So on of the problems that comes of being a gamer "of a certain age" is that there is so much more of life that demands my time, leaving so much less for being able to play. This is doubly so as I think of rpgs. The time and effort that I once had to plan, craft, write, and map careful game adventures simply costs too much compared to the fact that, 1) I'm not getting paid for it (though this is a point for some other discussion), and 2) I may never get a chance to fully use it. The last time I went all out writing, plotting, drawing out timelines, locations, maps, handouts to include faux news clippings (on newsprint paper), antique book pages, faux email printouts, and matchbooks for exclusive clubs... I only got about 1/3rd of the way through the campaign before it petered out due to player time commitments. I think that one hurt more than I am consciously aware of, as that was distinctly the last time I gave that much creative effort on a labor of love in a game.
But it was also one of the things that moved me ineluctably down the road toward indie games with more rules light and narrative design principles. As much as I still think that GURPS and Pathfinder for instance are well designed engines, I really just love Fate (and the host of Fudge-like games of a kind) for it's mechanical simplicity, bounding the mechanics by narrative statements. This kind of game is to be sure, one for players you trust, but I don't want to play with the other kind anyway. So the challenge is trying to find a way to get satisfactory story out of minimal prep.
Fate does this by making "Session 0" a critical feature, with issues, and games based on say, Apocalypse World have fronts, but otherwise "play to see what happens". I suppose that what I am thinking about then, is a way to kind of start with those sorts of things, and add just a little more structure so I can create and thereby provide a little more detail. So it seems that a good starter question for each session, is to have the players review the issues and their individual character goals, and considering context and continuity of what they did previously, ask the players the following question to start the game:
What are you doing?
Now the answer to this cannot be a weaksauce answer. No "chilling in the tavern", or "shopping for equipment upgrades". This has to be a clear, powerful answer that is an expression of what the character wants enough to fight for, perhaps kill for, and perhaps die for. In Fate, this is easy to do by examining aspects, and then figuring out how that action can go wrong... what can be worse, or what complications are expected. This should be detailed, and provide the specific picture for the starting scene of the game. This is also a good time to get fate points, and in a particularly gritty game, rather than refreshing automatically, give FP based only on this. But the players ought to do this, perhaps as a flashback, creating the starting scene.
Next, based on what trouble they have chosen to get themselves into, they need to suggest two or three steps, or sub goals, or objectives that they need to take in order to get themselves out of that jam. These can be a bit broader, leaving tags that the GM can plug into an overall scene planner to shape the game in a fashion that provides more build and story unity without a whole bunch of pre-loaded prep. The players get what they want in broad strokes, and the GM gets to make stone soup - letting much of the heavy lifting be done by others.
This is very close to what It's Not My Fault does, with just a little bit of customizing.
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