In search of my "Forever Game"

I like to believe that most TTRPGers have a similar desire or wish to find their "Forever Game". I know that I do, even realizing by now that it's probably an exercise in futility.

What's the "Forever Game"? 

It's an utopic, most likely non-existent, ideal RPG, that you can play forever and be content. It doesn't have to be perfect for everyone, nor does it have to be perfect in every regard or aspect; it just needs to be perfect for you (and, ideally, for everyone involved in your game).

In my case, that means many things, but even these constraints change over time. I'll try to enumerate what are the things my "Forever Game" should comply with (as of August 2022 lol):

• It must support different settings or genres. My mind gets distracted very quickly with "the next shiny thing", being a new setting or a genre I want to try as an RPG campaign or one-shot. Having to learn a new system (and then teach it to my players) just adds a lot of friction to my ideal RPG utopia.
• It must be rules-light, or at least not have too much rules-crunch. Not that me (or the players) won't get accustomed to heavy crunch over time (specially if this is the Forever Game), but I've been leaning more and more into the narrative end of the spectrum of RPG systems in the last decade, and going back to something very simulationist makes me tired even before beginning to think about it.
• Its core mechanics must be elegant, or universal. And adaptable to all possible situations. Think action resolution in Fate Core. Or the unified d20 roll from the most popular iterations of the d20 system. I need to be able to learn it, explain it and improvise with it (that is, create content or sub-mechanics on the fly), and a universal and well-designed core mechanic is a must for this to work.
• It must allow from low to zero prep before each session. This is the nirvana of the lazy GM. And right now, even though I dedicate lots of time to this hobby, I still don't have time (or don't want to dedicate much of my free time) to do heavy-prep in games with big stat-blocks or that require set-piece encounter builds. I also like to improvise a big percentage of my GMing sessions, so prepping too much just won't work for me. My ideal game should accommodate the practice of GMing a session, closing all my notes until the next one, and start GMing right away, without no prep in-between. Even if, in practice, I end up prepping stuff anyway (but the right stuff!).
• It must be engaging for the players as well, at least from a mechanics viewpoint. It must give them meaningful mechanical choices. It must help them interact with the fiction in a non-obtrusive way... but not intrude a 100% of the time (I still want my players to think diegetically, mostly fiction-first, whenever possible). Specific mechanics must be present to guide them into roleplaying the tropes of the genre and their archetypes (think PbtA playbooks and their flavorful options) while also giving them freedom to interpret their own visions (think Fate Core absolute openness).
• It must facilitate delegation of "GM-powers". With this I mean sharing the burden of creativity during the gaming session... and letting the players surprise the GM or throw them a curve-ball every now and then. Again I think of Fate or PbtA, which really embrace this ethos. I guess this can be achieved in any RPG system if you really want to, but some of them encourage or facilitate this more than others from its mechanics and procedures.
• It must be hackable, or adaptable, in a not too hard or time-consuming way. Even though I love the PbtA school-of-thought and consider it one of the biggest advances in "RPG system tech and philosophy" in the history of TTRPGs, doing an adaptation of a specific setting or genre to PbtA takes lots of time and work. Say you want to do Star Wars as a PbtA RPG (and let's say it hasn't been attempted many, many times). Just the fact that you need to come up with the many typical archetypes and convert them into Playbooks, and then design and balance them between each other, creating interesting Moves for each... It's just too much work, specially if your objective is to play with your friends and not publish a product to be used by lots of people. There are examples of other systems that allow you to adapt a specific IP (or the feel and themes of it) without having to actually write A BOOK from which a big percentage you won't probably need in your one-shot or short campaign. My ideal RPG should allow to kickstart a new setting or world with little to no work, maybe with just a page of ideas or adapted mechanics (like skill lists and such). I'm thinking of FKR games here, like 2400.
• It must embrace improvisational techniques. I can't improvise a combat encounter in D&D4E from the top of my head (which is why I don't usually run games like it). I would need stat-block(s) from the Monster Manual, references for all the spells and powers on the NPC side, notes for the possible challenges and set-pieces that I should've prepped beforehand, etc. Nowadays, I (almost) don't check on the rulebook of any RPG while I'm GMing. That's just not how I like to run an RPG. My low-prep notes are mostly diegetic (albeit in an omnipresent voice), in-fiction, and system-agnostic. An ideal RPG system must let me improvise scenes or encounters on the fly, while still being mechanically challenging for me and the players. Formulaic generation (of stat-blocks, quick NPCs, spontaneous challenges, etc.) is probably the way to go here.
• It must feel like a game, as well. I'm not doing freeform theatrical improvisation, and neither are my players. We still want to feel like we are playing a game, in which there is random chance (improved by your choices while channeling your character's strengths) and in which you might win or lose (that is, fail-state scenarios, or hard but beatable challenges). This means that the concept of "system mastery" matters to me. Maybe not in the sense that you must become an expert in all possible builds, engage in char-op or that you have to become a rules-lawyer that memorizes lots of 500-hundred-page tomes. Don't get me wrong, we love creating engaging stories that we can recall and retell in the future, of course. And the cinephile in me loves to feel like we are creating a well-written narrative with all the good beats. But during the moment, we also like to be playing an actual game.
• It must have enough material (or tools to create content) without having to resort 100% on your creative juices. Here I'm talking about adventure generators, procedural scenarios, all sorts of random tables, monster builders, treasure lists, etc. I'm thinking of the OSR movement and its love for random tables and procedural generators. I've tried games that lack these and that just means that I either have to prep them beforehand, or that I have to improvise them on the spot. Both are consuming: either time-consuming (which I talked about against, above in the low-prep section) or brain-consuming (which gets tiring after a few hours of play and often leads to burnout). This goes hand-in-hand with the character creation process: It must give the players enough fuel to let them create a cool character without demanding all of the creative work on their part (Again I think of PbtA Playbooks and their lists of choices, instead of blank-slate style sheets).

Rereading this list makes me realize what I've been thinking for many years now: The ideal RPG doesn't exist. It will change depending on your mood, your tastes, the moment of your life, your desire to play more "wargamy" or more "loosely narratively" at any given day, etc. And it also has to accommodate the tastes of each and everyone of your players.

So, is this an exercise in futility, after all?

Well, yes and no. 

Yes, because the concept of a Forever Game is, in itself, kind of a lie I tell to myself. Do I have a Forever Movie? a "you are marooned on an island, what's the only book you take to read until you die" example? fuck no, I can't even finish a book that I want to start another one. So this won't ever work for RPGs either.

But putting this into words lets me be more thoughtful when I analyze thoroughly each new RPG I read and think about running. Does it comply with my exquisite tastes? 

And it also informs my design when I want to create a new RPG of my own. Will I ever achieve that? I don't know. 

But I can aim for perfection.

"and what did you find, dad?" "me? illumination."