Not only can this work, there are people on Iwaku who will swear by this working better than any other approach.
Sometimes
ignorantly only doing this style of RP's, seeing anything else as having "Lack of direction and thereby doomed to fail".
So yes, this is more than do-able.
This also works, and is in fact my own personal preference.
Though admittedly this also requires more player dedication.
You're more reliant on the Player's willingness and ability to get involved, motivated and creative.
This is partly why people often swear on the earlier approach, because it's easier to simply rely on the DM and have them pull the 'Party' along than it is to get multiple people to that same level of involvement.
Partially because it involves balancing 1 Life VS Multiple Lives, and 1 Personality VS Multiple.
To explain a bit further.
Say in a RP the group quite simply doesn't get along too well, or their too occupied by real life, or they simply can't get that involved.
If you're doing the Ultimate Purpose approach, it's easy enough to simply get new players instead and keep it going. Or to pick up some of the players slack because they aren't actually being asked to do too much.
If you're doing the Everyone's Goal approach though, this would mean a lot more investment in making sure players are up to speed, able to contribute and making sure they get a long. Otherwise you're faced with RP death or hard resets as you find a group to players capable of carrying the RP.
This can work.
The issue is this is a High Risk/High Reward style roleplaying.
The style gives (in my experience) the most openness and ability to players to forget whatever they want to make the RP amazing.
But there's a number of potential pit-falls.
- Player Direction: If the DM and/or the Players don't establish some direction or goal, this can quickly turn into a "Lol what now?" scenario, and get the RP to die very quickly.
- Melting the Ice Cream: This is what I refer to what happened at the Star Wars RP site I used to run. Essentially you give your group so much power/ability that they go overboard. They make things that are either too broken to keep things going for long, or launch it to such a power level you don't have anything else to do afterwards. Now in the instance of my Site we did actually complete the RP, the issue was afterwards we had nothing to launch/continue into.
Usually though in RP's #1 will become the death of the RP far before #2 can even raise it's head up.
And it happens so often you'll commonly get people saying stuff like "Sandbox is just another way of saying it has no direction or purpose".
Because what happens so often is these RP's are launched into play expecting everyone to pick up the ball and know what to do with it, but what kind of ball is it? Is the ball even inflated?
Essentially they forget to implement a Plan B, or a "I'm coming in and giving you guys something now" alternative for when people don't know what to do.
This can work too, but remember this is a tool of the RP, not the entire RP.
However there are a few ways you can implement this tool.
- The Party Guide: You are a PC, but you're first/main purpose is to give the other PC's focus, direction and things to do. Only once they are covered does your PC start to get attention. This can help for situations where the party members may all be stuck, your PC can then suggest a route for the party to follow and does so without God's divine hand interrupting because it's coming from a fellow party member.
- The Equal: This often only works when there are Co-GM's, or you're running one of those RP's where there is no real DM but rather just a group system/consensus. In a nutshell it allows the DM to take a break from their DM position, and participate as another player while someone else focuses on the DM side of things, or at least shares in carrying the load.
- The Main Character: This one is the most rarely used, but essentially your PC is the Main Character. All the other characters are essentially side characters. Still characters with proper development and arcs, but side characters. This one is the most rare for a big reason, you relegate all your players to secondary roles which breaks the mold of RP's a lot. And a lot of players will look at that and go "Nope! I want to be a Main Character!". But you can still find RP's where it works... But if you do so remember one thing, INFORM YOUR PLAYERS AND HAVE THEM CONSENT TO THIS IN ADVANCE! Nothing stings more than putting a ton of effort into your character, playing them out and then being broadsided by the DM saying "Nope, my characters are priority". That lack of heads up/warning is where a ton of the "Bad DM was just writing/playing with themselves!" stories tend to originate from.
I don't play Golden Sun so I can't speak in that respect.
But one bit of advice here I can give is don't think of it as "Railroading" but as a "Plan B".
Because optimally that's what you want, your players to be able to lead the story, but if that doesn't work you at least have something to fall back onto.