Trying to get players to bite on hooks.

[SangoProduction]

I do not run open world games. While it's interesting in theory to have a bunch of options for things to do, they each require preparation of their own. Thusly, while there is certainly less pressure to prepare much, the preparation you do have has to be split between likely paths they choose.

But I was really into the Anbennar setting and decided to make a game around that. Only made sense to be open world. Boy does that feel like a mistake. Sure, I didn't say on the game posting that it was open world, but I did in the session 0. I also gave them a good bunch of leads and hooks based on their background (or explicit character interest, where the kobold was concerned), and asked them to pick a direction they wish to go in.

You can already guess what I'm going to say, but... the players choose to not pick anything. So last day before the session is to start, I need to prepare *something.* They did at least make choices when I listed out the potential jobs they can take while in-session.
I mean, I like to improvise. That's where I'm at my best. It was a fun (if short) session. But I have to admit, it's rather annoying.

[Zanos]

Unpopular opinion: Just railroad them.

I vastly prefer open world games myself, but they only work if your players are of a particular type that have their own goals and will pursue activities to achieve their goals. A lot of players need to be force fed an adventure for them to do anything, or they will "choose" to do nothing. The only other advice I have is to provide context. I've played in "open world" games where the PCs had literally zero information about the setting(transplants from another 'dimension'), and so the open world only existed in so far as we were aware of what little information the DM choose to provide us.

[SangoProduction]

Unpopular opinion: Just railroad them.

I vastly prefer open world games myself, but they only work if your players are of a particular type that have their own goals and will pursue activities to achieve their goals. A lot of players need to be force fed an adventure for them to do anything, or they will "choose" to do nothing. The only other advice I have is to provide context. I've played in "open world" games where the PCs had literally zero information about the setting(transplants from another 'dimension'), and so the open world only existed in so far as we were aware of what little information the DM choose to provide us.

I mean, that's ultimately what I'm planning to do.
There was one person who said there's not enough information to choose between the hooks. Well, thankfully they literally start right in the middle of an adventuring company, with plenty of people running around, stocking shelves, serving food and what have you. A ton to ask, and get information from. If they chose to pursue any information gathering.
But, a good couple minutes of awkward silence as no one does anything, and the local commander offers them a couple of jobs.
By the end of the session, they're once again in a populated outpost, including a couple notable characters that they do not actively talk to. Reminded them that they can ask whatever questions they need.

But yeah. I'm probably just going to need to just assign an adventure to the group. It's either that, or the game falls apart. lol.

[AvatarVecna]

My own attempts to run sandboxes, even ones as sandboxy as "an official adventure with a big sandbox in chapter 3 for players to explore until you feel like moving onto chapter 4 of the railroad", has taught me a very important DMing lesson:

If the players knew what kind of story they wanted to play through, they'd be the one behind the screen instead of you.

Players don't want the freedom to go wherever they want, because if given the opportunity, they bicker amongst themselves and ultimately decide to wait until they gain more information to base a decision on. And either the plot advances without them and they fall behind (which is your fault), or you put the plot on pause until they figure out what they want and the game stagnates for 6 months (which is your fault). When players say they want the freedom to choose, they mean they want the freedom to opt out of dumb railroads, or to go on tours around town before hopping back on the train, instead of being bound to the rail for all eternity.

But if they really, truly didn't wanna be riding someone else's railroad? If they had a genuine thing they wanted to chase down and they weren't gonna let a silly thing like "democracy" stand in their way? They'd be building their own railroad. And probably a DMPC.

[pabelfly]

How I do semi-open world stuff:

Session 1 - I hand out one or two missions to every player, which I've printed out in advance. Each mission is a short synopsis of the task required, a few important information points related to the mission, and the reward for the mission, which are identical. If you don't do identical rewards, this influences what players will pick, which kid of removes the point of open-world IMO. Players pick their preferred mission.

The players will organize supplies specific to the mission, and then they journey to their destination with a few random encounters along the way. The random encounters can be organized in advance and outside of very different adventure locations (eg one mission is out at sea while others are on land), can be used regardless of mission choice.

End the session having arrived at their destination, ready to start the actual mission that they chose next session, and you can prep specifically for that without feeling like you've done pointless prep work.

