Musings on different amounts of effort in GMing RPGs

[Stonehead]

Not sure why excluding this stuff. Your model works here as well. Premade settings everyone knows by heart and which can be used without any further explaination and adjustment would be Zeus, GM-made settings would be Hephaistos and vague settings that are only expanded/developed in play by the GM would be Atlas.

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but I assumed it was because setting work can be done in almost any system. You could use a prewritten setting guide, or homebrew a world with millions of inhabitants, regardless of if you're playing GURPS or 5E, or Fate.

Similar with NPCs. If the system provides enough sensible premades for all occasions it would be Zeus, if you have to craft them yourself in preptime, it would be Hephaistos and if you give your NPCs only stats on the fly during game, it would be Atlas.

Even in a situation like this, different systems make the process of NPC creation much easier than others. Creating a level 10 wizard to be some dungeon's mook is a lot more effort than creating an enemy in a system like Feng Shui or Lancer. In other systems like GURPS, creating a stat stick takes 10 seconds maybe, but creating a memorable enemy that's fun to fight takes a lot more effort than it does in systems that give you npc building frameworks.