D&D 4E Palladium's philosophy for D&D 4e? Pros and cons

[jdrakeh]

Okay, but the era when RPG rules were poorly explained and poorly documented was around 30 years ago.

EXACTLY. Which was my point. Palladium has production values analogous to the original 1974 D&D box set. Which was great in 1974. Today, it takes a bit more than pasting a book together with glue sticks in your garage to impress people. Even the individuals who publish through Lulu (e.g., everybody at IPR) put a great deal more effort into editing and presentation than Palladium manages to. When the college student who is publishing his homebrewed RPG via a vanity press outlet like Lulu looks more professional than an established industry giant, there's a problem.

 

[jdrakeh]

Minor nit, the PHB is 98% of the way towards being a standalone complete system.

98% isn't 100%. You'd still need to add monsters or NPC classes, rules for experience adjudication, balancing encounters, and magic items from the DMG for the PHB to be a 100% complete, standalone, game.

 

[Melan]

Maybe because lots of us got sick of the lack of rules and abusive DM's?

Player "I want to jump the pit"
DM "Uhh... whats your worst save? Yeah, roll that.... oh, you rolled a 20? You went too far and fell in the next pit"

Antagonistic DM's are afraid of published rules. No wonder the grognards hate having anything written down, since it slightly hampers the "screw the players on the fly" feel of 1E.

That sort of immature antagonism is something typically found in immature individuals. Not discounting your poor personal experiences, I would not play with these people in a more codified game, or in fact any game. If a basic level of trust and maturity is missing, any social association is pointless and potentially frustrating. OTOH, where both players and DMs understand the concepts of fairness and mutual respect, there is no need to make the rules "foolproof" to limit their abuse. (Of course, people may still prefer "hard rules" for entirely different and valid reasons.)

But you are attacking - and you have been attacking in several threads - games because immature people did immature things with them when they were immature.