I’m not sure if you’re telling me what I wrote was helpful or…something else?
Oh, it was helpful. My apologies for being unclear, no hidden meaning or snark intended.
Regardless though, the nature of GM’s prep (amount and type) and their employment of that prep is going to be quite different (leading to a very divergent play experience for both players and GMs) in the above configurations, right?
Maybe.
There seems to be an assumption that preparation for a game / setting is necessarily onerous. Also, that the play experiences are necessarily divergent. I don't think it needs to be. Now, it may be unusual that the players at my game can make whatever character they want and have full permission to "break" the world I have created. There have been many changes over the years, and they can "see behind the curtain" enough that they can author changes which then unfold. A delight we share is when current players encounter aspects that were authored by players past.
I mean, is it "setting tourism" if you encounter something authored by someone else than the DM?
I think the assertion here is that a declaration of a belief, say in Burning Wheel, is a proposition, not an assertion of fact about the character. If I were to say put forward the belief "I am loyal to the king" and then I'm also an officer of the kingdom, owing a duty to the kingdom as a whole, how loyal am I to the man on the throne? More loyal than I am responsible to my office?
I think this is an excellent question to play through, and really doesn't matter what system you're playing in. It is easier when there is a formal means of contesting ideals, certainly. In Burning Wheel the player certainly has 3-6 specific things that are to be directly challenged, where in other systems the player may not be expecting to be challenged over what is little more than "color". Again, communication is key, especially so that it isn't unexpected.
Sometimes people play paladins so they have a fighter+, not because they want to be an ethical chew-toy. Sometimes they do. It depends.
Part of the reason I acquired Burning Wheel, and will eventually acquire Apocalypse World, is to see what the magic is that you, pemerton,
et al., are talking about. My games are larger affairs, 6-8 players on average, and we seem to have a blend of map-and-key and narrative styles. Some of my players aren't really interested in more narrative aspects, some are. Things that I see in narrative story hours I have experienced in my own game. I didn't design for it, but it seems to be an emergent property. Anyway, I'm reading these other games to learn about some mechanics that might otherwise improve the game I am currently running.
That was probably all over the place. Distracted.