Other fairly recent, high-quality, professionally-produced, original fantasy RPGs?

[apoptosis]

Ah, so it’s the creator’s heartbreak due to a silly definition of success, not my heartbreak. Got it. (^_^)

See, I call it cleverly not re-inventing the wheel and staying focused on the area where you do have an idea to explore.

Well in the article on Fantasy Heartbreakers one of the criteria is that the designer did have a couple of really cool ideas that got buried in a D&D knock-off.

The guy who wrote it really liked many of the these cool ideas that were designed but that they were lost in the D&D cloning.

VS basing the game design around some of these cool ideas.

Having played fantasy RPGs for a really long time, i guess the essay kind of hit home for me.