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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 7651904" data-attributes="member: 58416">As I have limited familiarity with those editions, I cannot comment on them in a way I would even hope to describe as knowledgable.  That being said, it is my impression (whether right or wrong) that the difference is not quite as pronounced as today's D&D.  I believe that because converting adventures from those earlier editions to different systems has lead to results which appear to be consistent with the ideals behind the originally designed adventures in so much that PCs and non-PCs are on roughly equal footing in how they interact with the surrounding world.  An example which comes to mind is a GURPS game I was in in which the group played through Ghost Tower of Inverness; how things played out in actual play seemed (again, I have very limited familiarity with the earlier D&D editions) consistent with what I believe was the designer's intent behind the adventure; things seemed to play out roughly how I'd imagine them to in those older D&D editions -based on my limited understanding of them.  In contrast, some of the 4E adventures I've converted change quite drastically; mostly because the monsters are able to use tactics which are virtually impossible for them to use in 4E due to their physical inability to use them effectively in 4E.  I do expect things to change between systems; especially when converting between systems which have a vastly different underlying philosophy, but it's some of the small and often not noticed details which change drastically enough to attract my attention the most.  Like why is it that I can use an at-will power and destroy things which monsters who are supposedly (according to the fiction) can barely scratch with their strongest attacks?  Later 4E books did greatly help in this regard, but it's not just attacking I'm talking about... slap a pair of dimensional shackles on a monster and see what their chances of breaking out are compared to a PC of similar level.    I enjoy 4E.  That's not to say I feel it's perfect; I've been very vocal about some of the parts of it which bother me in the past.  Still, I've come to enjoy it, but I've come to enjoy it because I realized I was better off embracing it for what it was rather than trying to fight against the system.  Do I believe you can play different styles with 4th edition D&D?  Certainly, I do believe that, and I even believe there are some groups for whom using D&D 4E to play a hardcore gritty game work quite well.  I believe that because I've used GURPS to do game styles which other people feel you cannot do with that system.  However, for me personally, the changes proposed in this thread wouldn't fix the problems I have had in the past when trying to use 4E for a "gritty" playstyle because the elements the ideas are fixing arent what I see as broken (for a lack of better words) when trying to perform that style with D&D 4E.  That's not to say I believe they are bad ideas, but I'm not convinced they would make 4E feel "gritty."  Instead, my initial impression is that I'd be playing 4E with the difficulty setting turned up, and for some reason I'd be able to use encounter powers even less often than I can now... which presents problems of its own because I already have players who feel it's strange to only be able to trip or disarm someone once every 5 minutes.</blockquote>

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