It’s been my position for many years that while there are some good reasons to stick to tried-and-true D&D concepts and design philosophies, there’s also been 30 years worth of other systems derived to one extent or another from those same principles. Palladium and Rolemaster are two of the longest-lived titles that started out at least as D&D variants, and while both moved away from that starting point to different degrees, the fingerprints of D&D are still very evident on them. There are dozens of other examples.

I am in complete agreement with your position on D&D4; the new arrangement is very constraining, and although I’m sure there will be publishers who will make that work, my own goals are really incompatible with the new license. The 3.0/3.5 license was such that you could really dig into the nuts and bolts of the system and change it radically, while stil keeping it a recognizable take on D&D concepts. I’m not sure that’s possible anymore, although there’s still room for things like third-party modules and the like. On top of that, the new system is kind of precariously balanced in my opinion, such that it’s hard to modify without complete redesign of parts of the rules.

Complexity is a tricky subject. The overwhelming majority of serious commentators online (i. e. at places like RPGNet) will swear up and down that everybody hates complex rules and designers should always go as simple as possible. But I don’t share that opinion, and I think that over the history of the hobby, sales numbers and game longevity bear me out; if you look at the systems that have been around a long time or have been very popular, virtually all of them are at least somewhat complicated, and absolutely none are really simple, rules-light games.

Of course, it goes without saying that complexity for its own sake is pointless. If you have a complex rule, what is that complexity gaining you? Is is worth it? If not, a simple rule should replace it. For this reason, as a (still aspiring) designer, I’m not afraid of complexity, but I seek always to simplify things whenever possible.