I found Mike Mearls' recent blog post interesting. In it, he introduced the concept of just giving the players the flavor text of powers and abilities, and keeping the mechanics of the powers behind the DM screen. So for a Fireball spell, a player might just have "Shoot a fireball that explodes on contact, damaging anyone caught in the blast." But behind the DM screen, you'd have the range, radius, and damage.
It was meant to be a concept for 4th edition games played without minis, but I think it could be applied to any edition, with or without minis. I sort of like the concept, but I think it'd be too much work for the DM, except for the simplest of games, like OD&D. But in OD&D, the powers are pretty much flavor based anyways.
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I like this idea, too. And since, way back when, we were playing OD&D without minis (that's a double whammy: OD&D spell-effect vagueness plus lack of a tactical grid) this kind of thinking is pretty much required already.
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