecting to hate this article based on the title alone - "oh look another attempt to turn advice from a completely different medium into DMing advice" - I find most of those to be just wrong. Lo and behold - this is actually good stuff, and if your players keep coming back you're...