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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 4809556" data-attributes="member: 467">I think this is an over simplification and undermines the importance of the system in a given game.  While I think it is possible to play an "old school" style game in any edition of D&D, the farther you remove yourself from those "old school" rules the more difficult it becomes. 3E, for example, allowed  for "old school" play primarily at low levels because of its lethality (and retained it for the same reason throughout, though to a lesser degree). However, the increased power of the PCs made maintaining the "old school" feel more difficult, even at mid levels, and the focus on skills and feats (that is, mechanical character attributes rather than player interaction with the scenario) makes some aspects of old school play more difficult -- particularly with respect to traps and the like (though I recall a few arguments related to "caster levels" and such for enemies, as well).In my relatively limited experience with 4E, these problems are mostly exacerbated. Characters, even at low levels, are less fragile, "powers" and skills/skill challenges undermine player-based engagement (at least as it relates to "old school" play; opbviously, using the system is still engagement by the players) and the ubiquity of "level appropriateness' all make old school much more difficult to do with 4E. While this doesn't in any way diminish 4E as a well designed game, it does make it difficult to continue to play the game as one might have played it in the new edition.In the end, I think rules (or the lack of them) are important enough that people should choose games based on how theyw ant to play them, rather than attempt to shoe-horn a game into a style of play it wasn't really designed for. This isn't always plausible, of course (I am currently running a 3.5 game I had originally envisioned and desired to run as either AD&D or BECMI D&D, but the vote pushed it to 3.5 for familiarity) but in a perfect world, the right tool for the job may not always be the only tool, but it is the best tool.</blockquote>

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