DM problems

>give them plenty of background info and preliminary knowledge
>paint a picture of the scene before them in vivid detail
>they STILL stare at me like glossy-eyed retards when I ask what they want to do next

Why is it so goddamned hard to get players to think for themselves? It's like unless I'm holding their hands they cannot comprehend the idea of being able to do what they want in a ROLEPLAYING game.

Then put them on the rails. Most groups like it anyways, you just hide he tracks.

it's probably vidya. most newbies are coming straight out of fallout or some shit so they are used to having everything done for them.

My experience is the vast overwhelming majority of people who play and are under 30 can't or won't muster their imaginations. 30-45 is about a 50/50 shot, over 45 the odds go way up, if they played when they were younger.

I've explained to these fucks that Elves are not a thing in my setting damn near every fucking session.

Elves blew themselves up in a magical apocalypse a thousand years ago. The survivors, who had access to insane magics, became the "Gods" of the Human Age. All these ruins the party keeps exploring has to come from somewhere.

Warlock player chose Archefey as his patron. Fuck it, I can make it work, you're a knockoff cleric. Another player made a Firbolg, insisted he spoke Elvish. A third wanted to be a half elf.

How many fucking times Veeky Forums, how many fucking times....

Don't ask them "what do you want to do next?", give them a few options for what they can do next, then add in "or do you have something else in mind?". Most people aren't used to taking initiative like they can in an RPG. Most people's experiences with choice are video games that give a preset of four or so options. People like having choice, few enjoy total freedom.

>they STILL stare at me like glossy-eyed retards when I ask what they want to do next

Yep, that's about my experiences, too.
That, and they make a bunch of edgy characters that want to go off on their own.

>Ok cool, there is no more party, you all go your separate ways. The game has just ended. I'm going to go bitch about it on the internet and you guys can go back to playing Dark Souls or Diablo or whatever you do.

>Elves blew themselves up in a magical apocalypse a thousand years ago. The survivors, who had access to insane magics, became the "Gods" of the Human Age. All these ruins the party keeps exploring has to come from somewhere.

Can I borrow this?

You're running a campaign where there aren't elves, in a system that features elves and elf oriented mechanics and options. System informs mechanics, the things players are gonna want to play.

You want players to not touch elfshit, run a system without elves.

>players whine and bitch and complain when your adversarial NPCs and monsters show a modicum of tactical sense.
>Complain about how you're "robbing them of XP" when you've told them for the umpteenth time that you get XP for encounters and/or mission objectives, not killing random monsters
>Prone to attacking random NPCs for literally no better reason than "I wanted to see how tough they were".
>Had to introduce a homebrew spell that would give them a rough power level reading that makes no sense thematically but necessary to curb some of their more idiotic stunts
>Does not work with 100% accuracy. One time, due to a miscommunication, they thought a group they were sizing up was "roughly as powerful as they were". I step in, no, you only scanned that one guy, of a party of eight. He, alone, by himself, is "roughly as powerful as your whole group", he has 7 buddies, all of whom are roughly as powerful as he is.
>This of course did not stop them from attacking anyway and getting curbstomped, nor did it stop them from bitching about the consequences of their idiocy.

The other players in my group do this, so I naturally take the lead even if I'm trying to play a meme character. So, I guess my suggestion would be to recruit someone like me who thinks he's clever.

One more I forgot.
>Players want to run a campaign with a certain theme, in this case, going to sea and having merchant/piratical adventures on the open water
>Refuse to take any nautical skills like Navigator or Mechanic or Sailor that the core game system we're playing provides specifically for this and after pointing out these skills in particular; no, they want the old standbyes of healer and astronomer and spy/thief
>Furnish them with an NPC crew to actually run the vessel.
>They complain that their employees are better at running the ship than they are.

That was the original point of them in lord of the rings so go nuts.

Maybe they think you have a plan for them. They're afraid if they go and do their own thing, they'll miss out on the carefully crafted adventure you brought.

quick test: order food and ask what toppings or side they want. If they're non-confrontational or say it doesn't matter, they're probably afraid of upsetting other players at the table too.

Go ahead.

I would agree with you, except in session zero, I explained the setting and asked if everything was kosher. I was entirely set to retcon it to allow a small group of "refugee" elves. I asked them flat out, is not having elves an issue. They all said no, it wasn't an issue.

And then immediately pulled their shit.

>>Ok cool, there is no more party, you all go your separate ways. The game has just ended. I'm going to go bitch about it on the internet and you guys can go back to playing Dark Souls or Diablo or whatever you do.

You are triggered. That's okay, I'm triggered too.

I came up with two resolutions to this problem. One's more impractical, but both are pretty effective.

