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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5987861" data-attributes="member: 996">Yep.  I think that's the real reason I ended up on the "4e" side of the edition war - I started out, as I usually do, skeptical of the new ed (particularly about the possibility that WotC might try to turn it into a CCG somehow - and, hey, there /are/ fortune cards, so they tried).  But, I have a bit of a compulsion to speak up when something's mis-represented (in another thread, I was sticking up for 3e multi-classing, for instance), and, wow, did the mis-understanding, mis-representation, and outright lies about 4e come on thick. 4e, particularly the first two years, tried as hard as it could to avoid rewarding system mastery, and a lot of the continual stream of errata was spent in hammering down the system-mastery nails that stuck out.  Yet there were /always/ optimized builds being bandied about.  No game needs to 'support' or 'reward' system mastery intentionally, system mastery is unavoidable.   AD&D 1e has a special place in my heart, but that's the unvarnished truth.  It was an early game, and it was intentionally a rules-heavy game with lots of detail - part of the famous 'two prong approach' that had supposedly more rule-lite, or at least less completist, BECMI on the other prong.  (Disclaimer, I never played BECMI beyond the Basic Set and rarely even glanced at it after.)</blockquote>