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I keep thinking it’s not worth posting since all I have is anecdotes, but it seems too often that’s all we have in this hobby. (u_u) The question I’ll choose to answer is: Is D&D currently the gateway RPG? The few gamers I know who got into the hobby since about the mid-1990s didn’t start with...

That’s the thing. I know some people refuse to believe it, but Wizards could actually have more than one RPG in print. (Indeed, they do.) If 4e had been called “Foo”, they could have kept 3e around as “D&D”. In fact, this is one of the many good answers to the supposed dilemma of the RPG...

Don’t have the DMG. Don’t want the DMG. This is making me feel like I can’t discuss the system since I only own the PHB. (6_6) I understand and respect that others feel differently, but that’s the last thing I want a system to be designed for. I suppose that’s pretty much the reason I prefer...

Like the Hero system. Wouldn’t be a bad thing, I think. Yet, it would make it even a greater disconnect from previous editions. I kind of felt that way in my AD&D days. When I read 3e, I really was wishing the system had gone more that way. Generic classes and True20 finally did it pretty...

As I recall, the official way to resolve conflicts between books in AD&D was that the most recently published book trumped earlier books. To me, this is the key to being a successful 1e thief. If you can hide rather than hiding in shadows, then do so. Moving silently is good, but even if you...

Well, B/X D&D was the first RPG I owned, but classic Traveller was the first RPG I played on a regular basis. So, I could call D&D my first love and Traveller my second. Or I could call Traveller my first love and AD&D my second. Or I could say that my first real “branching out” was Warhammer...

If I had a million dollars, I’d still eat Kraft dinners. (Except I’ve lived in TX all my life so I call them “macaroni and cheese”)

In the few conversions I’ve done, most skill checks just got eliminated. Instead of a spot check, just include it in the description up front. For some spot checks, the players may need to actually say the look at something first. Instead of search checks, if they search, they find it...

I’d rather my not be able to plan ahead for my first few PCs and feel like the upper tiers got as thorough a playtesting as the lower tier.

(Ignoring that in earlier editions the trade-offs were mostly in your choice of class.) And it is with the Wizard—which happened to be the 4e class I’ve played—that I feel unsatisfied. And if the game is going to make the Fighter follow mechanics more similar to the Wizard, then I’d like the...

I’m big on reflavoring. The druid class in many editions makes a wizard I like better than the wizard/magic-user class. Heck, I’m big on house-ruling and making up stuff yourself. I’ve got some ideas for house rules that might make me enjoy 4e more. But when you ask the kind of question you...

Nah. I played in fantasy GURPS games that only used the Basic book magic. The Magic book had a lot of good stuff in it, but the Basic book was sufficient. Heck, the sample adventure was a fantasy world without magic.

I see where you’re going with that, but I guess I’d then have to say that it isn’t about the concept not translating for me. (^_^) My wizards tend to not have a lot of flashy combat spells. In 4e, I can’t create a wizard without flashy combat spells. I could just not use them, but I’d much...

Well...GURPS had two kinds of supplements: Rule supplements and world books. Oh, they tried to call them all world books, but Martial Arts was clearly more rules than world and Old West was clearly more world than rules. The world books often had vanishingly few new rules. The rule supplements...

I’d like this model. The highest levels of editions that didn’t follow this model have often seemed poorly playtested. I think this would result in a better product in all tiers. Many groups will never get to the paragon tier. Many groups will never get to the epic tier. As for groups that...

I suspect most of us would agree with that. My impression is that most old-schoolers don’t use NWPs.

My impression is that they didn’t provide a conversion for 4e because of the negative feedback they got about the 3e conversion they published. Based on what I saw among groups who tried to convert → 3e, I advised people at the time to start new PCs rather than convert. For a few groups...

Sadly, when I went to link to it, I didn’t have it handy. Had to search. Interesting. I think this may be an important but subtle reason that 4e wasn’t quite doing it for me.

Nah. 3e (3.0e even) sent me back to Basic(s) long before 4e came out.

I believe you can play any game in old school style. I believe you can play old school games in styles that are not old school. I believe I have done both. But, it works better if the game and the style match. If you want to play 4e in old school style, I think you have to first understand old...