No, the idea is that 4e basically imploded the brand, so they pushed some unfinished stuff out the door before the axe came down and suddenly and unexpectedly they discovered that the brand was printing money.
Rules aren't restrictive, because every rule is optional. A lack of guidance is WotC asking you to do their work for them.
I bet door-to-door salespeople would make way more money if they could just break into your homes, leave their junk on your table, and steal your credit card, and yet we don't let them do that.
It's because most of us have been abused by employers, teachers, and the system as a whole, and our only model for what an employer-employee relationship is is one where the employee has zero power and does what they're told. This, in turn, means most of us would be awful, toxic bosses, and that comes out whenever we, collectively, are the employer.
I remember when the bus drivers went on strike here, like a decade ago now, or more. The radio call-in shows were swamped with people complaining that they don't get any of the things the union was demanding. Rather than wondering why, or unionizing and striking to demand such things, they just kept telling the bus drivers to get fucked.
"Reviewers" need to understand that, unless they paid their own money, from a bog-standard store, on or after release day, they are not reviewers, they are hired spokespeople.
Canadian Raising -- which is what creates the sense in 'Muricans that we're saying aboot -- is actually weakest in the Atlantic region, and particularly with respect to Os. We strongly raise our Is and As, but not our Os. "Out and about" is more likely to be pronounced "oat in a boat" out here.
The phenomenon, more generally, occurs coast-to-coast, though, and originated in the 1800s.
Nowhere in Canada has anyone ever actually said "oot and aboot", though. Americans just have this tendency to hyper-fixate on the subtle difference between raised and unraised vowels, and see the raised vowels as very cutting. They'll go "ow-t and ab-ow-t", or put shingles on their "ruff", particularly in the south, and find the more closed-mouthed form of these vowels alien.
Retconing things to protect muh precious twists is not compelling, though, it's just base metagaming. The unwavering plot is the GM equivalent of the 8 page main character syndrome PC backstory. If I found out my GM was doing that, they wouldn't be my GM anymore.
Albertans talk about alienation as if any of us living outside of Toronto or Vancouver don't experience the same sense of "people only talk about Toronto and Vancouver".
Meanwhile, Albertans routinely shit on Atlantic Canada, behave as if BC is just Calgary's port, and complain bitterly and non-stop about the French.
The reasons why the wealthy like liberalisation matters, though. The reasom the wralthy want more wealth matters.
Money is power. The wealthy are competing to have the most power. Eventually, that turns to taking control of the state. So, the wealthy will back free trade and deregulation right up until they, personally, are in a position to attempt a coup. After that, regulation and trade barriers work for the particular rich folk who have taken control over the state.
Yeah, it happened quite some time ago now. I think the newsroom merger happened with the Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun, too, but I don't know for sure, so didn't mention it.
No, the idea is that 4e basically imploded the brand, so they pushed some unfinished stuff out the door before the axe came down and suddenly and unexpectedly they discovered that the brand was printing money.
Rules aren't restrictive, because every rule is optional. A lack of guidance is WotC asking you to do their work for them.