Paul Beakley I had been wondering just the other day “I wonder if I could find those 3 talismans I made that Anders had put on his Mage page again?” Then, you link to that page and I see them and I am like, great! But then 404 error. 🙁

As to the actual question, I suggest that your Pendragon and One Ring examples do not show those games are intrinsically more fun to GM than to play. They seem to me to suggest that not all players like to play games where there characters experience a lot of unplanned change, where they are not substantially in control of the arc of their character. This is definitely true, no question about it.

Or maybe you are speaking about instances of games, not the game themselves? If that is the case, I would answer Torchbearer. I had piles of fun running this, coming up with the stuff necessary to run it, etc., but it was obvious after five sessions or so, the first time we hit a town phase, that I was really the only one having a completely good time. The players just were not interested in the grind, and especially not interested in the detailed mechanics of the grind. That is the only case in my life where switching systems actually worked; Dungeon World proved to be exactly what people wanted. I think lots of players may really love Torchbearer, but not the ones in that group.