Quote from: hexgrid;847249This is incredibly passive aggressive. It's always better to discuss issues like this out of game. Sandboxes aren't for everybody, and there's nothing wrong with that.

RPGs inevitably depend on the active participation and contributions of all involved players; it doesn't matter if the game is supposed to be a sandbox or not: an entirely passive player or a player who treats his gamemaster like an entertainer without contributing to the game is a loadstone for any RPG group.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;847180Try having a session where nothing happens.

Seriously.  If you ask each player what they're doing, and each one says "nothing," then say "nothing happens."

And sit there totally silent.

If you can bear to do so for five minutes, it will transform your game.  Either the players will realize that they need to do something, or you will realize that they aren't really interested in playing.

I'm completely, totally serious.  Don't initiate the action, make the players do it.  And the best way to make them do it is to refuse to do it for them.

I used to ask my players "What do you want to do?" and one witty guy would always reply "Take over the world!"

If you challenge the players to drive their own goals, there better be a setting where they can decide how to achieve their goals. What factions are there? What resources? Who knows what? What are the likely concequences of actions?

Sandboxes can have hooks and PC motivations provided by the DM. For example:

* Dwarf, you need to raise 2,000 gp to ransom your brother from a dragon.

* Cleric, a senior priest of your temple was investigating this valley for signs of vampirism when he disappeared two months ago.

* Rogue, you are being hunted by bounty-hunters sent by the lord of the neighbouring barony.

* Everyone, a run-down village is situated in the center of valley. Looming over the valley on either side are two small castles, each one held by a lord who claims to be the rightful baron.

If players can't come up with some plan of action after a basic setup like that, they need to be smacked.

PCs need to be integrated into the setting.  Sandboxes do not work so well if everyone just makes characters and you ask them what they want to do.

I am not very familiar with Vampire, but there is like a Prince who rules the city and other NPCs around.  PCs need to start the game with backgrounds and connections to to Prince and NPCs.

1. Coming Up with Engaging Hooks

QuoteOne of the reasons sandbox play worked so well in original D&D was the reward & XP system. The goal of play was to acquire treasure and thereby grow in personal power & influence. Rumors of undiscovered treasures somewhere was the motivating factor for players to be proactive and get out there looking for it.

If not treasure, then something needs to exist in a game to drive players to seek it out. A purely plot driven game without any "carrot" to entice players to go do things is often going to result in the PCs waiting around for something to happen to them because that is a surefire way to know that what they are engaging with matters.

- that' makes sense, however, there's a pretty flat XP curve and no "treasure" in VtM. If the players don't have a clear goal they want then I can't give them opportunities to get it. And they still need to "do" the thing when I give them the hook

It is SUPER HARD for me to come up with ideas, and once I do come up with an idea, it is EVEN HARDER to figure out how to make it something these guys care about and will pursue. Maybe there's an easy formula for doing this I'm not aware of. Please help.

I can't even restrict feeding because one of them Bought the  Domain background and they all feed there.

(2) -
Also, what is super hard for me is figuring out, in the rare case where one of them does pursue something and it isn't something i have planned, coming up with enough interesting obstacles on the fly to make that into series of interesting activities.

For example, player wanted to buy a boat. I made up a character for him to find. That was just a scene. Not super interesting. After the game I came up with something (what if the Toreador control all of the building trades and won't allow Kindred to buy anything without their OK (and clearly a favor)). However, that wasn't something I came up with at the time.

Do not come up with ideas to engage the PCs.  

Come up with NPCs who have agendas.  In character creation, PCs should have ties to NPCs.  In play, all you do is have the NPCs try to put their agendas into action.  The PCs ties to said NPCs will automatically draw them in.

Again, I do not know Vampire, but a simple example is something like this:

The Prince wants to eliminate all Brujah in the area for whatever reason.  The Brujah PC has buddies among the local Brujah, perhaps even her sire.  As the Prince is putting his plan in action, she quickly notices that her Brujah buddies are disappearing.  She can choose to ignore it if she wants, whereupon she will eventually be targetted.  Most likely, she will want to investigate what is happening to her buddies.

NPCs need goals and agendas.  Things need to be happening.  PCs need ties to the world.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;847151This is the biggest problem with a lot of players nowadays. They expect "the adventure" to be an amusement park ride, in which they just sit and passively enjoy.

Enough railroad, plot driven adventures can condition players to have these expectations. The game system being used can also play a role in player attitudes.

