I was reading Vaesen and thinking about how the "solving mysteries" dynamic might inform my current Mutant Year Zero game. I'm sharing my thoughts and how I communicated it, but would love feedback and any war stories around using this or something like it for player agency and more collaborative game.
I decided to ask my players to consider having a SCENE ready for their time in the Ark. We usually roll for Projects, they tell me things they might want to do, and I try to throw encounters/ideas and stuff at them (not to mention possibly having a THREAT develop).
The way I put it was:
I'd like you each to consider preparing a SCENE for next session in the Ark. A scene should be simple and short. It should have an intended goal, a statement of how your character is going to try and achieve that goal, and a suggested way to determine outcome of the scene (often a dice roll).
The scene should advance your character and/or their relationships, and you'll want to have some ideas in mind for failure. So, for example, if I were running Danova as a player, I might say:
"Danova is going to try and get Liam to fall in love with her. She flirts with him off and on, then shows up in his bed one night in a tattered tee shirt she traded for from Jabba the Fixer. I think this might be a MANIPULATE roll."
Some other ideas:
"Xena wants to protect Benji as always. One night Xena is walking with Benji around the Plaza. A couple of thugs from so-and-so's gang start to harass Benji and it starts to get physical with some shoving. I think Xena would try to INTIMIDATE the thugs."
"Bolo wants to talk to Boss Krao about the problem the Order had with the water filters. He wants to see if he can help get them working properly or come up with a way to make access to the filters harder for unauthorized mutants. Since Bolo is a gearhead I think he would spend scrap and try to JURY-RIG something like a lock to get to the roof area where the filters are."
Scenes give the player a way to create an opportunity for their characters instead of waiting for GM to throw the right stuff at them.