@rcoleman-netgate Dear Readers, This issue is now solved for me. Here's an explanation for future vmware fusion folks...
I redid option 2 again for the LAN interface, noting that the bridge100 interface on in the MacOS offered up the 192.168.198.0/24 network (see above, your bridge networks may be different). I entered in for option 2:
new LAN ipv4 address: 192.168.198.10 (198.1 will not work)
subnet mask: /24 (class C to match the bridge100 interface)
enable DHCP server
start address of range: the IP number you used above, eg 192.168.198.10
end address of range: some higher number in the 4th octet, eg 192.168.198.200
yes or no to the http setting
Important in VMware! After redoing the LAN interface, then go into the vmware configuration for the LAN network interface (compare the MAC address via the pfSense shell to your interface). ==> Change the interface setting from "Share with my Mac" to "Private to my Mac". Let vmware make the changes.
At this point, your pfSense network setup should look like:
WAN (wan) -> em0 -> v4/DHCP4: 172.16.20.138/24
LAN (lan) -> em1 -> v4: 192.168.198.10/24
and you should be able to ssh or https to IP number 192.168.198.10 to login or see the pfSense webpage.