[morgonstjarnan]

I the issue here is that very many old-school D&D gamers have never really understood that to many newer gamers (read: those younger than 30) D&D is something of an inside joke.

It's old, crunchy, unbalanced, math-centric. It has math geeks spending decades finding the right combination of multi-classing, extra source-book classes, spells, buffs and the like to make the perfect build. On top of that, every character is dressed like a virtual Christmas Tree with Boots of Jumping Really High and a Burning Amulet of +43 Defense Stat. D&D as a role-playing game in the modern sense was pathetic. It was a board game with player made game pieces, but it couldn't admit it, and neither could the fans. So instead we were stuck with a nostalgic, broken, nightmare of a system that encouraged finding loop-holes.

D&D 4th has changed all that. It is modern, sleek, focused. It does what it wants to do amazingly (combat, exploration) and leaves the rest up to the DM.

This is fine by me. Planescape Torment was amazing not because I could multi-class with 57 different prestige classes like the horrible Neverwinter Nights 2. No, it was awesome because of the plot and mood and story and characters.

Now that the rulebook allows everyone to start off cool, easily get balanced (but great) powers, and function well as a team, not to mention makes everything a lot easier for the DM, I think all that extra time can and will be spent on making great stories instead of Christmas Tree Prestige builds that defined 3.X.

4th is turning Dungeons & Dragons back into a role-playing game.