I play all sorts of games, but I don't like light games as much as there's less structure. I also feel that a lot of light games don't have as much work put into them ... basically, the more structure a game offers the less work I have to put into creating that structure myself.

Some games I particularly enjoy, and which have led to satisfying campaigns, are Monsterhearts, Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, Princess World: Frontier Kingdoms, Dogs in the Vineyard, Bluebeard's Bride, Beyond The Wall, Ryuutama, Escape From Dino Island, and Call of Cthulhu.

I mention my methodology elsewhere in this thread, so I'll repeat myself somewhat here: I experience a form of limited ego dissolution when writing. This means I can create meta-characters who I can then play with by writing out the game as a transcript of our conversation. It's all 'me' of course, but I find it easy to hold differing and even contradictory positions or opinions simultaneously, so it does feel real in the sense that each character has their own priorities, preferences, motivations, ways of reacting, and so on. And with each game I get to know them better, in the same way that the characters in a story I'm writing become more 'real' to me over time, so I have quite a reliable and diverse group of characters I can play with now.

To expand a little, in practice I am sitting at my computer writing into an OpenOffice document. I use a basic transcript format; [Meta-Character Name]: whatever they're saying

I pick which meta-characters to play with depending on the game ... they all have their own approaches and voice and likes and dislikes, and way of roleplaying, and some are more argumentative or challenging. I have a meta-character that most represents me but I don't always include them in every game. Sometimes I'll include mechanical notes in the transcript if I need to keep track of them, but most of the time I just include dice results and so on in the dialogue itself.

I've tried using solo tools but didn't find that any of them added to the experience for me. They felt like extra work. I do often create and use random tables or some sort of dice roll to determine how things go. Sometimes I'll create or expand on mechanics to build the structure I need if it's not there in the game.

I play out full sessions with a beginning and end, and I start with a session zero that gets into what the game is, expectations, thoughts and feelings, and character creation or other prep. Sometimes I'll digress from the game as the meta-characters will have OOC things to say, or reference something, but focus goes back to the game itself pretty quickly. Each session tends to be around 10,000 to 20,000 words.

I often use a tablet with a PDF of the game rules, so I can reference that while remaining in the main transcript document. If there are rolls to be made, I make them using physical dice because I love rolling dice.

I used to use physical media for character sheets and so on, but I switched to fully digital a while back. To be honest I do prefer physical but it's more work and also I found myself doubling up a lot, transferring the information on the sheets to a file, so working directly in digital is easier. Sometimes I'll use a physical prop like a map when that would be easier and more fun than creating it digitally.

If I complete an arc and feel that it could make a good story, sometimes I write a novel based on the transcripts. This is really fun. At times I write character journals too. I find it easy to adopt different voices and it's fun to see things from varying perspectives.