Musings about running games and the stuff I like and dislike

For the last few days I've been thinking a lot about what kind of games and play I find myself enjoying, what kind of games I run currently as well as the crowd I am running those games for, and I caught myself in the thought of my running of games for people has been shifting from what it used to be when I started this whole gamemastering thing.

And it wasn't exactly a positive thought either, an analogue that lingered in my mind for a day or so as I felt it around and tried to fit it into words went along the lines of me having found myself running games more and more to meet player expectations and wants much akin to how one might try their best to seek out acceptance and lick up to others in high school, trying to do one's best to not offend or upset anyone over the fear of getting tossed out of the group.
A disgusting thought really, which has lead to me trying to air out and re-examine the way I run games at my table so that I could get that initial enjoyment of doing my own thing and shifting the games back towards the things I enjoy rather than trying to cater for people.
After all, I've got two groups that I've been running for for over a year and they claim to have enjoyed it since the beginning.

Another thing that's prompted looking at things a bit differently and re-examining what exactly I find so fun and interesting about roleplaying games is the sudden influx of 5e-minded players that my ongoing West Marches game has been getting.
There's just something about people gushing about what they can do within the confines of a rulebook and reciting me these super exciting rules interactions and spell comboes that has been steadily eating away at my interest even to the relatively rules-lite Lamentations of the Flame Princess that I run the game with.
It is the exact thing I ran away from 5e for, at least every other session I would play in one of the players would start going on and on about this cool build they are going for and how in two more levels they can do this stupid rules interaction to break this or that at which point I always have to wonder if the player even is interested in playing with the fiction presented in the game or if they are just playing with the rules and trying to break and bend them to the best of their ability by themself.
Kinda like playing solitaire when everyone else is trying to play poker, they make that game for themself about nothing but themself.

... I suppose this turned out as more of a rant that I intended, but airing out thoughts and grievances is good for oneself I've heard, or something along those lines

Because blogposts without pictures are boring - image manipulation by me

 The actual self-reflections and such

Yes, to keep this from just being a case of "old man yells at clouds" I should try to articulate some conclusions I had landed at based on these last few days of mulling over this stuff.

First and foremost, for me a rulebook is a fallback. What I mean with this is that I read the entirety of LotFP Rules & Magic book back when I first acquired it as I was getting into the OSR, but since then I've barely flipped through it other than for spell descriptions as I believe I've got the general logic and feel of what kind of rulings to lean towards.
The actual rules of a roleplaying game are the last thing I want to discuss about, especially when the fiction is unfolding at the table.

This hadn't come up in the context of OSR games before because I feel like a lot of people in this sub-genre of ttrpgs shares the same or at least similiar approach. The fiction dictates the play and what happens, not the rules.

On the flipside the more 5e-leaning players I've come to run games for confine themselves within the rules, anything not written in them isn't given a second thought and only things written in the rules can be done seems to be their approach to roleplaying games.

I also find that I tend to lean towards running what I had in one conversation likened to "walking simulator adjacent" games, games where combat is sparse and the pace of the game isn't exactly a fast one. The players are on the driver's seat and dictate when they want to move to a next scene or towards doing something rather than me pushing them along to hurry them up in order to keep the game going, which is something that the West Marches style rubs against in fact, as every session should be a self-contained oneshot so I often worry about trying to add atmosphere taking up too much of the play time.

This might be another contributing factor to why the West Marches games I run tend to feel to "hollow" to me, but it's also an issue that I don't know if I could start to address in the format of that specific game.

Another thing that I kind of touched in the above rant is the stuff that I myself find fun and interesting in roleplaying games.
Personally I am really in love with the idea of what I like to call "misery porn". People going through absolutely hellish situations, making sacrifices as they go and clinging to life with gritted teeth.

There are of course ways to convey this at a table, either with or without rules and procedures specifically for reinforcing or enforcing that kind of play, but the one issue I always have with is that I keep pulling my punches out of concern that the players won't like it or will feel it unfair or whatnot.
I want to inflict absolute misery on the player's characters, but I am afraid that will upset the players.

This is of course one of those "just talk with your players" thing, but even when I have done so it's still not managed to get me out of that high school mentality I mentioned earlier of wanting or needing to make sure I don't accidentally upset or offend anyone so I don't get stoned out of the room.