BardStephenFox said:
Interesting! I haven't seen the same situation. Maybe it is more about my players. I sometimes wish they were a little more creative. I just figure that maybe I haven't been as good at communicating how open I am to their ideas.
Would you mind providing an example of how DnD3E crunch inhibits the players? I might disagree, but I am very curious to hear it! 
Simple examples (first ones that come to mind):
Skill Mastery and Take 10. This is a purely mechanical one, but by restricting Take 10 and, more importantly, by making unrestricted use a special nifty for the rogue, you've taken that option away. If i were the GM, everybody, at all times, could Take 10 on any roll. Period. This gives the players more control--they can go for the safe but mediocre result, or chance it on a die roll. The way it would probably play out for most groups i've been in, is some people would almost always Take 10, and some never would--just a matter of personality.
The numerous cool combat maneuvers that require a feat. [I'm inventing this particular one, but the general point stands even if this example doesn't.] Someone wants to swing from the chandelier to bypass the guards and drop on the lead badguy. However, there's a "Swashbuckling" feat that lets you execute a full-round move action and still attack in the same round, and this character doesn't have it. Now, if someone else spent a feat slot on being able to do this, it's not fair to them if you let the guy without the feat do it. If you let them do it at a modest penalty, the guy with the feat might still feel ripped off. If you insist on a hefty penalty, then nobody will do the cool stuff, except when they have the feat, and we're back to the "have to have the feat" situation.
In short, the more you define about what the characters *can* do, the more you implicitly define about what they *can't*. In purely mechanical areas (combat is the best example of this in D&D3E), this generally translates to missed options.
But this philosophy can affect the whole play of the game. Frex, the emphasis on mechanical balance means that you can't do a lot of stuff that would be mechanically unbalancing, even though it might not be a problem in actual play. Picking your crits, frex. I've played in and run games where the players can choose when their critical results happen (usually to a limited degree--only so many fate chips, or whatever--but not always). This doesn't necessarily result in more crits by the PCs. It just depends on concept.
Similarly, what a crit is is defined very strictly. What if the rules just said "on a critical hit, you get an extraordinary result" (much like botches are handled in Ars Magica, frex)? A creative player might use this to cut an opponent's belt, forcing him to hold his pants up or trip over them, rather than doing double damage. Can you do such things? Yes, but the power is in the GM's hands, because she gets to decide as soon as you go outside the rules. Shift the balance of power a bit in favor of the players, and *they* get to decide about such things, rather than the GM *or* the rules.
An example: in a D&D3E game i was playing a monk. 3rd level at the time, i think. We were fighting this big 2-headed demon-dog thing, and not having much luck. So i got the "bright" idea to try and inconvenience it a bit: i had an immovable rod, so the plan was to dive at it, reaching as far down its throat as i could, activate the immovable rod, and then leap back before it could take my arm off. Now, without Spring Attack, i'm pretty certain there's no way to do that in D&D3E. Luckily for me, the GM decided to go the player-empowerment route: it was a cool, in-character move, so he let me try. A few very difficult (but lucky) rolls later (i think he had me make two tumble checks and an attack roll, and risk an AoO or 2), and i had a very slimy, but intact, arm.
By the book, the crunch of D&D3E prevents that sort of stuff, because it's against the rules. And, in philosophy, it works against such player empowerment by having an attitude of "you can do what the rules say, no more".
I can probably come up with better examples, given some time to think about it, if you'd like.
). So I told them that if one of them would like to be the DM I would happily participate in their game.
