Yes, but most of the PbtA and FitD games rebuild their core systems, play books, etc to fit very narrow play loops. That is what those core systems are good at.
The loops for BitD aren't ultimately significantly narrower than those of D&D using "gritty rest" rules and Apocalypse World isn't a bespoke game; it's a generic game with bespoke playbooks. And because the bespeaking is in the playbooks not the core game mechanics it allows the entire game to be broader while at the same time each actual campaign to be pretty bespoke to the needs of the players. In many ways Apocalypse World is the best of both worlds - at the cost of not fitting predrawn settings so well.
Starting with Apocalypse World because it's easier there is nothing at all preventing an Apocalypse Word party of a Gunlugger (combat monster), Brainer (creepy psychic), Angel (medic), and Driver (with a signature vehicle) travelling from town to town beating up nests of raiders and monsters known as dungeons and taking their loot in the way of a classic D&D adventuring party. The damage will be different and the tactics different but the strategic gameplay loop of a group of wandering adventurers wronging rights and depressing the oppressed (or whatever) will be pretty much the same with the main difference being choice of weapons and that combat is far more consequential and deadly. By contrast a party consisting of the Hardholder (town boss), Maestro d' (leader of the local scene), Hocus (cult leader), and Chopper (gang leader) is going to be almost entirely different because a lot of the troubles are going to centre around the organisations the PCs are in charge of and how the PCs can deal with their needs (which is a roll at the start of session thing). By your own definition Apocalypse World is a far more flexible system than the more bespoke D&D. The core difference is, of course, that in D&D it's the GM who chooses what the game is about (within a bespoke range) while in Apocalypse World it's the players and you build the setting round the PCs.
Meanwhile the BitD central loop basically is the D&D gritty rest core loop with one core (unremovable) difference and one subsystem that is removed by a whole lot of the hacks. The core difference is that D&D's "long rest" even in gritty games is basically "time passes" while BitD gives you rules to actually do stuff in down time such as research, training, and acquiring assets as well as recover stress and damage (and you don't recover) and a consequence for whatever you did. And yes BitD is designed primarily for heists - but in the fictional sense (ignoring the law) what even
is a heist? It's a small group of like minded individuals banding together to obtain something of value against something that should outmatch them.
A dungeoncrawl is a type of heist. And the only reasons you can normally do dungeon crawls in D&D and rarely do them in BitD is that both games have genre protection rules. In D&D combat is basically consequence-free for the winners as hit points have no negative effect and recover freely while in Duskvol (the default Blades setting) a bell rings every time someone dies by violence. But you don't
have to heist in Blades any more than you
have to dungeon crawl or fight in D&D (and indeed one of the Blades settings is called "War" even if that's gang warfare and you're not meant to have mass street battles). Other than the stylised and tightly focused D&D Weird Wizard Show, and stylised and tightly focused consequence-free D&D combat and speeding past down time I'm trying to think what D&D does that Blades can't do as well (flashbacks are a heist staple but not heist-exclusive).
It's worth noting at this point that neither Apocalypse World nor Blades in the Dark are e.g. Masks or Monsterhearts which actually are tightly focused bespoke games.
But that's not really why I consider BitD and S&V to be "bespoke." Those games are bespoke because their play loops are defined and focused and the system exists only to support that play loop. The play loop of D&D is not only less well defined, the system doesn't really do anything to support the play loop. Note: there is certainly an argument to be made that OD&D was a bespoke system (such that it was) but every successive generation of D&D has eroded its focus.
Indeed. Long rests are
absolutely not a thing in D&D these days. The core loop is there. As is the wizards being based round always-reliable-fire-and-forget-spells. The logisitical element of logistical dungeon crawling might be vestigial in modern D&D but does similar things to the control exerted by Blades. Being good at something doesn't necessarily mean locking everything else out of the game.
I don't think that's true. Fate puts a lot of design space toward genre emulation through narrative tools,but not really structural story tools. And the core system is pretty standard,mechanically speaking. Of course, there are lots of variations and in general it seems like there are crunchy Fate games and light Fate games. And Dresden has an example of both!
Fate when being pushed absolutely has a structural story tool in the Fate point economy (and stripping that back is a big reason why Fate gained rather than lost when it simplified in 2012 to Fate Core/Accelarated even past the speed and clarity gained by halving the number of aspects). You're overmatched by the big bad, and you spend the entire story getting into trouble until by then end you all get to drop a stack of fate points on them. And the core system rests on the "create an advantage" action that's really a whole lot less generic than it should be.
