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I have been watching a lot of Tarkovsky films and it gave me a weird poetic quest idea. In his films which are characterised by theological intensity and moments of heightened anguish or violence interspersed with oneiric languor and hypnotic cinematography, often there are lots of incidental or seemingly unexpected sudden background occurrences eg a glass falls from a table or a gust of wind blows away some cloth fabric or a dog escapes and chases someone in the background etc.
So this made me think in rpgs you are used to making the big choices, kill this person swordfight this villain steal this treasure fight this siege battle etc.
What if someone inverted the consequentiality of all these decisions, instead of making the big decisions in person, someone wrote depersonalised scenes where all you do is decide inconsequential happenings in the background that allude symbolically to the mood possibilities that follow. You choose the symbolism of minor details and the QM chooses the corresponding tonal action possibilities instead of the other way round.
Compare this encounter (adapted from Tarkovsky Andrei Rublev):
An apprentice bellmaker witnesses the first ringing of his creation; if the bell fails to ring the Grand Duke will see him executed. Do you
>flee the scene before the Grand Duke arrives
>watch the ringing of the bell inconspicuously from the crowd
>await his arrival, boldly greet the Grand Duke, and oversee the hoisting and ringing of the bell yourself, confident in your glory
>writhe in the mud whilst frothing in the mouth like a madman. If the bell rings people will assume you are a genius and accept this as mere eccentricity; if the bell fails to ring perhaps they will assume you have been driven mad by your exertions, take pity and not execute you after all?
with this:
An apprentice bellmaker witnesses the first ringing of his creation. Before the Duke arrives:
>the shadow of a cartwheel turning, impaled upon a pole looming over the bronze casting kilns
>a woman clad in white leads a girl child through the crowd
>the mocking laughter of a foreign dignitary accompanying the Duke's retinue, as he gestures to the assembled forlorn rabble with derision
>four horses feed upon the riverbank grass opposite in a downpour of thunder and rain
etc.
You might choose the weather, lighting, scenery, background events etc; but unlike in a conventional choice game you do not choose the direct actions of characters, all you can do is guide via the tonal symbolism. Write-ins work similarly, you can suggest all manner of symbolic background ornamentation (lol watching Tarkovsky made me wonder if the John Woo flying white doves thing came originally from him).
Maybe it would be too much to write an entire narrative like this, but at a key moment it might heighten the mystery
