Do the rules of football support two players on opposing teams wanting to kiss?
Joke aside,I want to look at questions we can ask about a game instead. I do think these can be re-wrapped up in your addendum question, "What structure does X have that shapes Y?"
- does the game encourage or discourage INCLUSION of (coffeeshop AUs, detailed combat, ...)
- does it encourage/discourage FOCUS on Y?
- Does it provide interesting context or perspective (e.g. fragility of life mentioned above) for Y?
- does it make Y easy, or difficult? simple, or complex?
- For each of these, how?
- Does it do these things on purpose?
And from there, what is it asking of us as players? How big of a bridge do we need to build to play the kind of story we're looking for? will it be fun to build the bridge? will our bridge be stable?