Quote Originally Posted by 1337 b4k4 View Post
Should D&D be able to do epic fantasy? Absolutely. But it should not do so at the expense of all the other types of fantasy out there. If they're wise, WotC will have the tiers of fantasy laid out in the book as a cohesive rule set and have them symbol or color coded, such that those that want heroic fantasy would add or remove certain blocks, and those that want exploratory fantasy would add or remove others.
IMO, D&D's never done low fantasy very convincingly. You can do low-powered D&D in any edition (yes, including 4e), but not really low fantasy in the "you're a bunch of townspeople driven out to fend for yourself in the wilderness and get eaten by bears" variety. I've had much more luck on that count with WFRP2, which is specifically designed for it.

-O