Just read ERA: Epic Storytelling Game the second game from Neil Gow of Ominhedron Games.
It is a one on one system for one hour games that can be fitted in between our busy lives. It is designed to be a structured game cycle that guides poster and GM through opportunities for narration whilst still being driven by recognisable RPG tropes.
I am not going to summarise the system: suffice to say it's elegant and worth the 20 minutes it took me to understand it.
I have to say I am very impressed and charmed. A lean and yet well structured game in the original sense; also a platform for lots of autonomous narrative storytelling.
I have always loved the idea of elements as attributes and dice shapes as skills.
The clearly defined structure of the cycle allows a higher degree of support for player and GM; rather like writing a sonnet or haiku rather than prose poetry.
I look forward to running it a great deal.
It's pay what you want on rpgnow and I recommend it for those that want a well structured storytelling game either as your main fun or as a filler between levels 21 and 22 of the current megadungeon.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/118877/ERA-Epic-Storytelling-Game?term=ERA+omnih

Quote from: tzunder;728663Just read ERA: Epic Storytelling Game the second game from Neil Gow of Ominhedron Games.
It is a one on one system for one hour games that can be fitted in between our busy lives. It is designed to be a structured game cycle that guides poster and GM through opportunities for narration whilst still being driven by recognisable RPG tropes.

Oh wow, our group playtested a previous version of this last year, and after we discussed it with him at Conpulsion it sounded a bit dead.

It doesn't look like it's changed that much though. The big problem we had with it was the "role-play a scene up to the climactic point, break for a quick game of yahtzee just when it's getting good, and then tie up loose ends after you've lost all your momentum" feel that story games with this sort of mechanic tend to have (I personally like In A Wicked Age, but it suffers from the same issue). In other words, It's Not For Us.