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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8338695" data-attributes="member: 42582">My advice, based a little bit on personal experience, would be to drop the GM creates an adventure and instead to focus on the PCs have their own stakes in whatever is going on. I would look for a system that gives the PCs fairly clear needs (eg a wealth/resources rating that is under constant pressure) and gives the players fairly straightforward ways to get involved and make things happen.I've used Burning Wheel for RPGing with a bit of a S&S feel. I've also used AD&D, but I think it's a bit less well-suited, because it doesn't give the players quite so many levers. But in both cases my approach was to focus on situation, and then following the players' lead.My own view, and experience, is that the things you are proposing here - spending time at the table on the circumstances leading to adventure, on keeping track of the passage of time, and on keeping detailed track of money - are apt to produce play that does not feel very S&S-ish.Taking away the PCs money is not "taking agency from the players" unless we accept, as a premise, that what is important to play is managing the PCs' money. But why would we accept that premise in a S&S game? To drive the game you need the PCs (and thereby the players) to have the rights sorts of needs, and the need for money is a straightforward one. Social dynamics are also important in at least some S&S (ie REH Conan, which is the S&S I personally know best).The way to avoid the situation where the players have to take the one job the GM offers them is not to bring it about that the PCs don't need cash (or don't need to escape this city right here, right now) but to allow the players to exercise genuine agency over how they respond to the situation that sets their PCs into motion. If the players need to leave town, they get to declare a check to board a departing vessel at the docks (a la Queen of the Black Coast) or to declare a check to sneak out hidden under their cloaks (I think something like this happens in The Hour of the Dragon, doesn't it?) or to establish a meeting with a friendly magician who will conjure a flying steed for them (The Scarlet Citadel). This is why I think a system like BW is strong for S&S, but you could try and adapt D&D in this sort of direction - use Streetwise checks, or the Contacts mechanic from Yakuza in the original OA; use Knowledge checks; etc.I think what will shut down a S&S feel is a sense that the players have to find out what the GM has in mind for their PCs to do. This gives the game a detective-story feel, not a S&S one.</blockquote>

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