I am just endlessly amused by the comments people have about D&D 4e in the Player Handbook reviews on Amazon.

• Now that it is here and I have had a chance to peruse the books for myself I have one feeling about them. Utter disgust. This takes the legacy of D&D and spits on it's grave.
• If a system like 3.5 is to complex for you then take up trading card games because they are about at the same level as this drivel.
• IT IS TWINK GAMING.
• I'm so sad. AND NOTICE!!! THERE ARE ALREADY USED BOOKS AVAILABLE!! THAT SHOULD TELL YOU SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• The biggest part of the game is tactically positioning yourself and your enemies. You hit them, get to shift one square and slide them 4 squares. It's just about planning our where people end up. Where's the imagination in that?
• This edition of D&D is nothing but a MMORPG/Video game simulation for the table top with none of the benefits and all of the work.
• Having been a player since 1979 I refuse to accept this as the game I fell in love with so long ago. It is like waking up in bed next to a stranger.
• This game is terrible. I wonder if the game designers even liked D&D when they made this pile of dung?
• I can't adequately express my disappointment with the new edition rules. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?! In many ways, it is unrecognizable from previous editions, and rather than a logical evolution (can you say ver 3.75?), it has devolved into something I can no longer associate with the game Gygax invented.
• I bought it and played it a few times. It's not D&D, more like supers in a fantasy setting.
• This is titled Betrayal because that is what WOTC have done to those people that supported this game for the last 35 years. I'm not happy. The only thing I can think that will make me happy is to see everyone responsible for this dribble to be tied up naked and smeared with fire ants.
• I have seen every incarnation of the game, and this is the worst ever. From what I can tell this is a poorly executed attempt to lure new players from the very successful online gaming communities.
• I miss the nights of our rule lawyer DM and the insane amount of details in our campaings, which will no longer will be the case for me or anyone else for that matter because of the damage this edition has caused. 4th edition has basically reduced the game to a watered-down user freindly "lazy mans" table top battle game ala Hero Clicks of even simply checkers.
• Why not re-color the Mona Lisa with big bright crayons?
• I've been playing D&D for a long time and this is the worst, most horribly butchered edition of the game I have ever seen. Thank god Gary Gigax is no longer alive to see what they did to his creation.
• [I]s like playing a boardgame, it forced you to use miniatures, when i set up a game with this my players freak out! they where screming what the hell is this thing, this is not our beloved dnd it just another rpg with the same name.
• The advantage of D&D and the D20 game system in general is that everybody knows it. There's no huge learning curve needed to just start playing the game. Every previous edition of D&D has understood this basic strength. Fourth Edition, plain and simple, is not D&D, and is not the D20 system. It's an entirely new game.
• I don't like what I've seen and read because I don't feel like I can tell a good story with this rules set.
• I can't believe this, but this game has actually managed to depress me!!
• I guess we've 'returned to our roots'... so why do I feel like we climbed back into the primordial ooze?!
• Worst D&D version ever. It is but a shell of what D&D once was and is now the shattered remnants of something that was grand. Rest in peace D&D. Quite possibly the worst rpg I have ever played.
• Now my friend bought the book cause I refuse to buy it..and thank God I didn't. I saw it, I read it and was the WORSE game rules creation put together.
• I prefer to have my eyes taped opened and force to see Sex and the City then roleplay 4.0 once more.
• To continue the WoW references, 4th edition made me want to /wrists. The skill system is beyond simplistic. +5, or take a feat. /vomit.
•  If you've ever played D&D before, stay away from this edition! I didn't like a single change that they made to the game.
• This game is cheese and stupidly rolled up in a videogame style burrito and served with an extra portion of combat, hold the role-playing.
• 4th edition is all about POWER. PCs are bassically gods!!!
• Gone is the incredible detail of characters that is the trademark of DND and in place is now AT WILL POWERS...or more simply...DND for Dummies.

(I hasten to point out that the current review scores are almost evenly bimodal (as Margie classifies it), i.e., there are lots of folks giving it 1 star, and just as many giving it 5. I'm only cherry-picking the bad comments because they're ... well, so funny.)

There's actually some interesting analysis in quite a few of the reviews (both pro and con). But the vitriol of some of the posts -- generally the really short ones -- is as breathtaking as it is wildly misguided (I haven't seen anything in 4e that makes it any less suited to role-playing than 3 or 3.5 ... and, in fact, hear of some indications to the contrary).

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This was my favorite: "I don’t like what I’ve seen and read because I don’t feel like I can tell a good story with this rules set."

I'd like to reach through the internets and remind this moron that the only reason ANY game system exists is as a framework to hang stories on. Otherwise it's just "Pew pew, I got you!" like our childhood days playing cops and robbers . . .which always devolves into a fight and thus . .rules . . *sigh*

The irony being that D&D, as a system, is really pretty crappy at supporting RP/storytelling outside of combat. You can do it (and obviously most people do), but there's nothing in the system that actually does much to encourage or reward it. That's certainly true for 3.x, and I suspect for 4 as well.

What I find also fascinating is the "Eek! It's all about miniatures and battle maps!" That's pretty much the only way I've ever played D&D (of whatever level). I mean, movement and attacks of opportunity and range and all that were key components of 3.x, too; I think 4 is just doing a lot more showing of that sort of thing in the rules than poeple are used to. You can as easily (or with as much difficulty) do "combat in your head" with 4 as with 3.

Yeah, every DnD game I have played since the first Box Version had minis, you needed them for tacticals of the battles.

If I said that hardliners of both AD&D and religion deal with change about the same way - would I be way off base?

Nope, you would not Mary but any fundy of any system is a bad thing. :)

"It is a mockery to the sacred institution of role-playing games!"

Yeah ...

Don't they realize that the genesis of D&D was tabletop wargaming? If anything, this is a return to what the game was meant to be originally (for good or ill).

"No! You're lying! That's not possible! D&D sprung full-grown from Gary Gygax's head complete with Monks, Half-Orcs, and Feats!"

Seen this article? http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2008/06/alttext_0618/

Asks the question, "What if gamers reviewed cookbooks like they review D&D4?"

Might have seen it here... or Boing Boing. I don't remember now.