my initial thought here is Yes! Mechanics can get in the way of any type of play at times. You illustrate this well I think.
To me that’s an argument to get rid of those particular mechanical barriers when you want narrative play. But that doesn’t need to mean completely changing all mechanics. At least the case for needing that isn’t immediately apparent. DM empowerment over whether to invoke a rule or make a new one on the spot seems to get you there as well.
The GM deciding when to invoke rules or abandon them or whatever is, in my opinion based on my experience, not a good fit with player-driven play. For instance, if the GM is at liberty to suspend the rules, then instead of
the rules bringing unexpected results, driving home the consequences of failed protagonism, etc, it just becomes the GM making a decision to hose or not hose the player. Which isn't much fun for either participant, in myexperience.
When it comes to "completely changing all mechanics" I don't know what you have in mind. 4e D&D, for instance, doesn't completely change all of AD&D's mechanics. It doubles down on some of them and changes others.
Burning Wheel doesn't completely change all of RQ or RM's mechanics. If you're a RM or RQ player, and you look at a BW PC sheet, you're going to recognise the significance of the long list of skills, the derived attributes, etc. You'll quickly work out that spell tax is like PP or POW depletion.
But there are key elements of BW that differ from RQ and RM, and that make it better suited for narrativist play. As I've already posted in this thread, I doubt very much I'll ever GM RM again, having found a game better suited for my purposes.
Going down a separate line of thought, it’s easy for me to see how some games have more rules that get in the way more often. Which to me implies some games will allow for more narrative play in the mix. But my intuition says all the elements are present to some degree in all playstyles. Like mandates that moves follow from the fiction is advice applicable to both narrativist and simulationist games.
@clearstream mentioned earlier about particular mixtures and that seems very applicable to your position then, but you also were very anti-spectrum then and it’s hard to see how we don’t end up with a spectrum of narrative play following my 1 and 2 above when coupled with your points about certain mechanics getting in the way.
I honestly don't know what the spectrum is that you (and
@clearstream?) are trying to articulate.
I mean, either the session of play addresses premise, or it doesn't. Either the way scenes are framed, and resolved, generates theme, or it doesn't. Either there is rising action across a moral line - driven by fit characters and apt antagonism - or there isn't.
I’m not as big on map and key play. You talk a lot about it and I can’t say my play is completely devoid of it, but it’s certainly not the main feature of my play. You focus on it alot in describing differences and maybe that’s part of our communication problem.
Well the goal of my posts is not to characterise your play. That's up to you.
But it seems to my implausible to deny that map-and-key play is not a big thing. I mean, I have
CoC modules that are full of maps and keys - what the heck is that about, other than being a massive marker of the enduring cultural footprint of D&D's map-and-key approach across the whole hobby.
Another enduring thing, related to map-and-key, is that play should start "at the edge of the map" or "at the entrance to the mapped place" - that is to say, that play should being in a low- or no-stakes situation, so that the players' first move is to enter the "gameboad" and thereby being the process of enlivening scenes.
This is why any discussion of starting in media res gets labelled as railroading by many people, even if the "res" of the scene are things that the GM has directly taken from the players' cues. For instance, I've often posted - as an example of narrativist play - my first session of Burning Wheel: one of the PCs had a Relationship with his balrog-possessed brother, and had a Belief that he would find a magic item to help end that possession, and I opened play with that PC in a bazaar in Hardby with a peddler offering to sell him an angel feather.
Multiple posters have told me that that was an inappropriate way to start, and that the session should have started at the gates to the city, so that the player has the choice to go to the bazaar or not. That criticism makes no sense at all unless one takes as a premise that play should begin at the edge of the map with nothing at stake. Which is to say, the criticism both reflects the cultural legacy of map-and-key play,
and is directly at odds with the goals of narrativist play.