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Wow...sorry I showed up after the thread became undergarment focused.

My opinions and scattered thoughts:

In some ways I wish that there was no GSL, and that D&D4E was completely closed...then there would be no temptation/stress about what you could do, and creative people like Clark would just create their own stuff (perhaps even under good old copyright law).

I've been playing 3.x since it came out, and my own experience is this...this ruleset has allowed me almost infinite variety in terms of characters I can generate, and near infinite variety in terms of what I could do beyond that in terms of new classes to branch into, prestige classes, etc.....in 1st edition I played a half-elven cleric/magic-user about six times....weird thing...I and my group have more STORIES and MEMORIES about the wild differences and personalities and activities of those characters than we have for any of our 3.x folk. Part of it might be confounded with age/responsibilities - we play less so maybe we ourselves put less into it...but to me I think that a great deal of the rules complexity in terms of feats, combat options, etc has actually allowed you to create 'stat individuality', and allowed us to get away with less thought into the actual character individuality. For me, 4th edition simplifies the execution of that stat complexity and choice complexity, but doesn't get us anywhere closer to the character individuality.

There's just, for me, something about a bare-bones rules system that puts the onus on the player to differentiate their characters. When 4E came out, I bought KotS, and I read a copy of each of the core books. I read the heated forums, and participated at times....and the weird end result for me was that the more I compared and contrasted this new upstart with my beloved 3.x, the more people explained to me all the horrible bits of 3.x, the more I learned about 4e...the more I actually tended to move away from both.

The 4E vs 3.x battle made me nostalgic for 1e, or on alternate days made me want to try yet another system. So I've got True20 books now, but I'm also pulling out the old Efreet-covered and sloe-gin-stained (don't ask...teens, D&D, and alcohol do not mix) DMs guide.

Clark - I don't care if it's based upon, divergent from, or completely separate from 4e - - if you create a rules system that is smooth, elegant, but manages to drive the creativity back to the players for what for me is the '1st Edition Feel', then I'll buy anything you create for it.

One question: If you create it as an 'offshoot' of 4E, won't it be strongly tied to the GSL? I ask because I am starting to revise/update/publish thirty years of my own campaigns and adventures, and I'm betting that (GSL changes dependent) I won't be able to support anything you create for exactly the same reasons that you are having trouble supporting 4e.

An anecdote re: D&D and Drinking & Junior High...not only did Sloe Gin (which we mixed with Faygo red pop...oh to be young again) get spilled on my DMG, but my friend Todd decided to jump onto a chair and use that to spring into the air to demonstrate his character's bar brawl move. The demonstration was not strictly accurate, due to the fact that the small house we were playing in had enormous wooden beams crossing wall-to-wall...his forehead struck the beam, and while I'm sure it was a trick of the alchohol and hilarity of the situation, it certainly seemed as if he hung in midair for a full minute, forehead stuck to the beam, before he fell to the floor, clutching his head. We would have asked if he was okay if we could have taken a breath through the laughter. In high school we officially added the third 'D' of 'Drinking', making it D&D&D...then eventually added a long parade of new D's....dungeons are a gateway drug, apparently.

I have sold off tons of old gaming books, but still have ALL my original D&D stuff, from the old boxed set through 1e/2e/3.x...only missing 4th edition - well, not really MISSING 4th edition, but I don't have it.

As an experiment I'm tempted to run a few sessions of 1st edition, to see if it really is the rules or the way we've aged that has caused the issue. But it does seem like players try to do more wild stuff when fewer wild things are fully codified.

I'm just still really torn on what system to use, and which system is financially viable to publish (most likely NOT the same answer)