or they don't

Quote from: JoannaGeist on Today at 07:07:44 AMThe players choose their goals. The players make choices.
 

What goals and what choices?

Quote from: JoannaGeist on Today at 07:07:44 AMThe players choose their goals. The players make choices.
 

Within the context of the world the GM creates, right? I think that's what they're saying. The PCs can do whatever they want in the game, but the GM is the one who ultimately decides what the game is.

Anyway, I agree with BadApple about how to start a game. You setup some obvious railroady crap just to get it going and give enough hooks for the players to become engaged, then after that let it play out organically. Typically, players will see all sorts of non-existent subplots and machinations that you clearly did not put there but can appropriate and flesh out to keep them interested. It is always easier to run a smooth game when the players are dictating what direction to go than forcing them to do anything because otherwise you might as well be just reading them a story.

Quote from: JoannaGeist on Today at 07:07:44 AMThe players choose their goals. The players make choices.

As a GM I am not, though, obliged to actually run their third session of "lets ignore the plot hooks, go to the night club, sing kereoke, and people watch the night away."

Which happened... only it was five sessions before I completely gave up. Turns out some people crave the club life as much as the drinks they can no longer have. Another player was using it as an excuse to search fashion sites for what her PC was wearing to the nightclub that night. The third was at the table because he wanted the company.

I am not required to spend four hours a week indulging that.

There's a tacit agreement between players and GMs that the players will at least try to engage the plot hooks the GM dangles for them. If you disagree, that's fine, but you're also not welcome in my games.

That was a "campaign" with zero movers. I already shared my story where there was just one mover and how the game crashed out when they were absent.

I've found that you can train at least some passive players to be more active.  The trick that works best is to start a game with obvious short-term goals--almost pure railroad--then introduce mutually exclusive short-term goals.

I've done it very gently and I've done it hardcore.  Depends on the players.  Start them with 1, then have 2 mutually exclusive with an obvious soft landing for the road not taken, so that they know if they wanted that goal met, they had to choose it when it was presented.  Haul the princess out of the dungeon or haul the treasure, you can't do both and live, since it slows you down to much.  Players start getting creative and active trying to come up with ways to do both--and sometimes they even do for awhile.  Ratchet up until they can't.  Now they have to choose, and choices matter. 

After that sinks in, hit them with 5, 6, 7, or more hooks, some mutually exclusive, some not, not at all obvious which is which. Hmm, some investigation might be in order, but if they want to flounder around and accomplish none of them, that's a viable option. If being nice, doesn't hurt to make one of the hooks a "get info" mini-quest. 

Build in some down-time, but don't have hooks that stretch out.  Yeah, you get to rest up for a couple of months with no obvious hooks--time can pass quickly if the players are all passive.  Then things heat up again all at once.

If you are lucky, it's at this point that 1 or 2 of them have become semi-active players.  They are trying to get ahead of things. They start using that downtime to find something to prepare them for the next flurry. Meanwhile, there are still things happening that they can't control, world is very much in motion, and the rest of the group is at least willing to go along with the active players.  (Sometimes, the active players need the GM's help to stop the nonsense.)

Quote from: BadApple on February 23, 2025, 12:48:58 PMI often start a campaign with a little bit of a railroad to get play started and then open it up to a sandbox.  Am I wrong?

Not In my experience, if you have a "true" sandbox without any direction, with something vague like "You've arrived in town, what do you want to do?" players will feel completely lost and unsure how to begin. You need some hooks or plots (which are pretty much the same thing, in my opinion); what you don't need is a strictly linear story. Even a very old-school "Here's a giant dungeon ready for you to explore" serves as a plot hook.

I'm of the mindset that D&D needs SOME kind of plot (hook, etc) or you have absolutely nothing, just players muddling around confused, or, worse IMHO, you're just rolling on random tables.

Quote from: Brad on Today at 08:04:32 AM

Quote from: JoannaGeist on Today at 07:07:44 AMThe players choose their goals. The players make choices.
 

Within the context of the world the GM creates, right? I think that's what they're saying. The PCs can do whatever they want in the game, but the GM is the one who ultimately decides what the game is.

