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Message: <blockquote data-quote="painandgreed" data-source="post: 3336637" data-attributes="member: 24969">Sounds like what I strive for so I'll offer some thoughts. First, is my rant that players have been trained not to think for themsevles. Set them in an inn and they'll sit there waiting for some wizard to come in and offer them a job till they run out of money and starve even if you tell them that working for somebody else is a fool's job and they can do whatever they want. Of course, it's hard to play a character in a fictional world because you don't know all the rumors and environments like one knows the real world. They do need to either be fed stuff or worked with a great deal.The first thing I tried was to have each character provide goals, two minor and one major. An example for a low level dwarven cleric might be to create his own masterwork hammer, enchant it and then use it to kill the druegar that killed his father. With each personal goal they get some XP bonus and the major goals can direct the campaign or offer side quests. Other than that, run a D&D game as normal and provide them adventures working their goals in as they wish. Some may have trouble even doing this or at least caring. Usually, there is at least one person in a group who cares and that persons long term goals will drive the party and most people will be more than happy to go along.After that, I try to run a more "sandbox" campaign. I have the world designed and planned out. My goal as the DM is to figure out what NPCs are up to, determine normal events, and how PC actions will change them. What the PCs do is up to them. Once again, you can't usually just dump them into the world and expect them to start running. You have to at least offer them some adventures and then let them choose what they want to do. Typically, besides whatever metaplot events are going on, I provide at least three possible adventures, one easy, one at their CR, and one hard and let them choose. These come in the form of rumors and gathered information and they typically know the realative danger levels. In addtition to that there are the typical metaplot events such as the evil king over here, the dragon there, and the good knight working there for them to interact with.Now, are you sure you want to play to their specifications? If you offer it to them, you're going to have to give it to them or face player disatisfaction. Are you willing to let them take on easier than normal targets if they want? If they decide they want to make some quick easy money and go after that 3rd level adventure when 6th level, are you prepared to let them? Few things will dissatisfy a player more than saying you want to do what they want to do and preforming bait and switch. For example, in one campaign our party had just escaped from prison without any equipment and the DM asked what we wanted to do. We agreed we wanted to find some suitable targets equivilant to a thrid level party, kill them and take their stuff. Dm said  ok, we gathered information, found what we thought were targets only to have to fight tooth and nail and almost loose because the DM decided what we planned would be too easy and gave us a "level appropriate" encounter. All illusions that what we had any control over our actions was pretty much gone for the rest of the campaign. Let PCs choose what they want to do and at some point they'll opt for the easy way.</blockquote>

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