Musings on different amounts of effort in GMing RPGs

[Ignimortis]

Oh, this person who made the Atlas post might have been me, because I seem to remember making this kind of statement in the last week or so.

As for your types, I think there might be a fourth type, or at least a subtype that I would call "Hades" games. Those being, in essence, generally Hephaestus-type games of the sort that relies less on having the GM do all the prep and instead more on having such boatloads of content that the GM can, possibly, just scour their "treasure trove" of books and find something that can be semi-seamlessly used in their game anyway. I think GURPS and D&D 3.5/PF1 may fall under this definition. Arguably, some other splatsplosion-focused games might qualify, like old Vampire or something.

But personally, I have always disliked Atlas-type games, since they tire and bore me as both a player and a GM (constant improvisation and making rulings on the fly as a GM is hard, not knowing what you can do because it's always up to GM is unpleasant and limits your options as a player).
And despite being an adept of Hephaestus-type games for almost 10 years now, I begin to dislike them as well - at least as a GM, because the player rarely has to do much in those games and reaps a lot of benefits (as is common for crunchier systems that are still playable) for very little work.
As for Zeus-type games...I, quite frankly, haven't really played a pure one, ever. Maybe Vampire was a Zeus-type game for one of my GMs - he claims to this day that working with Storyteller has been extremely easy for him, and I know that he needs maybe half an hour of prep to make a decent session, and yet there was very rarely any need for instant adjudication or resolving something in a way that I couldn't predict with rule knowledge.

Going by this model, though, my modest desire is to make most of the games I enjoy shift at least halfway into those, so maybe you're onto something there.

I also have to commend you on the specific type name choices, as Atlas has immense strength but is also bound by it, Hephaestus toils endlessly but is one of the least lucky and least favored on Olympus despite his talent and hard work, while Zeus, mostly known for his quick temper and questionable (at the very least) shenanigans, is still revered as head of the pantheon and has lots of fun regardless.