[Biggus]

The random encounters can be organized in advance and outside of very different adventure locations (eg one mission is out at sea while others are on land), can be used regardless of mission choice.

You can go further than this, as well as random encounters treasure, locations and so on can be prepared in advance and used for whatever adventure they choose.

If you don't mind being a bit sneaky, all the hooks can ultimately relate to exactly the same adventure, with just the start bit being different.

[pabelfly]

You can go further than this, as well as random encounters treasure, locations and so on can be prepared in advance and used for whatever adventure they choose.

I'm way too lazy with my treasure to do this. I just do milestone levelling and milestone gold.

I do like the random location idea though, I'm stealing that.

[DrMartin]

I think that it is fine to have a prepared scenario to start off an open world game. Having a strong, memorable start to get the party together and set them on the road to adventure is more important than radical adherence to sandbox.

for later though, i find it helpful to think that the "open world" works for everyone around the table: share the creative load with your players.

one thing that works for this, is to remind them of their impelling needs and let *them* come up with ways to get rid of it - let them come up with NPC, contacts, allies, even rivals from the character's past who might have a job for them or help them out.
Have them improvise part of their backstories, ask questions, and follow up on those questions to put some details in the world. This moves the players behind the PC from a purely reactive role typical of the classic dnd game loop into a more active one, which takes some getting use to, especially for old hands - but it does work, and makes GMing more fun, in my experience.

Once they have "put into the world" the possible solution to their problem, you only have to make it interesting. Not immediately available, with strings attached, or putting them to the path for other adventures. Sometimes the players will even suggest these themselves.

Of course this is way easier with some tool and preparations. The second half of pretty much any of Kevin Crawford's books (sine nomine publishing) is a set of tools and tables and principles for running sandbox, and they are, in my experience, excellent.

[D+1]

Players don't want a choice of adventures that they have to pick from - even if they THINK that choice is what they want. What they want is THE ILLUSION of choice. They want to feel that because they made the choice the adventure is going to be more fun and more likely to be personally relevant to their individual PC. But there's no way they CAN know that because they're not creating ANY of the ongoing adventures. They're almost always choosing in the blind, only hoping that the choice they made turns out to be the best one. The DM, on the other hand, they ALWAYS know (or bloody well should) what's most likely to happen as a consequence of any choice the players make in selecting a direction for their adventuring to turn to. But players have an even greater dislike of being so deliberately routed by the DM that it's obvious there can be no other choice. They want the OPTION of changing directions and doing something entirely different on a whim, but they nonetheless also want the DM to gently LEAD them into the adventure/story (or gently lead the adventure/story TO them if they "choose poorly".

One of the pitfalls of sandbox campaigns is players facing choice paralysis. They have UNLIMITED choices of what to do - and too often a DM that isn't weighting any of their potential choices to really look any better than others. All their options are simply like a dozen identical curtains with slightly different labels that the DM waits for them to choose from. Only when the choice is made is the curtain finally pulled back to reveal what's ACTUALLY behind that curtain - and it could be a new car or it could be a goat. Too late for the players to make an INFORMED choice of what to do. That effectively leaves players AIMLESS. They don't want to choose because they can't know which choice is genuinely likely to be the better one. So they waffle and delay and choose nothing.

If players are EVER hesitant about what direction to go, what adventure seed to chase after, a DM should NEVER leave them struggling. PUSH them in a direction or literally have an adventure that HAPPENS TO THEM without them having to even make a choice. I took this principle from the Star Wars d6 RPG - if the PC's/players can't decide on what to do, THROW STORMTROOPERS AT THEM and keep them occupied. (Same if the DM can't figure out what to HAVE them do - just throw a bunch of stormtroopers out to fight and use the time that it takes to resolve the combat to decide what to do. Give them an in media res adventure start. They can either follow it to the end or they'll figure out in the middle of a fight that there's some other thing they'd really RATHER be doing, and then they'll extricate themselves from the ongoing events and go DO the other thing.