One of the reasons sandbox play worked so well in original D&D was the reward & XP system. The goal of play was to acquire treasure and thereby grow in personal power & influence. Rumors of undiscovered treasures somewhere was the motivating factor for players to be proactive and get out there looking for it.

If not treasure, then something needs to exist in a game to drive players to seek it out. A purely plot driven game without any "carrot" to entice players to go do things is often going to result in the PCs waiting around for something to happen to them because that is a surefire way to know that what they are engaging with matters.

When looking to design a sandbox style setup, think about the opportunities you will provide for adventure, then from the players perspective, think about why they would go after these opportunities, both from a player and character POV.

Darn kids these days..

Quote from: Old One Eye;847313Do not come up with ideas to engage the PCs.  

Come up with NPCs who have agendas.  In character creation, PCs should have ties to NPCs.  In play, all you do is have the NPCs try to put their agendas into action.  The PCs ties to said NPCs will automatically draw them in.

Again, I do not know Vampire, but a simple example is something like this:

The Prince wants to eliminate all Brujah in the area for whatever reason.  The Brujah PC has buddies among the local Brujah, perhaps even her sire.  As the Prince is putting his plan in action, she quickly notices that her Brujah buddies are disappearing.  She can choose to ignore it if she wants, whereupon she will eventually be targetted.  Most likely, she will want to investigate what is happening to her buddies.

NPCs need goals and agendas.  Things need to be happening.  PCs need ties to the world.

great advice.

I would add one thing.
If there is a natural in game hook that the players lock into that does help flow.
If you look at episodic TV Shows you can see the pattern. The crew of Serenity need to take on work to make money to stay alive they have some contacts that provide them with that work. The agents on NCIS get presented with a different case each week. etc
By putting this mechanism in the world you force action. Now you hope that quite soon into the game the PCs get embroiled with the world and that stuff becomes background, in TV terms the season long plot arc takes over (though here the plot is growing through the players interaction with the world, its NPCs and their schemes).

I had some guys brand new to RPGs and we ran a Strontium Dog Sandbox game where they just picked a new Bounty to go after once they sorted out the last one. Meant they were never short of something to do and unlike trying to drive the PCs to interact with the world through a meta mechnic like Experience (you want your character to get more powerful -> to get more powerful you need gold to gain xp -> so go and find gold) this drives them through an in game process which actually gives them some genuine believable motivations.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;847080However, this still doesn't get the players to DO anything or follow up on any of these things. If I actually go after the players, they'll respond to that situation, but that's kind of it.

So if I was standing within the setting watching the player characters they would be doing absolutely nothing?

They have no goals? No plans achieve any type of goal? It doesn't have to be elaborate, it can be as basic as "I want more loot!"

As for following up on things then that is a sign they are not interested in that thing. Now depending on what it is that may or may not bite them in the ass. But that should be on a bell curves. At the low end there things that can be ignored with no consequence what soever. At the high end you got to stupid to ignore it. Then there is the middle with varying levels and types of consequences.

Back to getting them motivated. Each of them should have something in mind that they wanted to do as their character when they created them. It is a rare gamer that doesn't. Understand however it is rarely anything elaborate and often it boils down to mawr powrez! or mawr lutz!. Neither of which I have a problem with.

But you should know what each of your players want as their characters. What may be difficult is figuring out what approach will actually interest them and still remain challenging. There are lots of ways in real life and in myth to get loot, you have to be observant enough to figure out which of them is interesting to the group.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;847308If the players don't have a clear goal they want then I can't give them opportunities to get it.

Create a world with as much detail and as many moving parts as you're comfortable dealing with.  Expose this world to the players.  Then let them find their own opportunities to pursue their goals.  In idealized sandbox play, you shouldn't have to go out of your way to provide opportunities for anything because, in a sufficiently-detailed world, the opportunities will naturally be there already.  (But, again, that's the ideal.  In the real world, deliberately-placed opportunities are sometimes needed as a fallback position.)

Quote from: PencilBoy99;847308it is EVEN HARDER to figure out how to make it something these guys care about and will pursue. Maybe there's an easy formula for doing this I'm not aware of.

The easiest formula for finding goals the players will care about and pursue is to have the players come up with the goals themselves.

Note that they may not do this explicitly or deliberately.  Pay attention to general game-related chatter, in case someone reveals a goal by saying "man, I wish I had an X" or "wouldn't it be cool if we did Y?".

