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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5367700" data-attributes="member: 59082">What the OP describes is one of the main reasons I play 4E over 3E/Pathfinder: it is just easier to DM, pure and simple (OK, at least for me). That said, I totally get the OSR but I just prefer the streamlined 3-4E core mechanic and many of the rules options. However, I find the vast amount of options to be a bit tedious, both the hundred-odd 3.x books and the clunky Character Builder. There are just too many feats, and the difference in powers tend to be difficult to discern at face value and end up seeming all the same, but then in game play they can have vastly different effects. This is where rules mastery has (unfortunately) crept into 4E. But I digress.I'm dabbling with a power-less, feat-less version of 4E. This, to me, is the "holy grail" of D&D: combining the best of the old school (simplicity and freeform gaming) with the best of the new school (modular options and streamlined mechanic). Both 3E and 4E are, at heart, simple games, but they end up being overly complicated because of all the exceptions and minor variations. Complex can be good, but complicated is just confusing.I also find that "Old School" is more a matter of how one plays whatever version of D&D they play rather than what version of D&D they play. To me "Old School" has a lot to do with using the rules as guidelines rather than as writtten in stone. This is not to say that rules lawyering is a new phenomena--it is more a tempermental thing, I think, than anything else--but that emphasis with 3E especially changed from "DM as storyteller/judge/final authority" to "DM as moderator/opponent/one shmuck at the table among many." This might have mroe to do with the younger generation of players that started with 3E than it did with the game itself; not to sound like an old fogey, but the post-1980 generation has a stronger sense of instant gratification and entitlement than older, pre-computer-born-and-raised generations. But this is another topic...</blockquote>

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