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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5987748" data-attributes="member: 87792">This is a good and interesting point.  But there is one good counter-example here.  OSRIC.  Hasbro hasn't sued them into submission. The trick is you don't release under the GSL - that would be plain silly.  You take advantage of the fact that 4e is a d20 game and release under the OGL.  Game mechanics can not be patented, and so you need to re-write every bit of fluff text that you don't steal straight from the OGL.  Bull!  There's been a five year long campaign to destroy 4e starting before 4e was ever published with complaints like the Tyrrany of Fun and the Disassociated Mechanics that appeared before 4e was even published, and regularly including outright lies about what 4e is and how it works.  I don't think it's been an organised campaign but it's been a campaign none the less.  One of several things.  Another thing it does very well is 'non-power-mad system mastery'.  I like my system mastery but I really don't like system mastery turning the game into a pretzel.  Therefore I prefer 4e.  It rewards me for system and tactical mastery without ruining everyone else's fun.  A third thing it does is creates good DMs and works very well for new DMs. No.  The campaign right now from 4e fans is to get WotC in an act of brand-suicide to stop pissing off their existing fans in a way that makes the way they treated 3.5 fans round the production of 4e look positively polite.  Well it's a good job 4e doesn't do either then.  What it does is not actively set out to reward System Mastery because that would be stupid.  And compared with any previous edition a 4e fighter is positively dripping with flavour, and so is anyone else who isn't a Gygaxo-Vancian Caster.  The 4e Monster Manuals have as much flavour as the 2e Monstrous Manual and leave the 1e ones and 3e ones in the dust.  They just are produced to be used at the gaming table rather than read by the bedside.  Eep!  I rank him somewhere behind Ron Edwards.  And I'm no fan of Ron Edwards.  Why?  It has all the downsides of being rules heavy and none of the upsides.</blockquote>

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