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Choice of Missions
One thing that annoys me about how a lot of roleplaying works is the idea that any scenario can work with any characters, or at least any characters within some very broad criteria. So a D&D scenario might be for 'a group of 3rd-5th Level characters of non-Chaotic alignment'. Within those broad limits, any group of wandering fantasy adventurers should be able to turn up, find the scenario hook (which is easily identified because it has a neon sign on it reading 'Scenario Hook') and go into the adventure.

Closely allied to this is the assumption that the GM will always give the players something they should be able to handle. A GM with a party of 1st-2nd Level characters will put them into 1st-2nd Level adventures, a GM with 7th-9th Level characters will put them into 7th-9th Level adventures, and so on.

You may reply, 'What's wrong with that? Surely you aren't saying that the GM should be sending the player characters into scenarios which they can't survive?' No, I'm not saying that. I'm proposing that the GM should not send player characters into scenarios at all, but that the player characters should choose their own missions.

ROLEPLAYING WITH CHOICE OF MISSIONS

The common assumption, as described above, is that the GM will select a mission (ie. write a scenario or use a pre-written one), and that the PCs will accept that mission. Part of this assumption is that they should have a good chance of surviving that mission and succeeding at it.

I propose an alternative system, which I call 'choice of missions'. The player characters are in a particular profession, and they can take any job in the game-world that suits them. They could be burglars: then the campaign might be set in a city with many targets that they could try to rob. They could be mercenaries: then various missions could be available, if they can persuade the employer that they have what it takes to do it.

The crucial difference here is that intelligence gathering becomes important. In typical roleplaying, people just assume that the mission that the GM puts in front of them will be within their ability. With choice of missions, they have to gather information on every potential mission to decide whether they think it's possible for them.

Going a step further, you can give the PCs responsibility for something, and then let them choose exactly how they deal with it. Provincial policing is a good example. Imagine a game where the PCs are warriors of the King, charged with maintaining order in an area with a population of, let's say, a thousand people. Now they could never fight a thousand people in a stand-up fight, but that's not their aim - their purpose is to make those people productive tax-paying subjects of the King, not to kill them. They have to seek out the rebellious and bring them back into line by any means necessary - this could mean violence, threats, promises, bribes or any combination thereof. They must assess each case to determine what they can do: some enemies may be too strong for them to attack openly, requiring clever tactics instead. So there are no pre-written scenarios: everything that happens comes from what the PCs or the NPCs decide to do. So the PCs truly have a choice of what missions to take and how to do them.

I ran a game much like that some years ago, called The King's Men, and it was rather good.