I am one of those people who called D&D 4th a “roll playing” game.

I will (again, and gladly) concede the point that the people playing the game have a lot more to say about the amount of role playing than the game system.

Really, with any board game, card game, pen & paper RPG (even computer game if you are into modding), you as a player can modify the rules to your heart’s content. I do this regularly along with the others in my group when coming up with house rules to improve the playability and fun of the board and card games we try out.

In my opinion the next questions are: what kind of game do you want to play? And how much time are you willing to spend making modifications?

While I’m perfectly willing to take a board game’s pieces and change the rules a little to turn a broken game into a fun game, if a role playing game’s system is generally at odds with what I want to do I’ll probably go in search of a different game rather than put a lot of effort into retooling it. Role playing rule sets are typically far more complex than those for a stand-alone board or card game.

D&D has traditionally been in such a position, from my perspective. This is partly due to the game and partly due to the perception a majority of D&D players seem (in my experience) to bring to D&D, that it’s going to be a “dungeon crawl“, an unrealistic hack’n’slash; this also seems to be what many want, if WoW’s popularity is any indication (no offense to WoW players).

Rather than work against this perception to bring my preferred (deeper role playing) style to D&D players, I’ll opt for a different game, without the baggage, that accomplishes more of what I want off the shelf.