That's basically true, but I'm more interested in what the mechanics encourage themselves. I'm not solely interested in that (I think it's interesting they had stuff on wishlists, for example), but in regard to 4e, I think what the mechanics encourage (or don't fight against) is more interesting.
Well, there are a couple sides to this then. On the one hand (as I mention below), I think I consider some things "part of the rules" (and therefore "mechanics" in some sense of the term) which you do not. On the other hand, I do think that certain aspects of the mechanical design help in this regard. People frequently talk about how Wizards (=most full casters), in editions prior to 4e and
especially 3e and its derivatives, have " 'I win' buttons" and dramatically greater "agency" than other classes (=most everyone else). 4e did away with that,
hard; it's part of why some people (erroneously) say that Fighters are Wizards in 4e. They're not--they just (finally) have a parity of agency with Wizards and the rest (and they definitely don't shoot lightning out of their hindquarters). Though it wasn't common, there
were some people turned off to 4th edition SPECIFICALLY because Wizards were no longer objectively superior to other classes; I had a...rather frustrating argument with someone who dogmatically insisted that it was
bad design for Fighters and Wizards to have the same level of power in a fantasy game.
Getting to the actual mechanics of this, much of it boils down to all classes having Powers: declarative actions with specific effects, which the DM is obliged to adjudicate as written unless there is good reason to say otherwise, so long as any prerequisites are met (e.g. you can't use a Weapon Attack if your hands are tied behind your back and you're disarmed). Having these declarative powers--which intentionally, though implicitly, leave the fiction justification up for the player and DM to negotiate--means that every player has a certain (relatively small) amount of authorial participation, which is most obvious with Martial characters and their Daily powers (though even there, there are SOME real-world things which reflect this kind of physical phenomena WITHOUT player-based narrative control; I won't get into that because it's not really germane to the discussion.)
The expansion of declarative agency to all players is sometimes described as "depowering the DM," though I of course think this is a misnomer. The DM lost no power, unless relative power difference is all that matters, and even then, no 4e character ever becomes as powerful as a high-level 3e Wizard, who can break campaigns over her knee and construct worlds. What happened is that the game shifted; rather than being a "lecture-like" environment, it became a "recitation-like" environment. There's still one person clearly in authority, analogous to the professor (the DM). There's still a variable number of people (players::students) clearly there to get something the authority can provide (game::course content). The difference is that in a more lecture-like environment, control is more-or-less unilaterally exerted by the authority on the attendees; the authority alone decides what is done, and the attendees respond accordingly, either individually or in groups. In a more recitation-like environment, control is exerted
in part bilaterally; the attendees have some amount of "say" in what is discussed, can raise questions, debate with the authority or fellow attendees, etc. In neither case does the authority stop being the final arbiter nor stop deciding what will and won't fly; the situation remains a "dictatorship." However, in the recitation-like environment, the "dictator" is obliged to listen to the "populace," and the "populace" is given some amount of control over discussion and (in rare cases) policy.
I think this is interesting, because it's not a rule in any way, but I think that 4e would broadly be okay with it (just like if anyone could take any appropriately-leveled power from any class). But I do think there is a good amount of room for abuse here, for the moderate-to-hard optimizers.
Well, I suppose that depends on what you consider "a rule." It's a DM-side thing, to be sure, but I'd classify it as a "rule" just as much as I would "say 'yes and...' or 'yes but...' ". That is, it's very clearly a guideline for GM behavior, which I consider to be just as much a concern of the ruleset as guidelines for player behavior.
Oh, I use quests all the time. This is interesting. So you think it's okay for the GM to set these, over, say, the players?
I'm not precisely sure what you mean by "set these over the players." If you mean the DM fiat declaring "This is the thing your character wants," I'd probably not be very okay with that. The structure of 4e Quests, as I understood it, is inherently a dialogue between player and DM (again, don't have my books with me). As I understood it, 4e's Quests are not something "set on" the player, but rather dynamically determined as a function of what the player finds interesting and what the DM thinks is worth giving session time to.
They are very nearly the same (but not exactly the same) as Dungeon World's Bonds. Dungeon World intentionally formalizes them as part of character creation/progression, and keeps them to a certain kind of style and scope (that is, one-, or rarely two-, sentence statements about the relationship between the PC and some other entity--person, place, organization, object, etc., generally goal-directed or in some way understandable as "completed," "addressed," "abandoned," or "changed.") But the heart of the rule system is essentially the same.
