Question: is it possible for this sort of meta-level discussion to never happen, and if so, how?
I ask because while some players might be the safety net, others often carry metaphorical knives with specific intent of cutting through said net. I speak of players - and there's a whole lot of 'em out there - whose main or even only goal in play is to "beat the game"; and who would quickly find ways to exploit meta-level discussions like these to game the game, as it were, and in so doing stumble on to (and with open arms embrace!) the Czege principle.
Can I share a secret with you? I feared this very thing when I first thought I might try Dungeon World. "Oh my gosh. How in the world do you keep a cap on the players just inserting 'I win!!!' buttons into every scene?"
And this was playing with three powergamers in my group. One a mild-but-proven powergamer, one a mostly-hardcore, one an ultra hardcore.
And you know what happened?
Exactly none of these fears came to fruition.
We sat down as a group. I provided what I hoped was a thoughtful, reasonable explanation of what Dungeon World might look like, how it plays differently from "classic" or "traditional" RPGs, and that we as a group were going to collectively have more input into scenes, and not just from the GM side, and that we as a group needed to find a new way of playing that we hadn't tried before.
To be honest, I didn't GM Dungeon World well at all. I totally did it wrong. But even with my mistakes, the group largely embraced what we were trying to do and didn't push back against it and try to break it. It's amazing how adaptable players become when you offer them something, and tell them the reason you're offering it, and describe to them how to get the most from the offering in a way that serves the greater balance of play.
Later, when I finally figured out how to run Ironsworn and how to engage the group using the narrative dice in FFG Star Wars, then everything came together and became
incredible in play. And the group recognized---with occasional bumps, admittedly, but with a good attitude and a sense of fun---how a more character-focused, collaborative gameplay style can come together.
It's amazing how well the group self-managed and self-reflected on what was fun, and what expected outcomes should be. Multiple, multiple times, more than I can count, it was the other players that offered suggestions on how to limit certain actions and outcomes in a way that was fair and fun, and didn't strain the credibility of the fiction.
The other time when the players-as-safety-net idea fails is when the players simply aren't proactive enough. There's a lot of these out there as well, and while it's possible to get some to become more proactive it sure don't work on all of 'em. These players will at best react when they have to and at worst will happily do nothing other than watch as the story unfolds.
And unless the intent is to trim the potential player base by a lot, maybe to near zero in some communities, story now has to be able to seamlessly integrate and deal with these approaches to play; and further, do so without overtly trying to change who-what these players inherently are, as that never ends well. So, how can this be done? Or do you think it's even possible?
You want to know another secret? Players aren't proactive in "trad" because they're rarely given reason to be. Anything they throw out as "proactive" is either shot down immediately by the GM because it "Doesn't fit in the campaign I'm running," or it gets shelved for "later, when we're in Bingdongnabbington, because that's where the suggestion fits in the story." Only the GM doesn't tell the player that getting to Bingdongnabbington is 6-12+ months of real time play away, because "Sim priorities, man. You can't break the sim!"
Or even if neither of the first two cases is true, there's a residual "trad" GM mindset that you just can't give the players nice things. Because if you just give the players nice things, they then go off and try to break the game. Or ask for more nice things and just become a pain in the a** about it. And what GM could possibly be expected to deal with such things? Players should accept the table scraps they're given and be happy about it.
