Ah! My apologies. You were clear; I think I missed a paragraph in the OP.

I think part of it comes down to intent. `Play to find out what happens` needn’t just be a GM principle. My perspective on DoW may be different than others because I try to approach it without a preferred outcome. It’s a tool we have agreed to use to come to consensus about what new direction the play will go in, rather than a bludgeon to enforce my desired fictional outcome (and I know this may not be a typical use of DoW).

Interestingly, I’ve felt more coerced in lighter, more free, and less random systems. In Firebrands, either party can end a duel at any time, but choosing to end the duel is a unilateral decision, and win or lose, it can feel like privileging my agency as a player over the others. I’m no longer playing to find out what happens, I’m choosing for the play to end. Thus, I feel, if not coerced, then at least constrained to be a good sport and continue the interaction beyond when I would have terminated it.

Non-intrusive mechanics that quietly reward certain kinds of play, but don’t explicitly punish other kinds of play are a rich space. Chuubo’s is a good thought. The awarding of XP can be pretty seamless, so long as everyone remembers to do it, and it’s a kind of opt-in reward system like Artha or self-compells in Fate. Also similar to *world principles. The mechanics work as an unobtrusive guide to the fiction rather than action resolution.