Sorry if I confused you
In reading the book, it seems a like a lot of it would neccesitate using minis. Most of the examples that they use have gridded maps and minis(actually circles with pictures in them). I'm not sure if that's the absolute case, but it is the reason why my ex-group is playing third ed (They're primarily 40k players mostly, so they've got the cash to blow on minis).
Oh, and as far as another system keeping in the spirit of D&D, there's a system called Imagine RPG, which has an amazing system that can be used in the D&D world.*
I'm the kind of player that doesn't like to dwell on absolute details (like exact distances and ranges), and just go by whim(especially when I GM). I've tried using minis, but it only leads to further confusion, especially when doing mass combat. Example:
That rifts group I was talking about were essentially a team of Xictic hunters. The first real combat they were in was rather large, 50+ enemies (group of 7). It was slow as mollassas, mostly with moving the minis and confusion over ranges and whatever. Later, before we stopped playing, I had a similar sized combat, but this time without minis. Instead of it taking a majority of the evening to play out, we were done with it within an hour or so.
I'm not sure if a fight between four adventurers and a couple of trolls would take as long, but I hope you see my point. It takes forever to use minitures, and takes away from the whole 'in your mind' aspect of rpgs. Of course, some people prefer minis, because they can visualize things better.
Melkor:I can see why you think that way, but most point based systems allow for runts too. Take for instance, the wide range of types in Shadowrun.
Player A builds a cybered street samurai. Player B builds a sneaky face character. Player C builds a quadrapalegic, albino, dwarf rigger. Player D builds a strong willed, weak bodied cat shaman. Player E builds a well-rounded ex-cop with a criminal record and a SIN. 5 distinctly different characters, which by the way, is only the beginning.
Same goes for Torg, White Wolf Games (especially true of Werewolf and Mage), and many other point-based systems.
It's not really equality per se. It's more play balance. Which situation would you rather have?
A:Lucky group with two superpowerful starting characters, hacking through anything that comes their way. Or conversely, an unlucky group that gets slaughtered any time they meet up with anything over 2-hit dice.
B: A Well-balanced group that is challenged by just about everything.
I'll hedge my bets and take B anyday.
*-BTW, I love some of the D&D worlds (Forgotten Realms, Planescape), I just have seen better rule systems out there(and Rifts is definatly *not* one of them).