I started a thread at enworld.org.
Here’s what I said:
D&D was originally a game about exploration and resource management with combat elements (sort of a Tolkienian Oregon Trail game). It quickly developed elements of heroic narrative, due to the nature of the setting. Based on my understanding of the rules, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and now 5th Edition all attempt to maintain this tension between the “how many arrows the PC can recover post-battle” part of play versus the “hitting the Dragon in the heart with the PC’s last arrow” part, but the 4th Edition rules seemed to have abandoned (or made irrelevant) the resource management part of the game. The rules have sections on equipment, the effect of weight,on movement, and such, but the allowances are so large that they have little effect, RAW, in how the characters interact with the game world. This accounts, I think, for the complaint that 4e “didn’t feel like D&D”.
In other words, I don’t think it’s a “grittiness” factor, in itself, that is the source of the complaint. One can,pump up the danger of a 4e game quite easily. It is, rather, the idea that the characters can effectively ignore mundane matters like “do we want fried rat or fungus sandwiches for dinner?” and “Drat it all! We didn’t bring enough sacks, again. Get all the gold coins and as many of the silver ones as we can. Leave the copper coins. Do you have the map? Good, let’s get out of here.”
4e is still my favored edition.
Greymerry Faire 