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Message: <blockquote data-quote="painandgreed" data-source="post: 4028090" data-attributes="member: 24969">Ditto.My games are usually sandbox games. I make up the NPCs and world, and decide how the plot and world will develop without the intervention of the PCs. How things develop from there depends on the PCs and their actions. In my last game, to make the PCs pivotal, I made the setting with about five different factions all balanced against each other or unable to upset the balance. The PCs were the last bit of weight that upset that balance. If they sided with one of the three major powers, they would tip the balance in favor of the power they sided with. if they sided with one of the minor powers, they would have allowed that power to become a major one. If they decided to maintain the status quo, they could have done that also. Needless to say, each faction was trying to sway the PCs to their side, and I found it surprising how much the PCs decisions were based on NPC/PC interactions and roleplay. They notably turned down greater in game rewards of both a material and status nature to side with the NPC they liked the most but had less to offer.However, PCs need plots. They need to be given a hook to catch them. Besides that most players are simply conditioned this way and will sit at an inn drinking as a party till they run out of money and starve, their characters would be experiencing the world 24/7 while the players do not. A players experience sitting in the inn for a night is limited to a few sentences, the characters experience is a night of talking, hearing rumors, adn telling stories where even idle chit chat would have clues for the character as to where to find adventure and what is happening in the world. It's the GMs job to condence that and give the 'good bits version' to the players. Besides obvious things going on in the world, I typically provide three hooks, easy, medium, and hard to the players and then let them decide which one to follow. I also try and get the players to flesh out their characters with backgrounds and goals, and then provide them with hooks that are based on those (which they may or may not decide to do something with). One thing that I find useful is to let time pass. If nothing of interest is going on, then ask the players if there is anything they wish to do, and simply say "nothing of interest happens for several weeks until..." If they want to stop you and have their characters do something in that time, let them, but cut out all the time they would normally be standing around doing nothing. A character standing around doing nothing for a month is a sentence or two, a player having to role play standing around and doing nothing for a month or two is a pain for both the DM and player.</blockquote>

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