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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.

A little simulation could help with that. I know I feel more immersed when logistics matter in my games.

This is true. A lot of gamers IME who are familiar with modern D&D are assuming special forces action missions and need to be informed otherwise if that's not what you want to run.

All the Without Number games do great work with survival rules. The newest, Ashes Without Number, is particularly impressive in that respect IMO.

Plenty of games are good for this. Just not modern D&D.

That's my goal nearly all the time. I want exploration and discovery, with a healthy dollop of diplomacy and politics, and the occasional life and death struggle, not special forces action assignments. My favorite "adventure" format is the hexcrawl. Trade and commerce would be nice too

Man, that was a cool game!

That is a laugh of joy,to be clear.