Even when players can choose anything they want they'll find that they're unsure of what it IS that they want. Don't leave them STRUGGLING to find their own direction just because it's possible for them to CHOOSE that direction personally. GIVE them a direction to go and a push in that direction. If they don't like it, they'll change direction. If they still aren't sure, well there's at least something happening for them to participate in anyway rather than sitting around idle, or groping in the dark wishing something interesting would happen. A sandbox game doesn't completely relieve a DM of the responsibility of still keeping the campaign running smoothly.

[Saintheart]

You can go further than this, as well as random encounters treasure, locations and so on can be prepared in advance and used for whatever adventure they choose.

If you don't mind being a bit sneaky, all the hooks can ultimately relate to exactly the same adventure, with just the start bit being different.

A mild cough: while this technique is a totally reasonable strategy to consider from a preparation standpoint, and I can completely understand DMs who do it, and I am not making any sort of moral judgment about the sort of DMs who do ... there is a vein of criticism that calls this generating Quantum Ogres.



...as in, it doesn't matter which path the players take, the result is precisely the same.

Like all serious literary criticism applied to Pretendy Funtime Games, take it with a grain of salt, but it's probably one of the more OOC-drama-inducing things you can be caught out doing as a DM. Because it easily is characterised as railroading, that great generator of Category Error around gaming tables which has its roots in immature DMing but seems to serve as a wonderful go-to criticism of any DM who actually would like to present the party with material he prepared earlier. But we're going to leave that all to one side.


More on topic, some of the best advice I've seen on the problem of getting players to bite on hooks is to present the hook while the players are doing something else. This can be while they're heading out to the horrible hole in the ground that adventurers seem determined to go walking into looking for trouble, or can be while they're doing something as mundane as shopping for the next 50 arrows. I would argue this is a better alternative than just "five job ads on the adventurers' noticeboard in the town square, pick one", because it actually requires the players to make a choice - either carry on with what you're doing (with whatever consequences flow from that), or detour and look down this new path (with whatever consequences flow from that, too). That, in a word, is exploration.

That, in turn, asks a DM to just ask himself - "given what I know of the players and the characters, what are they likely to want to do next?" This can be garnered either by carefully personality-profiling your guests :) out of session ... or, simply put, asking them at the conclusion of the session if there's the opportunity. Whichever method, you make a short list of said things players are likely to want to do, and then use that list as places to throw the hooks in.

[SangoProduction]

I mean, adventure-agnostic encounters are ones that aren't important to the adventure. They fill in the time slot for fighting, because there's a time slot for fighting, and not because anything about the combat matters. And...honestly, quite often that definitely seems to be what matters.
Now, making use of unused preparation is good, because you can easily adapt an premade encounter easier than you can create one from scratch. At least in general.

[Biggus]

A mild cough: while this technique is a totally reasonable strategy to consider from a preparation standpoint, and I can completely understand DMs who do it, and I am not making any sort of moral judgment about the sort of DMs who do ... there is a vein of criticism that calls this generating Quantum Ogres.

...as in, it doesn't matter which path the players take, the result is precisely the same.

Like all serious literary criticism applied to Pretendy Funtime Games, take it with a grain of salt, but it's probably one of the more OOC-drama-inducing things you can be caught out doing as a DM. Because it easily is characterised as railroading, that great generator of Category Error around gaming tables which has its roots in immature DMing but seems to serve as a wonderful go-to criticism of any DM who actually would like to present the party with material he prepared earlier. But we're going to leave that all to one side.

I haven't actually done the "all the hooks relate to exactly the same adventure" thing (although I have occasionally made it so that The Interesting Thing will be in whichever direction they happen to go). Apart from anything else my players are remarkably un-contrary by the standards of roleplayers and are generally quite happy to follow whatever hook I give them, so I haven't really needed to.

I will say though that I'm not willing or able to write five adventures and throw away the four the PCs don't choose, I just don't have that kind of time. It's a built-in part of DMing that sometimes things you've spent a long time over are wasted, like an enemy NPC gets unlucky and is killed before they get to take a single action, but I try to minimise that. Material which doesn't get used for one reason or another will generally be used somewhere else later, maybe with a few levels/HD added if necessary.

[pabelfly]

Apart from anything else my players are remarkably un-contrary by the standards of roleplayers and are generally quite happy to follow whatever hook I give them, so I haven't really needed to.

