Mastery of the Rules

Monte Cook's essay on Ivory Tower Game Design illustrated to me why I do not generally like D&D and other games that reward players for achieving mastery of the rules. I want characters to be driven by concept and conflict (internal and external). My reward should be roleplaying an interesting, nuanced character, not a better designed character.

What I find especially annoying about this concept of mastering the rules, especially as it applies to character creation (and Mr. Cook specifically talks about feat selection) are random ability scores and hit points. On one hand, they want to reward good (min/maxing) players, but on the other hand, they reward lucky ones. And if you are both lucky and good, then you are that much ahead of the other players.

I was reminded of this mastery of the rules concept when I was reading some posts about the new edition of Exalted. Here is a game I really would like to like. It looks really cool. How puerile of me, but there it is. But any discussion of the rules make my eyes roll back and my brain turn off. Whatever interest I had in the cool setting and concept completely evaporates in light of the rules. Oh well.

Given all the special powers and such that are the trademark of Exalted or Weapon of the Gods, I would think Hero Games could do something very similar to either of these. Maybe they just need to find the time. Maybe the target audience is off. Would anyone who likes games like Exalted or WotG want something similar using the Hero system?