Great points! I think these new systems take away the fun in role playing. 3rd edition had some good points, but all in all, the bases was character power, not the whole experience. The game as we know it, became just hack and slash basically.
However, I don't think that we should bash them so totally. The idea of an FRPG is to have fun. I know from experience starting in ODnD and playing up to fourth edition. Although certain mechanics change, and maybe the way it is played also. Any player and dm could put any story into the game.
My major complaint about the sudden edition changes, lies more into the fact that when we wanted to give it a try and decided to stick to the newer edition was transferring everything we written from second to third edition.
Anyone that has done that, knows that it is freaken nightmare. Not only does character and monster elements change, but the story element has to change to reflect the additional powers to be believable. So, after months of writting, rewritting, proof reading, rewriting again, it just became grueling.
But in those months of cracking open third edition, we began to see somethings. Other than ability scores, armor class, saving throws, which were the major changes. the game reflected the kit system of the advanced era of DnD. So it wasn't as big of a leap as we all thought. 3.5 came along and upset some of it, but not much. It added to the 3rd edition genre of the game.
4th edition is the same i feel. If you take it away in layers, and break it down into its basic mechanics then you find startling simularities that could be found with all other additions.
Why modern DnD variant won't attract new players? The same reason why old edition gamers was not attracted to newer addition. The reason, you have these people so faithful to the older editions and so adamant in their hatred of the new concept that they alienate players from trying to play the newer ones.
From experience, my first DM, we shall call him the ogre. He was so faithful to 1e that when advanced had hit the shelf, he refused to have anything to do with it. Naturally, as a player. I wanted to see what the new addition had to offer, but because he didn't want nothing to do with it. It was something we didn't do in his presence. At the time, I didn't have the notion of DMing, and other than the ogre, we really had no other. Not to mention that most other groups we knew at the time, felt the same as he did. So we left it lie. We stuck with the old edition and it wasn't til a few years that we branched off to form our own group with out the aid of the ogre.
Basically it just boils down to older players hate it, newer players might find it intriguing, but because the older players hate it then the newer players feel somewhat reluctant to try it.
I know, I felt the same way from going to second edition to third edition. It took a while, but it was more out of look what I have already done, and not to mention the money it would take to build a collection books, that equaled my second edition library.
P.S. I had to leave this post unfinished. I hope edited it enough to not be so vague and simple, that is the way of somethings. As far as hack and slash, all DnD has been hack or slash...your preference. But the issues with 3 edition I had was the same as I had with the Players Option, that came out during the demise of 2nd edition. Characters just became too powerful, that every monster had to have ability scores assigned to it just to be challenging. Not to mention leveled to match that of the characters. One of the things I did like about third. 3rd edition was way more statistically simplified but it still left tons of numbers everywhere.
