Upthread, there was a discussion about the use of Fronts in Apocalypse World, and also a discussion about "stakes" and player-determined priorities, and also a discussion about structures of play.
By chance, there is a new thread on these boards -
D&D General - Tell Me About Your Favorite Use of a Dragon In D&D - that bears directly upon these discussions, and that illustrates some features of one sort of approach to RPGing
There is a post in that thread in which the players get sent on a quest - comparable to the wererat quest from the 3E DMG - to kill some kobolds and a wyrmling. And then, at the end of it all, the NPC quest giver reveals themself to be a shape-changed silver dragon. So,
in retrospect, a certain meaning is given to what the PCs did. Determined entirely by the GM. Within this approach to play, the big reveal could just as easily have been that the quest-giver was a shape-changed (polymorphed) erinyes or pit fiend, eliminating an enemy in the LE hierarchy.
There is another series of posts in that thread making the case that the threat posed by a dragon is predominantly a function of how the GM frames the encounter, and that a "naturalistic" treatment of the threat - eg the GM having a dragon flee (by flight) and then return at an opportune time (ie when the PCs are vulnerable) - can easily hose the PCs and, thereby, the players.
In the context of those discussions in these threads, those are illustrations of the
GM exercising significant, perhaps overwhelming, control over the content and direction of play. One point of departures from that sort of structure - framing structure and resolution structure - is to have something different in RPGing.