Freeform GM-ing: Strategies and Best Practices?
I exclusively run and play freeform games. I tabletop rp, so I'm familiar with systems and the like, but I've just never really enjoyed how it translates to a literary roleplay.
I've experienced all the ups and downs of freeform, had games entirely peter out, restarted, rebooted, revamped, etc. Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way to completely mitigate this. However, there are some things I've found help.
The Mother Hen idea is a good one, I sort of expanded on this in what is probably my most succesful freeform game. It was an Urban Fantasy, and I had an entire team of GMs, people that I trusted and am very familiar with. Every GM was essentially given a group to govern and deal with, in regard to NPCs, plot hooks, random incidents, etc.
We would round table spitball ideas and plots, and figure out how to weave them into the game in a fashion that hooked the players and drew them into the plots. Through the use of specific GMPCs and GMNPCs, we could help steer or incite the plots and incidents more naturally, so it didn't look like an obvious plot hook.
We also all created a GMPC character whose entire intention, was to die in some spectacular and evocative fashion. These characters were designed to integrate, and form bonds and attachments with the PCs, so that when they died, it had impact.
At that point it's just a matter of finding the balance of when to nudge, or introduce a plot hook, or even just an isolated incident. You want to give your players room to sandbox and socialize, but look for those signs that interest might be flagging. Tying plots together, or coming up with some far overarching plot that all these smaller plots tie into and lead up to can also be extremely rewarding. It makes the players feel like they're actually building to something really exciting. Though it's obviously more challenging to do. Again, having a team of GMs that I had played with for years really aided in that regard. And then you have extra people to run those smaller plot arcs, so you're not shouldering the weight of it.
The other thing I've done, was in an alternate history fantasy, which lent itself a little more to political intrigue. And really the main thing there was crafting a really twisty overall plot and story, and working the players into it as they joined the game. You need a pretty solid knack for crafting a story, but if you're good at it, you can create a really compelling story. The key there, was creating this convoluted plot full of intrigue, and that deciding which bits the players themselves got to know, because I wanted the end result to be surprising for all the players, at least to some degree. So character A might know that he was going to the city to find out who his birth father really was, and he might have a suspicion, but he wouldn't know that that there were four more layers of unforeseen circumstances tied around the mystery of his birth. And every individual hook like that, was linked to and affected another players story and arc, and the only way to uncover those revelations was to advanced the plot.
It was a far more challenging GM experience, to be certain, and unfortunately that game did die prematurely, but it wasn't for a lack of interest, so much as it was due to my own burnout.
Ultimately, I would say going into it, you need a bag full of plot ideas, especially if you can weave them together. You also need a bag full of 'encounters'. And then you just need to figure when to dole those out. If you can tie specific character backgrounds into either the plot, or those encounters, even better, because then they feel individually engaged.
You can always run a directed game, freeform, as well, it doesn't have to be sandbox unless that's specifically what you want it to be.
If you notice a specific character's interest is waning, see if you can come up with something that directly impacts that character, and pulls other characters into the event. Everyone likes to feel like the center of the story now and then, and it doesn't hurt to pass that experience around.
And if you're good at steering characters, mother hen, or faction leader GMPCs can be great. In the Urban Fantasy game, most of the leaders of the various groups (vampires, werewolves, etc) were run by GMs, not all, but most. This allowed for utilizing plots that impacts an entire group, which could then be steered by the GM run leader of that group, to be effect.