Tyler,
just my $.02 in an area where I'm certainly not an expert: your vision is singularly yours. If what you capture needs to be processed to be more "real" than you might get through Roman's processing, HDR or tone-mapping, then that's fine. Although I must admit that the look that Roman gets from his own images has a vibrance and a vitality that I both like and don't think is "overprocessed".

When I use Photomatix to enhance some of my images, I tend to use it sparingly. Same with HDR. I use it to bring up more shadow detail but most of my images look very non-HDR-ish. However, there are those few images that I push pretty hard because what I saw beyond the image that I captured had more life in it: more color, deeper and more complex shadows, highlights where you can actually see some detail. I don't process all my images that way but for some, it matches my brain's vision.

There is no single right answer nor are there any wrong answers. It's your vision. You just have to have the tools to make the image match it.

Jim