This list is silly because it's based on extremes as opposed to the excluded middle
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The misinterpretation is in assuming that your parameters describe all or event he majority of ways in which a DM empowered game is played or run
Well, if you are not going to post what a "DM-empowered" game looks like, I am stuck with trying to draw inferences.
It's not just about power level (though 4e has issues in this area as well "wizard with an uber Arcana skill and certain cantrips I'm looking at you", there's also story elements (Say as a DM my campaign world doesn't have psionics... but in 4e a psionicist is core and allowable if the player wants to play one, so...) this is, IMO, DM dis-empowerment regardless of whether psionics is overpowered or not.
this type of DM empowerment and owning of the campaign flies in the face of what many fans of 4e such as pemerton want unless I am mistaken.
As best I can tell, you are describing in these remarks one feature of a "DM-empowered" game, namely, GM control over introduction of story elements, and of mechanical elements of PC build. That was my first and fifth dot points.
"DM owning of the campaign" might also imply GM control over campaign storyline, which goes to my third dot point.
I've also seen players, when things turn against them, start to grumble and make snide remarks or question DM's about whether an encounter is "appropriate". In fact I will say I've seen this more often in 4e games than in 3.x games... of course I admit that's purely anecdotal evidence. A better question I think is why is this even coming up if a DM has the right to set the encounters at any level he wants?
This also seems to me to be a description, by you, of another feature of a "DM-empowered" game. It seems to correspond to my fouth dot point - namely, that if there are encounter-building guidelines, the GM is free to ignore them.
So it's not clear to me, at this stage, in what way my dot points involved misinterpretation. It would be clearer if you actually said a bit more about what constitutes a "DM-empowered" game, and what the role of the players is in such a game. For instance, what role do the players in such a game have in introducing story elements? In contributing mechanical elements, and/or adjudicating the mechanics? In setting goals for their PCs which, if they accomplish them, can earn metagame rewards like XP?
That last thing, in my view, has a long tradition in D&D. For instance, Gygax makes it completely clear in his PHB that players are expected to set treasure-recovery goals for their PCs, and his DMG makes it clear that they are entitled to metagame rewards - XP - for recovering treasure. Does this mean that Gygaxian D&D is "dis-empowering" of the GM?
[MENTION=336]we are talking about the DM having the authority to go outside of those boundaries and it being acceptable to players.
When has that
ever been acceptable in tournament play?
Back in my university days I ran a tournament scenario - it involved 20+ players with pregen PCs in a series of interlocking scenarion "zones". Each zone had its own GM; one of the GMs imposed his own judgement on the particular zone he was GMing, adding abilities to one of the NPCs (a lich) which were not in the encounter description I had prepared. As a result, those players who ended up in that zone had no chance of winning the tournament, as they could not escape from this GM's free-formed challenge. That's not "empowered DMing", that's just breaking the rules of the competition.