One thing I’ve enjoyed in my playing (and watching and reading) of various narrative-oriented games are the types of structures they provide to guide gameplay. My favorite realization of this may be Blades in the Dark, whether that takes the form of “hard” mechanics (stress, flashbacks, resistance, etc), “medium” rules (success with complications, things like tiers), or “soft” principles (encouraging the GM to invite players to paint scenes, for example). In that game, the way dice pools are assembled, complications narrated, and results resisted really do give a sense to the dice deciding or helping to decide where the narrative will go next, even after it explores paths that are ultimately not taken.
Your writing definitely speaks to the dissatisfaction I've experienced with a lot of the newer generation of story/narrative RPG systems I've been coming across lately. Designers of these more recent games seem to have an intense fixation of establishing a very specific experience that is really at odds with the joyful maxim of Apocalypse World: "play to find out what happens". I don't think this is necessarily a problem, games done in new styles presumably are just meeting some needs at the table that previously weren't met, and there's no one correct way for tabletop games to be run, etc., etc. but it definitely marks a departure of my interest if this is the direction these styles of games are going.
Your writing definitely speaks to the dissatisfaction I've experienced with a lot of the newer generation of story/narrative RPG systems I've been coming across lately. Designers of these more recent games seem to have an intense fixation of establishing a very specific experience that is really at odds with the joyful maxim of Apocalypse World: "play to find out what happens". I don't think this is necessarily a problem, games done in new styles presumably are just meeting some needs at the table that previously weren't met, and there's no one correct way for tabletop games to be run, etc., etc. but it definitely marks a departure of my interest if this is the direction these styles of games are going.