My experiences:
Players will pick whatever option you don't want them to pick. If you've prepped three out of four options, they'll pick the one you didn't prep. And if you prep all four options, they'll come up with a fifth.

Oh, and if you want a player to roll high, they'll roll a 1 or a 2, and if you want a player to roll a low, they'll be rolling nat 20s all day.

[Biggus]

My experiences:
Players will pick whatever option you don't want them to pick. If you've prepped three out of four options, they'll pick the one you didn't prep. And if you prep all four options, they'll come up with a fifth.

Ha, to be fair my players do have a remarkable capacity to come up with complex plans I hadn't thought of, missing a much easier solution that's right in front of their eyes.

[Glimbur]

As someone earlier said, it will improve your life if you end each session with an idea of what the characters are doing next session. This may require some nudging (or shoving) at the end of the session, if they are slow to decide. You might even have to do it OOC, as people are packing up. But moving their decision point sooner should help you prep more efficiently.

[Eldonauran]

I generally solve this issue with a varied approach to the matter:

One over arching series of events that are going to go on in the background, regardless of what the players (and their characters) end up getting around to handling. An existing adventuring guild offering various jobs, ranging from mediocre background tasks that the players can handle with simple skills checks (ie, more specific money making downtime activities), all the way to quests that lead to different entry points into the bigger over arching plot in the background. Most of the more or less average jobs are three to four encounters that can take up a single gameplay session (and are easily created on the fly from a list of pre-existing maps or encounter set pieces) to the seven to eight session episodes that end up giving them about two levels and some decent, powerful loot.

If the players don't interact with the overarching plot in the background, other adventurer NPC's will. The players will have gotten to know quite a few of them because important NPC's they meet will be the ones to take on these jobs, and might not return from the job. If the player's have developed attachments to those particular NPC's, this will drive them to interact with the story more, if only out of some measure of seeking vengeance/revenge or just to figure out where NPC X went and why their favorite tavern/inn is no longer open, or owned by someone else.

In the end, the players WILL be interacting with the background plot as it will eventually get to the point where it cannot be ignored and will start impacting their character's daily lives. The severity of the impact will vary based on how much they have done to stem its progression. The players will realize that they are not the center of the universe or the plot, merely one lens from which the story is being told. If they want to be in the spotlight, they have to earn it.

[Elkad]

Illusion of choice is the answer.

Doesn't matter which direction they leave town in, just move the dungeon so it's in their way.

[Resileaf]

Had a campaign like that once. Players were the lord of a castle and the campaign idea was that in the midst of a civil war, they would try to stay afloat or gain power, a Crusader Kings type of adventure. Unfortunately the player chosen to be the lord was way too indecisive and refused to go along with the civil war storyline so that left me with no other choice than to create a whole new storyline for them to follow.

Therefore your best choice is to create something new entirely and forget about the sandbox. Either your players are good at sandbox games, or they're not, and if they're not you don't want to waste your time presenting that sandbox to them because even if they don't know it, what they want is a sand castle.

[zlefin]

I'd just ggo back to a session zero situation. Straight up tell them it isn't working; you're not sure how you can do the job any better. They didn't bite any of the hooks you had, and they need to go somewhere.

If they're not going to show enough initiative, or ask probing questions to find out more about hooks of interest, then sandbox simply won't work. It's nobody's fault, sometimes campaigns just don't work out.

[Telok]

Indecision comes from too little information. Start spewing setting stuff, names of people, famous magic items, notorious bad guys with bounties on their heads, rumors of evil cults, dragons opening banks, etc., etc.

If, after fifteen or twenty minutes of blather, they still havent expressed interest you spring some assassins on them, set the building on fire, run some scantly clad members of their preferred gender past them have the tap dancing ogre troupe panic, and drop a diamond the size of a goose egg on the floor.

[Daisy]

My own attempts to run sandboxes, even ones as sandboxy as "an official adventure with a big sandbox in chapter 3 for players to explore until you feel like moving onto chapter 4 of the railroad", has taught me a very important DMing lesson:

If the players knew what kind of story they wanted to play through, they'd be the one behind the screen instead of you.

