I only have our year-long short-lived restart of SM2 to go off of back when we did it on the RP list, but that was set up in a way that needed far less GM interaction and focused more on character interaction and development/self-discovery. Granted, the mechanics never got developed to go with it, but the framework was that every PC was a new SpellCaster, so the going was slow, the spells were minimal, and the failure rate was high.
But what it did was allow for lots of growth together with other characters as everyone tried to start basically a new life for themselves (witch hunters were everywhere, and SCs were outcasts, essentially). Tom had just a handful of posts, mostly for flavor, Loren had a character that I don't think ever ended up interacting with any other PC, and James' Jago started out as a statue and ended up a snarky old-timer imparting "wisdom" to all the newbies once we actually stumbled on him. That's all the "GM involvement" we had.
No XP, no levels, no anything really, except the desire to build Story. I'm not saying we have to, or even need to do the same thing again. But it did help alleviate a lot of the issues we are currently having. That time around, it died due to lack of mechanics. Now we have mechanics and no story/interaction/whatever.
Is it a different framework that's making the difference? Or a different group of players? Or something altogether different?
