A quick 5 songs off my play list (shuffle, hit skip 4 times) gave me:
Do what I say (Clawfinger) – about parental authority and child rebellion
Poor twisted me (Metallica)
Hellrider (Sabaton)
Hear me calling (Ace of base)
Have you ever (Offspring)

so er… motorcycles and angst. A riveting game of emo biker rage.

Maybe I need to think about this a bit more.

Also, I’m a huge fan of using songs in games. They tend to inform the game I want to run. I like this exercise though.

“It boils down to this: if you enjoy the act of playing with your group and the rules are an accessory, then you’ll love 4e. If you enjoy playing with the rules and your group is an accessory, then you’ll hate 4e.”

Where I diverge a little is I’m not entirely sure I agree that you should just let something work or even make it easy. Make it a common roll, sure, but not necessarily easy. If you just let them do something outlandish, the coolness factor is reduced by the ease of accomplishment and your other players may start focusing outside the lines instead of just occasionally looking for the creative solution. The latter is cool, the former devolves into silliness, ruins the storyline and suspension of disbelief and stops being fun. Keep in mind, I’m not disagreeing with your philosophy; I agree wholeheartedly. I just think that to be fun, the creative act needs to have a chance at failure, and to be memorable (a different goal), it should be downright challenging.

My limited experiences as a player in the early 1980s always involved DMs who knew every rule cold, but who were always willing to apply the rules to interesting proposed solutions. My own DM’ing experience in 1993 involved a homemade campaign and a whole lot of house rules, DM cheats and executive decisions designed to keep the game moving and keep it fun. The players didn’t care as long as I was consistent; we were having a blast, and that brings me back to my point: when you let your players TRY anything — without guarantee of success — you can come up with some truly memorable moments. For as comparatively little as I’ve played and DM’ed (the reason I spelled it out above), I still have certain crystal clear memories 17-28 years later. Memories of a paladin making a successful God Call by rolling 00 on his percentile dice seconds after the DM said, “roll me a double-ought and you’re successful” and followed by a flustered DM roleplaying an unexpected God Call on the fly (and rolling up a nice but appropriate magic item to hand over in the process). Or of a mage bouncing magic missiles off the shiny shield of a suit of armor in the corner of a passageway intersection in order to hit an orc who was not in his LOS — by rolling a natural 20. Or of a rogue choosing to silently climb the dungeon wall to sneak — not only past, but OVER — a party of waiting orcs in order to ambush them from behind — all dictated by skill check rolls against his climb and move silently skills. These things were primarily cool because there was a very strong element of chance involved in the execution of what was already a clever idea. The player had the idea, but the dice determined if fate would smile on them, and the fact that they still pulled it off in the face of difficult odds made the whole group simultaneously and instantaneously BELIEVE. Oddly, the act deepened our sense of immersion rather than ruining it.

So, I’m all for letting players explore the limits of your game world (even if it means bypassing encounters you planned for weeks); but I say make the accomplishment of unusual tactics appropriately challenging. If the idea is a bluff (the spellbook/mating ritual idea), then maybe it’s as simple as roleplaying it and making the guy actually convince you in character (maybe you cut him some slack for his CHA score). Maybe if he wants to knock out a retreating villain with a thrown hubcap, you just base it on his thrown weapon skill and throw in some small minuses for the unfamiliarity of the impromptu wep. If he wants to pull off a one-in-a-thousand shot, you go ahead and make it 1-in-20 odds in the framework of your game system to show that it’s difficult but doable. If it’s one-in-a-million, you break out the percentile dice; and if he wants to break the rules of your universe’s physics, you just say no. Or, better, you let him try it, and you narrate in your DM voice the description of it failing: “As you expend the last of your helium, the horse seems no closer to becoming airborne.”

Lots of scenic madness

Automatic rifles: Treat as better of SMG and Rifle at any given range, but may not fire full auto (recoil) and may not fire at Extreme range.

Bren, DP and BAR are LMG, not GPMG. This should balance reasonably well.

But tabletop roleplaying just doesn’t give you that oh-so-satisfying ‘broing!’ every time you jump up for a soda, tho…

But everything else is very solid advice, and the lack of preparation is probably pertinent to the bigger majority of GMs. Plus this whole article tickles me pink, as I’ve totally been playing Super Mario World on an emulator lately.