Quote from: PencilBoy99;847308For example, player wanted to buy a boat. I made up a character for him to find. That was just a scene. Not super interesting.

Buying a boat seems pretty mundane.  Why should it be any more difficult than that?

How many NPCs do you know about in your setting?  How much do you know about them?  Would any of them have a reason to not want the PCs to get a boat?  Would any of them just want to generally fuck with the PCs and happen to be in the right place at the right time to mess with them during the boat purchase?  Did the player just want a boat to have one, or was it for a specific reason that some NPC might object to?  Or perhaps it's the seller who has enemies that want to prevent the sale?

If there's a reason for an NPC to interfere, or for something to go wrong in general, then, sure, throw that complication into the process of buying the boat.  But don't feel like you have to force a complication into the transaction purely for the sake of having one.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;8473081. Coming Up with Engaging Hooks

As Old One Eye said, you need NPCs whose goals intersect with the players.  A cabal of vampire hunting knights, for example, won't need any special motivation to start tracking down and attacking the PCs.  They don't even need to be tough enough to threaten the PCs in direct combat; as long as enough of them escape the PCs to start messing with their stuff, you have a plot that the PCs can't help but engage with.

QuoteIt is SUPER HARD for me to come up with ideas, and once I do come up with an idea, it is EVEN HARDER to figure out how to make it something these guys care about and will pursue. Maybe there's an easy formula for doing this I'm not aware of. Please help.

I find it hard to come up with ideas, too, but my mantra is that the GM's job is to entertain, not to be totally original.  Steal liberally from anything you come across.  Maybe you watch an episode of Dexter and decide that there is a serial killer who hunts down and kills bad guys in your world.  Hell, call him Dexter.  Trust me, most players won't care as long as it's fun.  

One of the greatest recurring villains I ever met, as a player, was a pirate in a Star Wars campaign named "The Dread Pirate Roberts".  Twenty years on, I still remember him fondly.

QuoteI can't even restrict feeding because one of them Bought the  Domain background and they all feed there.

To me, the Domain background says "The PCs have something you can threaten."  Some players believe that, if they have paid character points for something, that it should be impossible for the GM to take it away or threaten in.  Frankly, that's bullshit - any asset that the PCs have is a legitimate target.  The only rule is that you can't take it away without giving them a reasonable opportunity to defend it first.

So, if the PCs have a Domain that allows them safe feeding, let them know months in advance that the countries next door are raising armies to invade them.  Let them know about the scheming nobles who are trying to have the domain legally reassigned.  Let them watch the enemy raiders riding en chevauchee through their lands, burning crops and villages and damaging the economy.  Let the peasants revolt because they feel that their lord is failing in his duty to protect them.  Let the local preachers start calling out the PCs as minions of Satan, trying to encourage their followers to desert.  If all of this stuff happens and the PCs do nothing, THEN you can start taking away their domain.

QuoteAlso, what is super hard for me is figuring out, in the rare case where one of them does pursue something and it isn't something i have planned, coming up with enough interesting obstacles on the fly to make that into series of interesting activities.

For example, player wanted to buy a boat. I made up a character for him to find. That was just a scene. Not super interesting. After the game I came up with something (what if the Toreador control all of the building trades and won't allow Kindred to buy anything without their OK (and clearly a favor)). However, that wasn't something I came up with at the time.

I suck at improvising, so I use tables and try to prep some ideas in advance.  In your example, I'd let them buy the boat, and when I thought of the Toreador idea after the fact, I'd just work it into the next game.  For example, a week or two later, a messenger comes from the Toreador, informing the PCs that they owe money and favours for buying a boat without permission.

This will probably piss the PCs off.  Excellent, because pissed off PCs do stuff.  All you need to figure out is how the Toreador will respond to various likely PC reactions.  If the PCs pay up, the Toreador will ask them to do X, Y and Z (which will lead into another adventure).  If the PCs refuse, the Toreador will start responding by political maneuvering, attempted assassination, or whatever.  If the PCs do something clever and unexpected, the Toreador will be surprised and will not come up with a good response right away (which gives you time between sessions to think about it).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;847180If you can bear to do so for five minutes, it will transform your game.  

Five minutes is all it takes for them to crack? Man, your players are a bunch of hyperactive weasels on crack compared to mine. If allowed to, my players will take much longer than that just to decide what kind of pizza they like. And I'm not saying order, I'm saying like. The Byzantine negotiations for pizza ordering make a turn of Diplomacy look simple.