Yeah. The GM comes up with whatever scenarios exist in the world, and the characters react to them.
I went through a period where I was so afraid of railroading that I thought myself into a corner and couldn't figure out how to get an adventure started. The way out of that corner is to realize that the characters can make all the decisions they want, but they have to have some kind of context to make those decisions from.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on Today at 10:16:53 AM

Quote from: Brad on Today at 08:04:32 AM

Quote from: JoannaGeist on Today at 07:07:44 AMThe players choose their goals. The players make choices.
 

Within the context of the world the GM creates, right? I think that's what they're saying. The PCs can do whatever they want in the game, but the GM is the one who ultimately decides what the game is.

Yeah. The GM comes up with whatever scenarios exist in the world, and the characters react to them.
I went through a period where I was so afraid of railroading that I thought myself into a corner and couldn't figure out how to get an adventure started. The way out of that corner is to realize that the characters can make all the decisions they want, but they have to have some kind of context to make those decisions from.

That's something important. I think too many people talk about a "sandbox" as though they mean there is nothing. You drop the players in a town and then wing everything else. There are no hooks, no "quests", no dungeon that can be a place to go just "What do you want to do today?" which IMHO is just stupid and nonsensical. Unlike a videogame you can't just go up to every NPC you meet and talk to them hoping they give some "clue".

I've noticed that some players just aren't ready for a sandbox, either because they're too new to the hobby or because they're experienced and too used to being railroaded. Anyone who plays modules regularly, for example.

It's also more difficult if the player characters aren't interested in being mercenaries or looking for treasure as a goal, or picking their own goals. If the players want to be good guys, then that usually means they'll need some kind of goal in mind that either involves following someone else's orders, or a specific quest tied to a specific location and sequence of events. If the campaign involves belonging to a faction like a military, it's going to be mission-based.

I really like the OSR sandbox model overall and I try to do it as much as I can, but I have to say that it's somewhat tied to the other D&D concepts like adventuring for hire, a premodern economy, and premodern methods of travel. For example, if you're doing a science fiction game with instant faster than light travel and an entire galaxy open, it's going to be difficult doing a traditional hexcrawl or letting the players just wander aimlessly into trouble.

Some settings also just lend themselves more to a less sandboxy style.

Superheroes, for example, are typically more reactive than proactive. If the GM isn't providing regular "Trouble! In the City!" they're doing superheroes wrong.

Indeed, if I know a particular group tends to be more passive, I'll often recommend we play a superhero campaign precisely because they won't have to make nearly as many "what do we do next?" sort of decisions. The proactive ones start patrolling or investigating, but the "supervillain rampage on 5th and Madison" alert hits even the most passive PC.

Even a typical "sword & sorcery" game, in my experience, has always had some kind of hook. It's never just randomly wandering into something. For example, Conan hears about the Tower of the Elephant and wants to rob the giant jewel. Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser acquire (IIRC Mouser actually stole it) a map to the House of Angargni that's rumored to be full of treasure and go there. They aren't "Conan was randomly wandering the road out of Zamora when..."

I think that's part of why my preferred mix is "episodic" style (anthology-style one might call it). each adventure has a hook, but they aren't necessarily related, and each adventure the PCs might be in a completely different area, the reason why they've journeyed there largely left as filler (although usually involving some tale of riches). SOME adventures might be linked together as a two or three-part "miniseries", and future adventures might have callbacks to previous ones (recurring villain, something done previously comes back to bite the PCs, and so on) but what you basically have is a collection of short stories featuring the same protagonists, in the vein of Conan/Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser/Kothar/etc.

A paladin need not be played lawful stupid. A sandbox GM need not run a game hook stupid.

Having hooks doesn't stop a thing being a sandbox.  Forcing hooks does.  Or players only chasing hooks turns it into a de facto non-sandbox. The mere existence of a hook is merely one other aspect of the setting.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on Today at 11:14:13 AMA paladin need not be played lawful stupid. A sandbox GM need not run a game hook stupid.

Having hooks doesn't stop a thing being a sandbox.  Forcing hooks does.  Or players only chasing hooks turns it into a de facto non-sandbox. The mere existence of a hook is merely one other aspect of the setting.

EXACTLY. Too many people I've talked to think having any sort of "hook" means it's not a sandbox. Although IMHO if players are always ignoring hooks, they're just being jackasses and wasting the DM's time.