Paul Beakley Take a look at Imagine. It’s four pages long and focusing on being immersive in fiction, instead of immersive in character.

http://www.urverkspel.com/vara-spel/oevriga-projekt

It uses no dice (or other kinds of random elements), no personal characters, no conflict, no prep, no game master, no mechanical progression. So what’s left?

That’s what I mean with having characters – it will make the people involved, wanting bleed. I read a thread where the designer had a design goal that sade “roleplay, not roll play.” and then he wanted dice. If you don’t want roll play, then don’t have dice. Having dice just invites that kind of behavior, just like having characters invites bleed.

We assume that characters is a must, and we develop a new way of playing, but without questioning what we’re using to play. In this case, the characters, or at least one designated character per player.

If you throw someone a stick and a puck, and say “Lets play team management”, that will bring confusion, right? The same goes with your problem.