Shared Setting and Agenda's

I'm interested in the concept of disempowering the Game Masters' position on dictating setting and story. That is not to say it should be removed, more redistributed. I think all players of a game should have equal input into defining the elements of Exploration. I have been harbouring these thoughts for a while.

However today I took a step towards possibly articulating and defining a methodology for facilitating play to examine these ideas. It took the form of an email I sent to a friend. here is the bulk of those articulations...

I just had a thought that it would be cool to have a core group of gamers who develop a host of characters based in a city or some such environment. The group would define various factions in the city and then play out various interactions between the groups with one person taking the role of the antagonist (ie the DM) and the rest being protagonists. The group wouldn't have a dedicated DM but would take it in turns "exploring" the issues around those characters.

One adventure might explore what happens to a patrol of the City Guard on one night. Another might be based around a cult trying to assassinate the leader of a church. another might be a merchant faction trying to establish a monopoly on dragon scales.

This is more or less an evolution of the Maralith Arms campaign i proposed the concept of earlier this year just with a broader scope

I might even pitch the Eberron game along these lines, I dunno, I have plenty of time to think it through.