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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 4350523" data-attributes="member: 62992">Oh; another thread descends into a morass of edition wars again! How surprising (NOT). Also, if some people are wondering why other people get annoyed when phrases like "grognard", "fantasy heart-breaker" etc get tossed about, it is probably because they are an insulting way of saying "oh; that old idea. We are so sophisticated we have heard all this before".  If you have; fine, don't post. To actually ANSWER the OP; A game that beats the pants off of D&D is clearly possible, but the company that launched it would have to already have considerable resources, so it is not something an RPG start-up is going to do; it has to come from someone established and possibly in the "left field" much like WoTC themselves were. I believe it will happen one-day and that the RPG industry will be all the better for having 2 massive companies instead of one. It might stop the complacency in WoTC for a start; I completely agree with all who have stated that 4e is no where near as polished as I would have expected.  Ironically, such a game would have to take up the ground that D&D has ceded; the generic fantasy system that can be used to play ANY type of Fantasy game without serious modification/house-ruling. I would argue that 4E actually steps away from this most basic of D&D's former design goals and is now a game about very powerful, potentially non-human PCs, in a very high magic setting. It is a great game; it just cannot now be used to emulate many important and enduring fantasy troupes; like the farm-boy cum hero story-arc, though additional material may plug this gap. Yet D&D was never truely generic; it always had a certain flavour that I found turned me off of early editions. What would I like to see in such a D&D competitor; 1) It must be generic enough that all types of fantasy can be played using it, including low or no magic games, possibly including historical games. 2) It must have a very powerful and streamlined system that is simple enough to be very usable by the DM but powerful enough to be interesting to the players.  3) Equal "rules share" should be paid to combat and non-combat game elements, to include social interactions and use of non-combat related abilities, yet these sections should also be able to be completely disregarded by those who just want to play like Hong. 4) Roleplaying should actually be mechanically rewarded for once; I would like to see rewards for PCs who generate stories for themselves and then complete these stories and also for fixing the PCs into the setting and to pre-existing relationships with other PCs. 5) I would like to see more reference to and understanding of real-world weapon combat. There are TONS of really cool moves and combat styles found in historical sources that no RPG has ever tapped into. 6) The reason for mentioning the real world alot in this is that I think RPGs might become more main-stream if they could be used to teach history or maths or other subjects in schools. This might be the marketing angle I would adopt if I were producing such a system. 7) I would also like to see more information for Dungeon masters about economics, trade, and historical references as aids to world building. Sure; some people would ignore this, but there is a danger the rest of us might actually learn something. 8) The generic game would also do well to develop several well fleshed out worlds; a low magic, gritty realistic setting; a high-magic, more D&D type setting and something more original and then have a cosmology that allows people to jump between them (like in Feist's books). 9) The game must be heavily supported; as well as WoTC do D&D. 10) Magic and other elements must be made, mechanically and in terms of feel, to be mystical and unpredictable, not like a branch of science. Are all the above achieveable; I think so, but it makes such a game highly unlikely and so it might be some time before such a product emerges.</blockquote>

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