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<blockquote data-quote="Michael Morris" data-source="post: 4056637" data-attributes="member: 87">&quot;Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence&quot; - Napoleon Bonaparte.The 3e design team had one major advantage over the 4e one - they had a guy that had been there since near to the game's beginning - Skip Williams. Now this is a guess - but I'm thinking Skip helped keep Monte and Bruce in check with some of the wilder changes that were proposed and dismissed (and now lost to the mists of time).4e is all new faces. There is no old guard at all on the design team - the oldest face among them only stretches back to right around the acquisition of TSR by WotC. The leads are all new. The previews have shown us the result of that approach, an edition without any respect whatsoever for what has come before it.Yes, 3e broke backwards compatibility - rules wise. But, for the most part, fluff was unchanged. Look at FR late 2e to 3e - except for Bane's reappearance there was hardly a bump - fluff wise it was a smooth transition.&nbsp; Greyhawk came back into the core in real force for the first time since 1e, again as a reassurance.&nbsp; The rules where new, but the setting familiar.&nbsp; There's a reason for this - and the WotC D&amp;D team doesn't have to look to me for an explanation as to why doing it this way is a good idea. They need only go up to whatever floor Magic is dev'ed on and talk to Mark Rosewater.<a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr267" target="_blank">Original Article</a>This blurb shines a light on the one thing that makes me the most uneasy about 4e.&nbsp; Change the rules? Fine, 3e did that, but it stuck to a mostly familiar setting. Change the setting? Ok, 2e did that, but it didn't change the rules all that much from 1e (even today 1e and 2e books are used pretty much interchangably ruleswise).&nbsp; Change both at the same time!?&nbsp;&nbsp; This is an extraordinarily bad idea. I don't know if it will doom 4e, it likely won't, but it is very off-putting.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Michael Morris, post: 4056637, member: 87"] [i]"Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence" - Napoleon Bonaparte.[/i] The 3e design team had one major advantage over the 4e one - they had a guy that had been there since near to the game's beginning - Skip Williams. Now this is a guess - but I'm thinking Skip helped keep Monte and Bruce in check with some of the wilder changes that were proposed and dismissed (and now lost to the mists of time). 4e is all new faces. There is no old guard at all on the design team - the oldest face among them only stretches back to right around the acquisition of TSR by WotC. The leads are all new. The previews have shown us the result of that approach, an edition without any respect whatsoever for what has come before it. Yes, 3e broke backwards compatibility - rules wise. But, for the most part, fluff was unchanged. Look at FR late 2e to 3e - except for Bane's reappearance there was hardly a bump - fluff wise it was a smooth transition. Greyhawk came back into the core in real force for the first time since 1e, again as a reassurance. The rules where new, but the setting familiar. There's a reason for this - and the WotC D&D team doesn't have to look to me for an explanation as to why doing it this way is a good idea. They need only go up to whatever floor Magic is dev'ed on and talk to Mark Rosewater. [url=http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr267]Original Article[/url] This blurb shines a light on the one thing that makes me the most uneasy about 4e. Change the rules? Fine, 3e did that, but it stuck to a mostly familiar setting. Change the setting? Ok, 2e did that, but it didn't change the rules all that much from 1e (even today 1e and 2e books are used pretty much interchangably ruleswise). Change both at the same time!? This is an extraordinarily bad idea. I don't know if it will doom 4e, it likely won't, but it is very off-putting. [/QUOTE]

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