Game Dream 5: Cooperative Storytelling

Doc's Game Dream is the successor to Game WISH. I've got some catching up to do on this one, it's already got up to Game Dream 5, which asks:

To what level (if any) do the groups you usually play with encourage communal creation of the game world? Are the players spectators, or do they actually have a say in the plot (moreso that just guiding it by the actions of their characters)?

The two online games I run (with many of same players) are very different in this regard. Kalyr is very much a labour of love, something I've spent fifteen years developing, with reams of backstory, politics, culture and religion. It's also a world with a lot of deep mysteries, and one of the themes of the game is about the players finding out the truth behind the various cults and guilds. Because so much of the world is predefined, there's not much space for the players themselves to add much more than local colour; I compensate for this by giving the players a lot of plot freedom.

The second game, Ahrran Empire Frontiers is a very different beast. It's a space opera game I inherited from another GM, with a big universe for which very little is predefined. Since I'm more or less making up the whole thing as I go along, there's no good reason why I can't let the players do some of the work. Some of the planets, such as "Esturia" and "The Scouse Cluster" came from one of the players in an online chat. The whole concept of "exchange" comes from an in-character post from another very creative player. I see my job as GM as trying to keep the whole thing coherent and providing some overall direction.