I've worked up something very similar to this for the game I'm going to be starting with some friends fairly soon, I'm still in the process of trimming it down to be a reasonable size, as I can tend towards being verbose when unnecessary.
in essence I have a bulleted list of information about the game, the "flavor", and what not... examples:
- I want the party to be a cohesive group, please talk with eachother while you design your characters.
- The world is somewhat "static" in that if I have plans to have a CR18 beast in region X then it will be there regardless of what level the PCs are.
- After the first adventure or two the game opens up to "this is what has happened, so what now?"
(what I mean by that one - if the characters have no motivation and do nothing then I won't twist their arms into action, which leads me to....)
- NPCs in the world have their own agendas. There are plots that will be going on regardless, if altered by, PC action or inaction.
(I acctually have been fleshing out a time line for the progression of assorted plots and plans of NPCs, the PCs can push back, or stop those deadlines through action)
parenthetical notes added for the forum. the whole thing is around 2 pages single spaced right now, so I need to do a lot of editing still.
The key point I try to get across to people reading it is - I want this to be fun for everyone, this is how I'm going to try to run the game, does it sound fun to you? If not, what doesn't sound fun? maybe we can work something out.
We've had game before where one or two characters just stick out like sore thumbs, people need to make up excuses why their character would associate with the other characters, et cetera. That has left a really bad taste in my mouth, so I'm trying this approach to make sure that the players know I want a cohesive group (party in-fighting isn't my idea of a good time, I know some people enjoy it though).
If all works out as planned - it should be a fun game for all of us, as long as people are honest when I ask them "does this sound fun to you?" and let me know if it becomes unfun.
Hope that helps you wrap your head around at least my idea of the social game contract
I wasn't sure what the site was talking about sharing responsibilities... I think it might have just been a bit about characters getting along, a lot of times in games I've played it's up to the GM to some how take these different backgrounds and personalities that don't mesh at all and try to make them coherant... in my game it's going to be up to the players to make their characters in such a way that they mesh and aren't always at eachother's throats.
I'll have enough to worry about fleshing out the setting without designing rediclous hoops and reasons that people who wouldn't get along at all have to get along or whatever