Players don't want the freedom to go wherever they want, because if given the opportunity, they bicker amongst themselves and ultimately decide to wait until they gain more information to base a decision on. And either the plot advances without them and they fall behind (which is your fault), or you put the plot on pause until they figure out what they want and the game stagnates for 6 months (which is your fault). When players say they want the freedom to choose, they mean they want the freedom to opt out of dumb railroads, or to go on tours around town before hopping back on the train, instead of being bound to the rail for all eternity.

But if they really, truly didn't wanna be riding someone else's railroad? If they had a genuine thing they wanted to chase down and they weren't gonna let a silly thing like "democracy" stand in their way? They'd be building their own railroad. And probably a DMPC.

If I hadn't finally created an account for any other reason (instead of lurking for years), it would be to say: this. This, this, this. AvatarVecna, you have hit the nail square on the head.

[Jay R]

Ideally, get players who want to play the kind of game that you want to run. No other solution is as effective, or as elegant, as this one.

Failing in that, have the path you want them to take be either far more attractive, or far more urgent, than anything else. When the orcs are attacking their village, they are pretty likely to bite on that hook.

[False God]

You can already guess what I'm going to say, but... the players choose to not pick anything. So last day before the session is to start, I need to prepare *something.* They did at least make choices when I listed out the potential jobs they can take while in-session.
I mean, I like to improvise. That's where I'm at my best. It was a fun (if short) session. But I have to admit, it's rather annoying.

Don't.

Shame them mercilessly.

You prepared a campaign. You prepared several options for them at starting. You explained that they need to pick something to start off the game. They chose nothing. In my mind they effectively chose not to play your game.

You should be under no obligation to run anything at all for them. And you should absolutely blast them for doing this.

"Pick something, don't play or run your own game."

I did it before, and surprise! When forced to actually make a decision, instead of leaving it up to the DM to make the wrong decision and allow them to complain, they picked something and the game went swimmingly from there.

[Xervous]

Put them on the train in session 1 with explicit commentary they can get off the railroad at any time. It gives them a little initial momentum so “do nothing different” is itself a choice that keeps things moving.

[Elves]

Just read the backstory as a blurb and put them in the dungeon maze

[Quertus]

Well, as bad as some (most) of my games (GM’s) have been, at least with regard to “hooks”, I’ve usually had better experiences than many of you, apparently.

Put them on the train in session 1 with explicit commentary they can get off the railroad at any time. It gives them a little initial momentum so “do nothing different” is itself a choice that keeps things moving.

Getting buy-in of “this is where you start” really isn’t the same as railroading. And I’ll agree, that initial momentum is good to get some parties going. Having a context with which to evaluate the various hooks can be advantageous.

[Jay R]

I've used one hook twice that no player has ever failed to bite on.

"Coming from the alley, you hear a woman screaming for help."

[Eldonauran]

I've used one hook twice that no player has ever failed to bite on.

"Coming from the alley, you hear a woman screaming for help."

Personally, I'd expect the trap and run in anyway. I play heroes.
Reasons for not running in: Players are not playing good characters. Players are playing good character that aren't being played well as good characters. PLayers expect an ambush and are tired of having their morals used against them.

[Biggus]

Personally, I'd expect the trap and run in anyway. I play heroes.
Reasons for not running in: Players are not playing good characters. Players are playing good character that aren't being played well as good characters. PLayers expect an ambush and are tired of having their morals used against them.

Obviously you're right about nongood characters, but if I was DMing and a PC had "good" written on their sheet and failed to respond, they would be told they'd just moved a small but noticable amount towards neutral. They don't have to rush in like idiots, but if they ignore it, they've just lost some of their goodness.

[Eldonauran]

Obviously you're right about nongood characters, but if I was DMing and a PC had "good" written on their sheet and failed to respond, they would be told they'd just moved a small but noticable amount towards neutral. They don't have to rush in like idiots, but if they ignore it, they've just lost some of their goodness.

Eh, willingness to sacrifice for others is not an absolute imperative to do so. It is the difference between charity and forced donation. The level of 'good' you are referring to is on the level of being Exalted. People should be skeptical and quick to question things, as Evil is eager, willing, and ABLE to play on their moral tendencies. It is why one does not negotiate with evil, you only destroy it.