Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Gripes (Redux)
Recently Mike Mearls did a retrospective on why D&D 4th Edition failed. It's been over a decade since I played and ran 4th Edition ("4E") D&D, but the question of what was wrong with it still keeps coming up on occasion, and my answers to the issue are spread across various places on the internet. So this is a more unified list of my complaints, or those I can sympathize with, that have been made over the years. I'm sure there's something to the casual participants vs. tactical combat optimizers issue Mike is mentioning. But the communities I was involved with at the time were what would eventually become the "Old School Revival/Renaissance", and folks there weren't particularly concerned with either of these things (though casual participants would have been more comfortable there than optimizers). First, to be clear: I think for some people, 4th Edition was exactly the sort of game they were interested in. It did try to "balance...