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So much crunch, so little time. Any chance that all this new material will be well thought out and properly playtested before it hits the shelves?

QFT The DMG cover is passable. The MM cover is bad. The PHB cover is a total embarrassment.

I like the simplicity of Good - Unaligned - Evil. I don't like Lawful Good = very good and Chaotic Evil = very evil. If we need degrees of good & evil, why not use something like Saintly - Good - Unaligned - Evil - Diabolical?

Good luck with that. Please let me know if you ever find an RPG ruleset that covers everything without resorting to any rule tweaks, houserules, DM fiat or interpretation.

They stay on due to the power of the ESRB. ;)

You certainly don't need a calculator for Rolemaster, but it does speed things up a bit. The math isn't much more than addition and subtraction, but most of the numbers are two or three digits long, so it's just faster to do it on a large-button calculator than in your head (at least for us).

My friends and I played tons of Rolemaster back in the day. We only used charts for combat and resistance rolls. Skills checks were made by the GM setting a difficulty number, usually 101, that your skill + d% check needed to beat. The combat charts are all in one book (two if you count...

What I'm wondering is what kind of profit expectations Hasbro has regarding DDI and what Hasbro would do if those expectations aren't met. I'm not sure that Hasbro would just let 4e continue on its normal trajectory if DDI fails. Is there enough profit in the book sales for Hasbro to justify...

Bingo. It's the classic better/faster/cheaper law of supply chain. I doubt they'll miss deploying on the release date of 4e and I really doubt they'll want to run up their overhead cost. Maybe they'll surprise us, but judging from the previews so far, the DDI thing isn't looking so good. If...

If story and setting were an issue, Hasbro could simply use the Forgotten Realms for D&D minis. It's a large, established world with a very large fanbase. Besides, I highly doubt that fluff is all that important or all that expensive to produce. Dungeons and Dragons is the biggest brand name...

Of course there will be some overhead associated with DDI, but I'd be very surprised if it had lower margins that their book-publishing business. Volume is still the big unknown. Will players flock to DDI? What happens if they don't? I'm not so sure that Hasbro would consider 4e a success if...

The online stuff is where the money is. Hasbro/WotC gets to keep a much larger % of the DDI subscription price than they get to keep of a book's price. Plus, the DDI has lower overhead costs and a more stable revenue stream. I wouldn't be surprised if Hasbro/WotC considers DDI to be an...

I think WotC realizes that there are a lot more players than DMs and "Tome of Treasures" sounds like a book aimed at DMs. "Adventurer's Vault: A Guide to Weapons, Equipment, and Treasure for Your Character" clearly shows it's for players as well as DMs.

D&D Tactics was ok. It was turn-based and used a grid for combat. It also highlighted why high-level 3e was broken. Once your party hit the mid-teen levels, all you had to do was spam save-or-die spells.

In some of the older editions of the game, there were sections of the rules where the author would discuss what to do when players wanted to try something the rules don't cover. I think a section like that should be included in 4e and future editions.

Why do all DMs have to rule things the same way?

You call it "DM fiat", I call it "DM's common sense". The whole point of having a referee in the game is so that he can make judgement calls. If you have a DM who's fair, it's not a problem.

Strictly speaking, no, they are not required to play the game. However, once a new core book is published, its material may be referenced by supplements, modules, etc. So, in a sense, it is required if you want to ensure that you can use all future WotC material. Not buying them might be like...

The amount of DM fiat needed is hardly "ridiculous". Just give any spell cast at the magic resistant monster a flat % chance to not work. Come up with some decent fluff to explain why this particular creature is magic resistant. Done.

New, simplified grapple rule: If you can pin your DM, then your grapple succeeds.