Yet here I am describing precisely the sort of unexpected fictional character development you claim is “winning”, only describing it in a long campaign using the 1979 edition of D&D rather then whatever (presumably story or other genre emulation game) you are lauding.
I try very hard to neutrally explain the game tradition I play and know about without judging others too harshly. I recommend you do the same, because as much as it’s fun to talk smack about classic games as “board games” where mechanical achievement is the metric for success, remember that there’s plenty of folks who see story/genre emulation/narrative games as little more then “improv theater” but that neither of these attitudes is productive. There’s enormous amounts of overlap between classic, narrative and even contemporary traditional play that gatekeepers from each of these playstyles insist are wrong fun. I don’t agree - I think there’s a lot to learn from an interchange between playstyles, even to the point of mechanical borrowing - for example I’ve PbtA concepts like clocks and moves applied quite effectively in classic system sandboxes.
I’ve managed to play a contemporary trad game using mechanics and play style from the classic dungeon crawl - that is tacticalish combat and vaguely superhero PCs with builds who need to worry about running out of rations and try to avoid combat encounters through RP or trickery. I suspect similar hybrids are possible among lots of playstyles. Perhaps Instead of dismissing “mechanical achievement” imagine what it would look like and how it’d effect a game of the style you prefer? What effect does the explicit rule “You WIN when you gather X amount of in game currency” do to the style of game you like?