1: The practical one. The characters already know each other and work together. In fact, they're already on the adventure when the game begins. The first session begins in media res, ideally with the first non-narration the DM giving being "roll initiative". I've completed 3 full campaigns this way and managed to get pretty far into 4 others before scheduling conflicts and DM depression ended them.
Technically this is railroading, but I've never had a player complain that their character wouldn't be on the adventure, mostly because those kinds of players tend to have either money or "my epic plot" as their character's motivation and you can easily tie either of those into the adventure. Just make sure the initial in medias res part of the adventure is actually fairly low-stakes compared to what the plot's actually about, and always make sure that there's a "next step". It doesn't have to literally be a railroad, but if the players can at least see the sign posts, they'll usually be willing to see where they lead, as long as they can do whatever they want before they get there. For example, the game begins with the players retrieving an amulet for a princess, the first session is bandits or someone trying to steal it, and then when they get to the princess's castle they discover she's been kidnapped, with a telltale clue left behind that then leads into the proper plot.

Best answer in thread.

2: The impractical one. I only did this with two games and it was very rewarding, but both times I was playing with teenagers and young adults and I don't think it's possible to do with adults. The trick is that, again, the players have some reason to already be together when the game starts, something a bit more constricting than "you all meet at a tavern". My first game was three players (a cop, a PI, and a thief) in a car together. The second was random adventurers on a boat. There's something in the first session that everybody would be interested in or be involved in, such as a big combat encounter. Then, when the lone wolves inevitably go off on their own, you let them. In fact, the entire party dissolves and each character does their own thing.
At this point, you let your players actually go and do whatever, and you run brief (2-3 hours worked for us) solo sessions with each player where their character gets to be the main character for a while, doing whatever they want. It gets the itch out of their system, and it lets you work up plot hooks and plot threads that you can then bring back when they get back together.
In the first example, the three players had a big fight on the freeway with some guys on motorcycles and a freaky bee-man in a home-made tank. Then, while two players played vidya, the PI investigated the Mystery of the Golden MacGuffin, the thief snuck into a museum late at night to steal it, and the cop and his partner had to go investigate a murder in the city underground where they found a society of insane cultists that killed the partner. Next full session, there's some kind of cult that's after the Golden MacGuffin in order to use it to raise their evil god. The rough part is that this "session" of two regular session and three solo sessions took like two whole days, and the other one I ran involved a main party game on the weekends and solo sessions throughout the week. It's a ton of fun, but jesus it takes a lot out of you.

>That, and they make a bunch of edgy characters that want to go off on their own.
I find the best way to curb this is to make the action come to them. Have whomever the villain of the day, or the story arc be gunning for them in particular. They'll be a lot less likely to wander off on their won when you make it clear that they're going to get 5 assassins whether it's the whole party together or one of them off by his lonesome ready to be carved to bits.

At this point I would individually talk to each player and ask them what they really want out of the game. Then, I'd probably ask the group collectively what their problem is.

This can also fail to work more often than not. Choice is also a chore to some people.

In the end, it really depends on the group, and knowing the group is part of the job of a GM.

I had one group that was perfectly happy with being dropped into a sandbox world and go off searching for adventure themselves. They had initiative and they talked to people and among themselves and they found reasons to stick together without my intervention. GM that campaign was hard because I had to prepare a lot of material ahead of time and more than half of it ended up unused (or saved for another campaign, more correctly).

When I tried that same thing with another group, they did nothing, bumbled about town and wasted time, even if I dropped plot hooks at their feet they just wouldn't bite. The solution was to start another game, and this time I made them part of a military and they are basically given missions by their superior officers that they go out and fulfill. They seem much more happy that way. This is also easier on me as a GM since they're basically voluntarily sitting on rails, and their only concern is how to overcome a particular encounter.

Basically, some people enjoy exploring the world and making things happen, while other people enjoy being given a task and using the available tools to solve their task. Some groups work well with tons of freedom, others need to be put on rails, and sometimes they don't mind even if you don't hide the rails.

...

I tell my players, there are no save points in D&D that they can load back to, if they fuck up.

nigga I gave up and let them get xp from random monsters

>employees are better at running the ship than they are
I wish this were the case in campaigns I've played in. When the GM gives us an objective across the ocean in a game where we've never had to get on a boat before I'd like for the sailors we hire to be able to run the boat without our help. We're paying the idiots, why can't they get us where we ask? Why do I have to steer? My character has never steered a boat, don't we have a helmsman? Why does the paladin have to help adjust the sails? He has no points in sailing? Why do none of these trained sailors have more than a few ranks in their own profession?

