I’m relatively new to the hobby since I began playing in late 2019, but I discovered that the narrative and rules-loose games are not for me, so my question would be ”How little is too little?".

I’ve played some narrative campaigns using the Stalker RPG (diceless narrative), Ironsworn, FATE and I ended up loathing purely narrative systems. Now it’s been 6 months since I started to play solo and I keep buying new systems whenever I can, but as of now, I’m completely enamored with 5e adaptations like CARBON 2185, and other systems like Lancer, Twilight 2K, Shadowrun, Mutant Year Zero, and Savage Worlds’ Settings.

Maybe my perspective would change if I went back to play with more people and had to wait 25 minutes to play the next 6 seconds of my actions, on a fight that would take 2 IRL hours to resolve, but as a solo player, what I want is plenty of improv and creativity for the lore/narrative parts (which is why I appreciate lore books and supplements) but complex, high-stakes board/wargame mechanics for the build/combat segments without a GM fudging rolls or events to maintain me alive or to add drama or keep the story going, which was my resumed experience with narrative systems.

I assume the game that puts out 3+ books a year is D&D?

This will vary from person to person very much and it stems from what are they looking for in a game. Some love the crunch (comparing values and looking up tables) or rules-heavy systems (having rules defined for everything they could do in a game) and expect the system to be build in a way that system mastery is required. Some don’t and will never read the CRB and I don’t think it should be frowned upon.

My players liked the level of customization Shadowrun offers, with all the grip modifications and types of bullets. But then the only ones that didn’t keep asking “how my main thing works, again?” were the ones who focused on ranged combat.

I probably could be a player in SR or D&D but I’ve discovered that for being GM, Savage Worlds (two dice defined by your character sheet to throw, against TN 4 in most cases) is the most crunch I can work with.
And max two books with rules; lore books - the more the merrier.

I love crunchy/complex systems! I GMed a lot of D&D 3.5; PF 1E; Cyberpunk; and some more. Especially having a big amount of choice in character creation is essential to me. I want my character to feel and play mechanically distinct from the other players. It’s one of the many reasons I despise 5E. Every Fighter I try to build plays exactly the same.

I can never get enough of new books, so that’s also more of a plus to me than anything else.