Crimson Longinus
Legend
I would tend to respond that "gameability" is always a paramount consideration. Over the almost 5 decades of running FRPGs I produced a pretty heavily explored and explicated 'place'. But every single step of that was necessarily shaped and constrained by the needs of play. I'm pretty familiar with a lot of the classic RPG settings. I cannot think of a single case where the fundamental tenet was not "a place in which the chosen type of agenda can be pursued." Its unlikely that a world built without regard to those considerations would really provide that much value as a tool for play, would it?
I am not really disagreeing, but I'm not quite sure how this follows from what I said either. You were talking about setting as vehicle for a story the author wants to tell, and I said I tried to avoid an overarching story. I.e. the intended play is more sand boxy and less Big Main Plot.