My Own Fifth Edition

[Remathilis]

You know, Mr. Philmont, all considered-- it becomes clear to me that you have never actually played a roleplaying game. You seem to be willing to pour an enormous about of effort and work into ultimately proving that you have never actually played one and have no idea what makes one good or enjoyable. Basically, your entire aim seems to be to take Dungeons & Dragons and violently violate it while strangling every last breath of life from it.

I'm not going to defend Philmont here, but to be fair his concept has its origin in Old School Play.

0-Level to hero play is something bantered around among some older players to create a "zero to hero" feel; Goodman Games has used it in Dungeon Crawl Classics (as a option) and it dates back to unofficial D&D play from even when I can remember. 3d6 for attributes is older than dirt. And (again, not reading close) I got the impression you didn't play the same adventure 12 times, but a group of players dragged in an army of n00bs and then used the starter to "weed out" the bad ones Darwin style; so 12 PCs enter a dungeon as 0-level hacks and 5 leave as 1st level PCs ready to go adventure.

Its very a very old-school method rooted in the idea that PCs aren't characters in some sweeping novel, but toons to be played until they die, and then a new one (or three) is rolled to try again. Problem is, that style of D&D was always niche and was officially ignored around the time adventures like Dragonlance and Ravenloft became popular.

So I won't say he hates D&D, but he comes from an old school style of play, and completely anathema to many later players. Not wrong per se, but definitely not what D&D has become.