yeah I feel like that is the minimum I am okay with.

like if a player just wants to roll dice but does not want to be involved in the story itself at all I don’t know why they would be playing a role-playing game.

knowing what they’re trying to get out of the situation or at least how they are sort of going about it is the bare minimum.

I will say though that makes it less fun for me personally. I am just more into the heavier character focused stories and if there is no role-play involved it just feels like basically playing a board game.

I like board games but that’s not why I play TTRPGs.

I don’t know exactly where I fall on this spectrum.

on the one hand obviously you want to be encouraging to your players and create an environment where everyone is having fun.

on the other hand if I wanted to play a game solely based on its mechanics I would play something else. the R in TTRPG is there for a reason.

some of my favorite moments in games I’ve run have been when players improvise something in character and completely derail.

I don’t think I’ve ever run a game where we didn’t have more fun when players act like they are their character rather than act like they are controlling their character.

to be fair though I moved away from 5e and Pathfinder and other crunchy games for that reason, I just have a lot more fun with games that are less heavy on the rules and more involved on the story were telling together.

so could just very well be my gaming groups preference that leads to that experience rather than not.

I really love pbta games but I would agree with you that they are not rule light so much as “rule lighter than d&d”

there’s lots of one page systems out there that are truly rules light.

that said once you know the rules I would say that it provides a system that is easy to plan for, it’s easy to play in, and it flows very naturally.

I ran dungeon world and monster of the week campaigns for years, playing probably 3 to 4 hours once a week on average most of that time.

I think I did maybe 2 hours a month of prep? something about like that.

I loved how pbta games would allow me to basically spend all of my prep time coming up with cool ideas and not having to worry too much about the mechanics because I either had a framework too accomplish them already or I could just make it up on the spot.

some of my group’s favorite moments in our campaign have come from me just making things up on the spot and them being able to react to it.

when I used to DM for d&d or Pathfinder those kind of moments would take hours of prep work.

I would say the obsession is more people finding something that has freed them from the heavy rule set rather than something that is truly rules light.

I got to have an intro session but then never play deadlands. I need my weird West fix!