NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="kitsune9" data-source="post: 5387485" data-attributes="member: 18507">Wow, these are some interesting examples here Fire. From reading these, I don't know if should feel really sad, or bust out laughing. May be a bit of both I guess. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Anyways, wanting to be constructive, it seems that you got a sandbox campaign going on here and the players are probably not use to that kind of DMing either because they are lazy, indifferent, or they just don't know what to do. Of course, with a campaign world, having all the locations and names populating the area kind of makes it daunting or overwhelming. Maybe you should take the Grand Theft Auto approach. You have a map, but only put about three locations on it. Everything else are just features, but no names. This would be similar to the big letters that clues the players for "find adventure / mission here". The PC's can then choose where to go from the three locations that you've got listed. If they ask you about them, you give them a handout that gives some rumors or common information. You can give them a nudge here and there by stating in your handout about each location, "If you go X, you'll need packmules to carry the necessary food to trek across the waste" or "If you go here, armor will be too hot to wear."For the tavern example, draw the map and tell the players to place themselves where they want to be. If you're not into minis and maps, then tell them that they have arrived at the tavern and end the box text opening there. Also, instead of asking "What do you do?" simply describe the situation going on and let them answer the unspoken question of, "What do you?" for themselves. Going back to your tavern example you can say, "You enter the Five Coins Tavern and Alehouse. The fireplace looks warm and inviting from that deluge you just sludged through, but it's away from the bar where a good hot mead would take the chill off your bones, or may be that game of dice that's being played catches your attention since you could use the winnings to buy your mead." Then after you read / stated this, you just meet your players with silence and then let them ask you any questions or give you any stated actions.  You remain silent until one of them says something. If you do all of this by putting the choices in front of the players and they still just wander around or give you "I dunno", then it's clear that you either have 1) players who disinterested in the game itself or 2) players are very use to gaming where the previous GMing styles have been "GMing by the nose" and that is their comfort zone in gaming. If you like this group a lot, then maybe switching to railroading is better for them and for you.</blockquote>

Verification