It sounds like the setting, genre and characters may not be particularly compelling or "relatable" to you or your players, if both you and they are having a hard time thinking of interesting things to do or care about.

It's ironic, but I've found that many players get much more involved in simple human characters that make sense and that anyone can relate to, than in characters loaded with "cool" supernatural powers. Unfortunately, many players tend to feel like they really want lots of cool superpowers, even at character creation.

Starting out playing a complex fantastic character can require a lot of imagination, and without it, it can be easy to draw a blank. It's much easier to relate to abilities the character actually gained in play, starting as a human they could easily relate to.

Also, playing dark characters such as vampires can be hard to relate to, especially if they haven't had the experience of being turned, and are just told they're vampires and need to drink blood, and told (or decide during character creation) that they care about X, Y and Z, unless they're talented roleplayers.

I find I have a hard time relating to GM'ing most games where players are monsters, too, because when I get into the detail of what it involves, I find that monsters are usually pretty awful unsympathetic people, and the "they're so cool and interesting" thing tends not to hold water for me. At best, with a LOT of thinking about what this actually means, it's interesting but horribly dark for anyone that's not self-deluding a lot.

So, for many reasons, trying to learn to be a strong sandbox GM for non-expert players, in a vampire setting, sounds especially hard. I almost never do vampire games, and not just because I'm not into it.

If the PCs are semi-normal humans, they have more or less normal human feelings and cares, and they have family, friends and people they work with or for, and they care about other people and are have various interests that all make sense to us. So if any of the people they care about have anything going on, it's a potential thing to care about that they can understand and relate to naturally.

If the PC's spend their days in a coffin and want to suck blood at night, and have various bizarre powers, and limited concerns, all of which involve GM stories about NPCs they as players haven't really experienced relationships with, that's a massive barrier to natural motivation. As a player, if Count Darkula's dominion is threatened by the Huha Brotherhood clan, personally I'm already wondering why I agreed to play in a vampire game.

Quote from: Bren;847442Five minutes is all it takes for them to crack? Man, your players are a bunch of hyperactive weasels on crack compared to mine. If allowed to, my players will take much longer than that just to decide what kind of pizza they like. And I'm not saying order, I'm saying like. The Byzantine negotiations for pizza ordering make a turn of Diplomacy look simple.

Oh, well, shit, PIZZA!  That's different.

I finally solved the problem by throwing a shitfit one night.  I pointed out that we ordered all these fucking weirdass pizzas like "Gravel and Toejam" and "Pickled Eel Guts and Peanut Butter" or whatever, plus ONE sausage and mushroom because I don't like weirdass pizzas...

... and when they finally show up EVERYBODY dives on the fucking sausage and mushroom and the weirdass pizzas never get eaten.  So I literally pounded on the table and yelled until people shut up, and pointed out in a loud voice that this kept happening, and that from now on all pizzas would be sausage and mushroom because that's all anybody fucking ever ate!

So from then on all pizzas were sausage and mushroom.

I got away with this because i) these people were all close friends I'd known for decades, and ii) I was RIGHT, Crom damn it!  Nobody ever ate anything but the damn sausage and mushroom.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;8473081. Coming Up with Engaging Hooks



- that' makes sense, however, there's a pretty flat XP curve and no "treasure" in VtM. If the players don't have a clear goal they want then I can't give them opportunities to get it. And they still need to "do" the thing when I give them the hook

It is SUPER HARD for me to come up with ideas, and once I do come up with an idea, it is EVEN HARDER to figure out how to make it something these guys care about and will pursue. Maybe there's an easy formula for doing this I'm not aware of. Please help.

I can't even restrict feeding because one of them Bought the  Domain background and they all feed there.

(2) -
Also, what is super hard for me is figuring out, in the rare case where one of them does pursue something and it isn't something i have planned, coming up with enough interesting obstacles on the fly to make that into series of interesting activities.

For example, player wanted to buy a boat. I made up a character for him to find. That was just a scene. Not super interesting. After the game I came up with something (what if the Toreador control all of the building trades and won't allow Kindred to buy anything without their OK (and clearly a favor)). However, that wasn't something I came up with at the time.

When you ask them what they want to do, what do they say?

Also, to echo another poster, why should buying a boat be more than "It costs $75,800, do you have the cash?  Done."  Complicating a mundane transaction just for the sake of complication is poor design.