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I loved Oregon Trail, so comparing RPG play to it doesn't dissuade me. And boring is of course relative. Lots of folks enjoy a planning session in live play, and once you're on the expedition it's just a matter of using exploration rules that work for you. I'm fond of those in Level Up, The One...

Which is why planning your route and supplies is so important, to make up for the stuff you can plan for, like blizzards and ice devils.

Trek has plenty of stuff in the narrative layer, no doubt. But not the examples you gave. Those are scientific, natural phenomenon within that universe. Noted exceptions to the reality we know, like magic. Nothing like that is true of characters with plot armor. Lara Croft isn't inherently...

My issue here though is that all those things you mentioned for Trek are considered scientific facts (and in fact are such) in universe. The principles of reality allow for those things, and the people in setting know it. That isn't necessarily true for something like Lara Croft. Instead, it's...

I love STA (mostly because I love Star Trek), but for me it is a specific departure from the type of gaming I usually enjoy, with all its narrative mechanics and character focus. Running it (which I haven't done yet but is my plan) is an explicit move outside my comfort zone.

Spider-Man vs. Batman is an excellent comparison, and IMO characters like Spider-Man area big reason behind Marvel's early popularity. I wouldn't want to play a superhero game in a setting where Batman-style personalities (ie, paragons of something or other) are the norm.

Whereas I want my fiction to resemble reality unless there's an in-setting reason it doesn't.

It depends on the game and the players. My personal preference is definitely for a more grounded game, where the PCs may be "special" by virtue of their actions, but themselves fall within the normal range of their species (albeit likely higher in that spectrum in some areas). If I want...

Worlds Without Number (very different system than D&D IMO), or The One Ring if that's too close for you. Maybe GURPS.

Ah. As usual, my concerns are much more about how to make it make logical sense within the setting. I feel "drama" should be a byproduct of good roleplay from all sides and should have minimal mechanical involvement in traditionally-styled games.

The Darkening of Mirkwood is one of the best published campaigns I've ever seen, right up there with the Great Pendragon Campaign. So glad I still have all my TOR 1e books!

That still begs the question of who is paying for it, and how. And if the PCs are in any way associated with a polity, how do they feel about it? You can ignore these questions, but IMO the setting will suffer for it.

Historically adventuring involved quite a lot of it, to the point that the exploitation of lands, resources, and people was the major motivation behind the Age of Exploration, so it's hard to ignore it and still have your world make sense. You have to come up with an alternative reason why and...

In most games IME, they really don't. Fallout looks like a great game. Picked it up not too long ago.

Hey, at least it's not a surprise, and generally it's a result of your own choices. And "spreadsheet exercise" is an uncharitable way to describe logistics in play IMO.

My answer to that is to work subsystems around the abstract nature of hit points that allows for things that should result from life and death situations (like injury) to actually happen.

I feel that Level Up and the Without Number games handle all those things well enough to have a fun campaign. They do it differently, but it all still works. I'm sure if you want a more narrative experience there are games that lean that way that do it too.

Depends on the players. There is a place for character death in RPGs, and it doesn't have to be "when the player feels they've told their story well enough". Sometimes bad stuff happens.

Level Up is a wonderful system. I'm currently using it to run a during-and-post-apocalypse game (using some rules from Voidrunner's Codex) and the exploration rules are a major part of play.

To be fair, plenty of adventurers as we understand them also fall into those categories.