Arkham lcg is my favorite game, but it absolutely is campaign-based.
there are standalone scenarios that you can do but they are not the main part of the game. the campaigns are incredible though and honestly if you can find even one other person or even play solo I absolutely recommend this one.
could always demo it on like tabletop simulator or something too to see if you like it
I really love pbta games but I would agree with you that they are not rule light so much as “rule lighter than d&d”
there’s lots of one page systems out there that are truly rules light.
that said once you know the rules I would say that it provides a system that is easy to plan for, it’s easy to play in, and it flows very naturally.
I ran dungeon world and monster of the week campaigns for years, playing probably 3 to 4 hours once a week on average most of that time.
I think I did maybe 2 hours a month of prep? something about like that.
I loved how pbta games would allow me to basically spend all of my prep time coming up with cool ideas and not having to worry too much about the mechanics because I either had a framework too accomplish them already or I could just make it up on the spot.
some of my group’s favorite moments in our campaign have come from me just making things up on the spot and them being able to react to it.
when I used to DM for d&d or Pathfinder those kind of moments would take hours of prep work.
I would say the obsession is more people finding something that has freed them from the heavy rule set rather than something that is truly rules light.
agree with one and two and younger me would have agreed with your third point but I think I don’t anymore.
yes cut is the simpler and mostly functional tool you need for those tasks.
but it is just so common to need a slight tweak or to want to substitute something or to want to do a specific regex match or weird multi character delimiter or something and you can do it all easily in awk instead of having to pipe three extra times to do everything with the simplest tool.
honestly I got one of these and ended up going back to brushing my tongue. maybe I am like more thoroughly brushing my tongue than other people or something but it never was as clean from a tongue scraper as from brushing