He has a d20 and a GM screen
I'm not sure what you mean. It sounded like he was pretty frustrated, at one point, but he has amply described his own extensive experience of such play.
There could be 3 paths to the introduction of such fiction. It could be part of the setting, like in BitD the Bluecoats are canonically a faction. It could be GM prep, AW allows the GM to create threats, but their introduction into a scene requires some degree of telegraphing, or at least that they initially appear as a soft move by the GM. Finally a player might describe something in answer to a question, or as part of character background at the start of a campaign.
Correct. There is only a little bit of agency, but it is there. The player gets to decide the number and the result will have meaning, even if he doesn't know the meaning at the time.
To me they're both just luck. That being said, @pemerton brought up a critical point. We have to understand how all of this fits into the goals of play. In general we can't really say much. I think we would all agree that saving throws in classic D&D are not instances of player agency. That doesn't make them bad or useless. Dungeon World has a "gates of death" move. The player simply throws the dice, 6- is curtains. It's pretty much a save, and serves the same purpose.
In 5e, paralyzed is the closest thing to being tied down. Attack rolls would have advantage against you and since the attacker is within 5 feet, it would automatically be a critical.
Yeah, I admit to wanting to give it a pass, given that I've played it pretty much since the start of the hobby. OTOH other 'toolbox' systems always strike me as bland and rather dull for largely the same reason. I guess D&D is kind of rescued by its quirky genre as well. Like a lot of people play it specifically to experience that. This is not a strong premise, but it does work, obviously, for many. I've just come to want something beyond that.
For me this aspect of D&D is its strength. It has both broad appeal, making it easy to get players for and it can be many different things. I can use it to run a sandbox, dungeon crawls, mysteries, paths, epic adventures, city adventures, etc. it is easy to adjust to a groups preferences (at least I find it so). Another aspect of it is the core components basic set up work. Something about sitting down with a PHB, DMG and MM to flesh out an adventure/dungeon/map/etc just always feels approachable and smooth for me as a GM. I don’t get as much opportunity to play it though these days
