And you act like adding subsystems is a Herculean task in this age. When we had to trudge through and toil on dice in some obscure Dragon magazine chart? Yeah, it could suck. But plenty of the randomization in generator subsystems can be handled out of hand. Flaming Sword? Again, this is your game, but personally I just looked for similar creatures and came prepared with their specific weaknesses in comparison.
Well, 4e ALMOST literally has no charts that you would roll on. It is just entirely dead simple, everything is always consistently a d20 and a +1 pretty much means the same thing the world round, you can roll a skill or ability against a defense or a DC, etc and you have things like page 42 where stuff 'just works' (actually its damage chart is one of the very few charts you will ever us in play).
The point is it is just easier, and that's better. I can just say "oh, vulnerable 5 fire" and not have to worry about "is this an avian sort of creature kind of similar to the ones in the DMG", and there need be no debates with players on the subject. I don't think AD&D is at all unplayable, but it can be and has been improved on, that's all.
If you choose to add an item to the game, expect to have a way to deal with its abuse. It sounds like, for your 40 years of gaming, that you don't have these preparations in place when dealing with new loot or player options. That's fine... But don't blame an edition for that case. 4e may be simple for you as it provides nice, small to moderate bonuses for 'rule of cool' sort of actions. For some of us (like me) that's great in certain games but doesn't work with all of our groups. For others? It is just terrible.
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not concerned about abuse. I'm concerned about 1) Ease of play and 2) Players being able to know exactly what the things they acquire/tactics they use/etc will do for results. This is especially useful when the game grants PCs specific things like powers. It is again simply about having better features in 4e than in AD&D. Players know what their PCs can do because it is fairly well understood in the rules, and it is easy to play, and easy to modify the rules and extend them. Quick, tell me, in 1e is it better to use a 1d8 for surprise or get a +1 to your surprise die? This kind of question barely arises in 4e.
I can't speak for what you find terrible or great. I'm not out to tell anyone what to do, but there's very little doubt that many features of 4e have made the game much simpler to run and play. If people really don't want to play it that's up to them, though frankly I find people are much less picky at the table than in these hypothetical debates.
I've run at least one group a year weekly/biweekly for two decades. Probably have enough DMing time to qualify for benefits. I don't find the appeal to the elders or appeal to authority based on time spent in a hobby to really work here.
Slainte,
-Loonook.
I wasn't in any way attempting to claim some sort of superiority of experience or understanding, that wasn't the point. The point was just to say that after GMing for a LONG time you do get an understanding of the issues and you can see what are better approaches to things. Handling crazy things players do is pretty routine, and 4e has the most robust system for that, hands down. It is easy and fast and gets out of the way when you want it to. Again, its up to you what you like and there are many factors in what you want to play besides certain rules features.
