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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7396409" data-attributes="member: 42582">Some systems bring more "heft" with them than others.The experiences I was thinking of when I made my post were: starting a Burning Wheel game ; starting a Classic Traveller game (a bit of a cheat - I had rolled up two or three random worlds in advance, and so dropped them in when I needed a world - but I could have done that while the players were rolling their Pcs if I wanted to); and more than once in classic D&D (either AD&D or Moldvay).What distinguishes these from, say, 3E D&D, is that each has a kickstart mechanicsm. In BW, the rules themselves generate PCs who are ready to go; in Classic Traveller, there is the random patron table and that - in conjunction with the implicity backstory that Traveller gives to PC - again suggestead a starting point for the game; and classic D&D uses the classic dungeon (which at a pinch can be randomly generated using Appendix A, which is what I did last time I GMed classic D&D).When I started my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, I'd pre-genned some PCs which would work either for a viking game or a Japanese game (eg one of the PCs is wolf skinchanger or fox skinchanger, depending on setting/genre; another is a swordthane or a bodyguard; etc). That's an idea as to setting, but once the players voted to go with vikings then they made up some stuff to kick things off (strange signs in the northern lights; the skinchanger having sensed trouble in the spirit world; etc) and I made up some stuff too (as they head north, they come upon a giant steading), and we went from there. Although this system doesn't bring the same degree of "kickstart" as the others I mentioned, it gives the players a lot of capacity to inject their own ideas and direction as it goes along.So some of this is a function of experience and inclination - which is my paraphrase of what you said! - but I think some of it is also about system design and the sorts of expectations systems create. A system which brings no kickstart mechanism and doesn't give the players much capacity to inject their own stuff is probably going to be more reliant on the GM to do some heavy lifting around setting and the details of framing. As well as 3E D&D I would put RM into this category, and RQ unless you're letting Glorantha do your heavy lifting for you.</blockquote>

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