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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mazzoli" data-source="post: 5899303" data-attributes="member: 6687941">Thanks for the outpouring of advice. I'll address a couple of specific points now.Johnny3D3D: I wish I could just get my players to decide to go to a shop. If I can convince them to decide to do that kind of stuff, then that's a pretty good idea to shake things up.DaveMage: They do have a sponsor. I'd intended him to be something of an adviser but he's become the lead decision maker. I'm thinking I'm going to have to get him out of the picture for a little bit to try to encourage some decisive action from the party.Rune: All good suggestions. I level with a milestone system, so it would essentially be party-wide bonus experience, but the fate point mechanic also sounds like an interesting idea. The player who wants to DM is fairly new to RPGs and wants to experience the other side of the screen (I actually don't set my screen up, but you know what I mean). He's working on writing up an adventure and wants me to help him with encounter balancing, and isn't interested in the job long term so I don't think that's the problem.Quickleaf: I suppose I should give an example.A recent session was supposed to be very to the point. I had some new players joining the group and one of the older players had retired their old character and was bringing in a new character due to new party dynamics, so I needed to get the new characters into the party.Partly because of this situation and partly because I've found that it's the only way to get the party to sometimes move along, I gave them one singular hook. The players understood that this was going to be the case and were fine with me not really even giving them the semblance of choice for this session. I didn't want to really force their hands quite that much, so I phrased this hook as a  from the captain of the ship they were going to be hiring and let them have a bit of free reign as to when and how they'd work on it.Regardless, the outline was clear: go to a specific place and pick up a specific item for the trip. I asked the group what they wanted to do.The players didn't immediately set off on the assigned mission, they didn't waste time in town, they didn't even sit around carousing in the common room they started in. They just sat there and stared at me.Eventually I ventured a suggestion or two. No commitment. I finally just had to tell them that they set off down the road to the farm they were supposed to head toward. Once they got there they went through everything just fine.Basically I can't get them to roleplay anything that might have consequences. They have no issues with roleplaying their characters' interactions with each other, but once they might have an effect on anything they shut down. Basically they wait for me to shuffle their characters between each piece of action that they expect me to have prepared for them.I have no issues with preparing memorable preplanned adventures for them, I just want them to put some effort into the in-between times./rant with apologies for the length.</blockquote>

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