Define how you are using "drama" please. The idea that drama and exploration are mutually exclusive seems... a pretty narrow view of drama, and I don't want to be talking past each other here.
The alternative is that anything is drama. If "exploring" is a dramatic need, then so is "fighting" and "resting" and pretty much anything else.
No, a dramatic need is something much deeper. The need to be the best explorer ever is a dramatic need, or the need to be the best fighter ever is a dramatic need. These involve exploration or fighting, but are not satisfied by just that -- instead it's deeper and more meaningful.
"I have exploring, and it's dramatic" speaks to a need that's not the characters -- the drama here belongs to the player, not the character.
Stop trying to cast my discussion as such, please and thank you, as your mind-reading abilities to tell what I am trying to do are... very bad. Really. Just awful.
Roll eyes. Trying to foreclose a line whereby it seems I'm claiming protagonism is a need isn't trying to read your mind. You trying to assume that's what I was doing is as bad. Quite often you're quick to accuse others of behavior you engage in, although you have some pretty nice top cover to avoid being called on it.
I think of it as setting myself up for success. There's a bazillion dramatic needs I, the player, could set my character up for that would be enjoyable for me. If it is six of one, half a dozen of the other to me, why not choose the ones that will be less work for the GM? Do I, the player, have to be willfully difficult for it to be protagonism?
What are you even talking about? Being willfully difficult? This is only a concept if the game is about what the GM says it's about, and you the player have to adapt to it. If the GM is setting themes and conditions, then the game's not really about your PCs, even if you bend to this and make a PC that's about the GM's game.
Where I come from, "dramatic needs" includes pacing and dramatic beats - these are major parts of how drama is expressed. If that drama is supposed to be focused on the character, it needs to land in a time and way that is appropriate for the character, doesn't it?
Sorry, then, that there's a disconnect in your understanding due to your place of origin. Pacing and dramatic beats are not about dramatic needs -- these are very different things. Pacing and dramatic beats are about how the GM is presenting story, not what story is being presented. Dramatic needs are about what the story is about.
So, again, your ability to read minds is not serving you well, as I am not of that school in the slightest.
Are you sure? Many of your arguments, including the one immediately above about picking character goals that align with the GM's game being contrasted by being "difficult." If you intend something else, I'm all ears - and it would be a boon to conversation if you actually explained instead of just pouting. I thought you often caution people about engaging in discussion to just win points? What else is this about?