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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6657969" data-attributes="member: 82106">I pretty much agree with you, in many ways, but I think that Rob and James might have underestimated or just not understood the degree to which certain things needed to be established or explained, like [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s characterization of the levels of fantastic terrain as being PC-level scaled constructs with no definite DCs, vs generic setting components that could have a DC set to match the DM's idea of the fiction.Another area where WotC completely missed the boat was in terms of the whole tone of the game, which is clearly a vastly more suitable game to a 'fantasy supers' or at least 'fantasy action-adventure hero' tone vs the classic D&D procedural dungeon crawl's gritty low fantasy meat grinder tone. The adventures, at the very least the first 9, seem firmly rooted in roughly an AD&D 2e or even earlier mode, where there is very little dynamic action, loads of sequential series 'monster-in-a-box' type tactical challenges, and really no scope for the rollicking crazy stunt-filled Indiana-Jones-esque high adventure that 4e comes alive for. Even the later adventures, while many of them seem to be a lot looser are still really at their cores pretty traditional tactical situations.Now, I don't know if James and Rob would have pushed for a different style of adventure or not. I'm not familiar with their 13a Adventures either, though I did play a bit. So I am not really sure exactly what sort of action sequences they advocate, or if in fact even those 2 were in the '4e as action adventure system' boat. I continue to maintain that it was an overall lack of coherency of vision, WRT at least tone, that was 4e's most salient problem, and the clarity with which 5e approaches its '2e-esque' tone that sets it off by comparison. Whatever process WotC went through in 2007/2008 didn't yield consensus, instead it yielded a compromise game, as you've alluded to. The brief appearance and disappearance of Monte Cook on the 5e team takes on a great significance here. It would be easy to see it as a failure to achieve unified vision followed by an "it is better if you continue on your quest alone, Mike."</blockquote>

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