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<blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8713576" data-attributes="member: 20564">I find that players who primarily play traditional prep games have been trained to be reactive.&nbsp; The strong, sometimes inviolate, feeling is that the DM will put the adventure in front of them, and they need to accept it.&nbsp; It's not a preference to react, it's what they have to do to catch the hook of the adventure, so that's their default mode of play.But there are RPGs with a lot more player direction.&nbsp; For example Apocalypse World has Fronts - things that are going to get worse unless the characters deal with them.&nbsp; And the players are quite adept at either picking a front or working towards another goal in a proactive manner.&nbsp; A large part of it is different expectations, and reinforcement that you pick what you do.Just telling players primarily familiar with D&amp;D and similar games that it's a sandbox still leaves them having to overcome their training inclinations and their assumptions about what they should be doing.&nbsp; And still may hit into other assumptions - I did that to a set of smart veteran D&amp;D players having told them in session 0 that they would be setting direction and the world was non-level-specific.&nbsp; Half couldn't make up their mind, only one suggested anything outside the presented, which was research into a few of the presented, and the paladin eventually convinced the party to go for the one that was the biggest threat to order - but with the assumption that the world was level specific and it was the DM's job to make sure that whatever challenge they went after would be fun, even though session 0 established that it was not level specific and there would be threats to big to handle via combat.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Blue, post: 8713576, member: 20564"] I find that players who primarily play traditional prep games have been trained to be reactive. The strong, sometimes inviolate, feeling is that the DM will put the adventure in front of them, and they need to accept it. It's not a preference to react, it's what they have to do to catch the hook of the adventure, so that's their default mode of play. But there are RPGs with a lot more player direction. For example Apocalypse World has Fronts - things that are going to get worse unless the characters deal with them. And the players are quite adept at either picking a front or working towards another goal in a proactive manner. A large part of it is different expectations, and reinforcement that you pick what you do. Just telling players primarily familiar with D&D and similar games that it's a sandbox still leaves them having to overcome their training inclinations and their assumptions about what they should be doing. And still may hit into other assumptions - I did that to a set of smart veteran D&D players having told them in session 0 that they would be setting direction and the world was non-level-specific. Half couldn't make up their mind, only one suggested anything outside the presented, which was research into a few of the presented, and the paladin eventually convinced the party to go for the one that was the biggest threat to order - but with the assumption that the world was level specific and it was the DM's job to make sure that whatever challenge they went after would be fun, even though session 0 established that it was not level specific and there would be threats to big to handle via combat. [/QUOTE]

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