Dude, “Yes but what do you doooooo?” was one of my issues with Coriolis.

Sure, lots of people spend lots of money on games where the premise is “You play D&D.” I dunno if that means it’s the prefect design choice for everything, but sure, to each their own.

For me, the above is an important question. Sure, cool settings are great — and I feel cool settings are Monte’s primary skill — but most of them are not cool enough to me that they’re worth spending money on if that’s all that the game offers.

I dunno. I guess I’m pretty much plussing the OP real hard. If there’s no premise, then I’d prefer the game had no setting either, e.g., I’m happy to play with GURPS or HERO tinker toys and come up with my own “where” and “why”.