See, I've had a kick ass time with DitV as well, and I (as GM) did go into it thematically. The players enjoyed it too, before any smartass tries to claim otherwise.
But... here's the key. Like Uncle Ronny says, the theme needn't be obvious. Players don't give two shits about "what lengths they go" to save the town. Hell, Bakers says as much in the rules of the game. The GM isn't there to hold hands, or talk about how everyone feels now that the town crisis is resolved. The GM doesn't judge. If the players want to introspect over who they killed along the way, then they can explore that. If the players want to just get the job done and NOT consider it, then they're free to do that too.
Now, I'm just defending Dogs, because I think it's a great game. Other thespy, Forgite games, I don't know about. I've avoided My Life With Master because I have no interest in the way it plays, and it looks like it plays like crap.
To be fair,
My Life With Master is much closer to the "classroom exercises" I've been talking about than
Dogs In the Vineyard is. It is, as you point out, entirely possible to play Dogs in a manner which entirely ignores the relevant theme. However:
a) Uncle Ron says that the theme
shouldn't be inherent in the situation, not that it
needn't be inherent.
b) Uncle Ron defines theme as follows:
Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from the in-game events.
What to ye and me is a strength of
Dogs - that it can be played perfectly enjoyably while ignoring theme entirely, or making the theme wholly optional - is actually a
failing if you look at it from the point of view of a hardcore Narrativist, since Narrativism (as defined by Ron Edwards - and if we take Ron out of the picture, what's left of Narrativism?) is specifically about exploration of theme as a play group.
My Life With Master, conversely, is (in theory) the ideal Narrativist game, since you pretty much have to address the central theme.
Hence the fundamental difference in approach between Forge-inspired indie Narrativist games and traditional games. The thing about "Let's Pretend", and the traditional games which provide "Let's Pretend" with structure, is that Let's Pretend, at the end of the day,
means jack shit. It's a fun game you play until the bell goes and you have to go back to class, at which point it's shunted to the back of your mind (or you sneakily keep playing in class and get in trouble when the teacher notices).
Conversely, classroom exercises are meant to be meaningful, in the same way that Narrativist games are meant to be meaningful: you're supposed to come away having explored a theme and come to some sort of new understanding about the issue, even if it's just an insight into how you or your friends think about the matter.
Here is where I have a problem with the Forge's approach. I think "Let's Pretend" benefits immensely from having a system - for me, system
does matter.
Which system is used is really a matter of taste (so the
choice of system doesn't matter that much, so long as everyone's cool with the system picked), what
does matter is that
a system is used in the first place. Systems provide structure, and structure is vitally important if you want to play an actual game as opposed to running around shouting "Bang! You're dead!"
I don't think classroom exercises, or philosophical debates, or discussion of "issues" between friends are helped by attaching game systems to them. Yes, rules of debate or the terms of a classroom exercise can impose a structure on the discussion and make it more likely that useful insights will be reached. But that's not the sort of thing Narrativist games provide - those games concentrate mainly on providing systems where people compete for authorial control (often, but not always, with the GM having authorial control most of the time). In other words, it's like a philosophical debate where you have to make a successful dice roll before you stand up and make your point, and where (in those games where there's a GM) one participant has vastly more power to frame the debate than everyone else.
With that in mind, it's no surprise that a lot of people (including a bunch of folk who are convinced they are playing in the "Narrativist" style but haven't actually read Ron's confusing definition of what that is) take these games and just play them as if they were traditional games, and have a blast. It's like a class where the kids are assigned the balloon debate, and so they decide amongst themselves that they will save the balloon by landing it in a swamp (guaranteeing a soft landing) and then they're exploring a jungle to try and get home and OH NO A TIGER and so on: yes, they're having a blast, but it's not what the teacher (game designer) was hoping they'd do.
EDIT TO ADD: I think that Forge-produced games are less likely to provide satisfying "Let's Pretend" experiences than games where the designers took a "Let's Pretend" approach to things, simply because they often simply don't support that approach to play.
Dogs does, but that's almost by accident - it borrows sufficient elements from traditional games that it can be played like them.
My Life With Master doesn't.
EDITED ONCE MORE TO ADD: Oh, and that brings me back to the title of the thread. I don't like Narrativist games, because I'm happy to junk the systems they provide entirely and just chat about some idea with my friends. Conversely, I love traditional RPGs, because they allow me to enjoy "Let's Pretend" again; I couldn't go back and just play "Let's Pretend" without any system, because that sort of unstructured play simply isn't satisfying to me any more.