Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Made me think 🙂

During character creation for my current 5E campaign one of the players was building a dwarven fighter, a mountain dwarf specifically. He asked about his people and I glanced at my setting elements and told him that there are a few “stoneholds” under various mountains in the region (that’s basically all I had noted thus far). He said they sounded like Moria and asked how many stoneholds there are? I said four (seemed like a good number), and inspired by the Moria comment said one of the ancient stoneholds was “lost”. Bear in mind that going into this all I had noted was that mountain dwarves live in “traditional” stoneholds and are less common then their hill dwarf kin in this region. What happened to it? He asked. It was destroyed six or seven centuries ago (a random amount of time) by forces of (looking at my setting elements) the Lich Queen (elven sorceress turned lich, nothing further). He asked if anyone survived? Legend says a few escaped the stonehold and sealed it up (just off the top of my head). He went back to character creation and I jotted down a couple of additional notes; Deepecho Delve was the name of the lost stonehold, five or six managed to escape, the survivors hid any knowledge of the stonehold. A few minutes later he announced that Bratheal (his character) was the descendant of one of the survivors and that he has sworn to find the stonehold and return it to its glory and make the Lich Queen pay. Looks like I’ll need to develop a little more about Deepecho Delve and the Lich Queen.

Since he was the first player to suggest a strong initial goal I started asking the other players why their characters were with a dwarf on a quest to find Deepecho Delve. The player of the bard said that he’s heard all sorts of legends about fabulous treasures, ancient curses, and mysterious prophecies (I jot down treasures, curses, prophecy). I ask how these characters no each other? The dwarf player said he hired the bard because the bard has a reputation for treasure hunting and tomb raiding. The bard agreed (although he hadn’t yet decided that, it sounded good so he went with it), and added that with his criminal background he was always looking for the “big score”. Another player jumped in an asked why? The bard’s player jokingly said that he needed the money because he just found out he was the father of an newborn! The player that asked why said, “You knocked up my sister!” Another player connection forged.

This process continued through the night and as the players made choices and built connections I tied them to various setting elements.
* I took the smuggler background. You worked up and down the Thorn River.
* I want to play a drow. You’re a refugee from the city of Xenoverra.
* I was a soldier back in the day. You fought the Howling Scourge a century ago.

A couple of weeks later when the campaign began the group already had created their initial goal (helping the dwarf reclaim his ancestral home) and how they were all connected. To summerize this long-winded example, I didn’t come up with the plot line, they did. They supplied the direction all I need to do is stay just ahead of them. And because of the process we used all of the players were already invested in this plot line before we even began playing so there has been no need to “keep them on track”. I guess you could say that they are “railroading” themselves (and making my life easier). More to the point, the players are railroading me, forcing me to adjust to their actions and choices, and since I’m the GM, I have the power to make the universe respond.
John Lewis recently posted…This Week In Roleplaying – November 28th, 2014

How do you deal with players who don’t know what to do with the freedom they’re given? Some folks need more direction than others- so how do you get them involved in a sandbox type game?