That's retarded. You're retarded. It and you are retarded because you are blindly pandering to the worst kind of bovine stupidity.

>hurr durr da DM sed dere are no elves, but da system has le elf, hurr durr wat do lol i dunno mooooooooooooo

People should not be this stupid. They can and should be better. It's not even asking for much. It's only asking for two things: to retain a single fact and to not be a blind elf fantard who can't comprehend playing pretend without being an elf. Unless you are playing with special needs kids who have literally just finished having LotR read to them, this should not be a problem.

>People should not be this stupid.
Assuming this will only ever lead to disappointment
People can and will be this stupid. .

This is why I always do at least on session zero when I'm working with a new group. I run by the general story outline, keeping it as spoiler free as I can, and run over the sorts of things they want to do, sorts of stories they want to tell. It helps root out a lot of problems that might other wise crop up.

Really? At least in my experience, it tends to lead to a lot of

>We want X
>Ok, you'll get X
>X happens
>WHAT THE FUCK, THIS ISN'T WHAT I WANTED!

Not to be to brash here, but that sounds like a problem with the people you're playing with. At least that's never happened in my case so far.

Sounds like you need to throw them into a rules light system and watch them drown.

>Why do none of these trained sailors have more than a few ranks in their own profession?
Limitations of the system, most likely. If a system ties max skill ranks to level, they need to be high level to be competent. Because level = combat ability (HP, saves, BAB, etc.), a decent sailor *must* be a skilled fighter as well. Because it doesn't make much sense for Sailor McGee to be able to solo half-a-dozen goblins, he won't be high level; ergo, he won't have high enough skills to be competent.

Let's start...

1- Alchemist of the party wants to have a shop to sell everything he crafts immediately at market price, thinking he could just double his character treasure like that. Doesn't realize there is a demand (which I had to arrange) and that he needs some ranks in the appropiate skill in order to know how to sell shit to the people.

2- Fighter character bails and cries about how that level 2 fighter NPC is better at grappling that him. He is level 4 and he hasn't taken ANY grappling feat, just the "Power Attack+Cleave" combo.

3- Player is never happy with his character and is switching to a new character each time the hype of trying out a new one fades away. I stopped to think about overarching plots for him.

4- Player doesn't know what character want to make. Asks me to create some options for him. Create a big roster of 6 options with background stories, builds, etc according to his desires. He just say "nah, I preffer that PC build I saw in that forum XD". That build doesn't have any sense in the world we are playing. He doesn't care neither.

5- Player feels like Jedis in my setting ins't as he envisioned in his head canon and insists in each session to remodel ALL the system to gather his tastes. Nobody agrees with him. He bitches and stalls the game until he break up the group.

6- Player let OOC problems to affect the party and the other players. He is kicked from the group. Other players now don't want to play anymore because the drama has left them with a bad taste of the campaign.

7- Great friend and roleplayer of mine insists of letting him to enter in our RPG group. When we accept him, he just behaves like a douchebag who doesn't attend to most of the sessions and, when he comes, he is like "yeah, whatever, I roll for damage to kill the kind merchant". He is regarded as one of the best roleplayers in my social circle and he is always boasting about that.

8- Old "friend" of mine, who was always criticzicing my adventures and trashing them, is DM those same adventures as using them as written by him in another LGS. He still talks bad about me to their players so they don't want to get into a game of mine.

9- Game group has a policy of kick out a player if he misses more than 3 sessions in a row. I have finals and talk about it to the DM. He says there is no problem because it is for a legitimate cause and, anyways, we only have 2 sessions per month. I will surely miss one because finals are two weeks. I get kicked because, in those two weeks, the other players wanted to make one session per day since it was holidays for them. They don't tell me about this until I return.

10- If everything is not coming according the plans of the players during the game, they will just throw tantrums about it for weeks. Even when it is more because their characters not knowing everything or just because their strategy was plain wrong. And the guilty of metagaming will be you even when I write down the shit in that situation in a paper in front of them before they organise such plan.

11- "We want a sandbox where we can make all the shit we want." Get a proper sandbox ready and send them all the information they need to build their character and meld into the setting. They doesn't read anything. They don't know what to do in the world. They just stare at you with a blank expression. When switching to a more rail-roaded plot since NO-ONE know what to do, they cry about a sand box was promised.

12- Dwarves and half-lings can't ride ponies because players are going to sperg out about me shoving them "brony stuff", even when I am meaning the classical kind of ponie, not the pastel colored one.

I had one player that was always the first to loot everything and didn't feel obligated to share what he found. I only half blame him, as the rest of the party would rather spend two hours dicking around and circling the point of "who's going in the room to look for stuff" than actually do it themselves. He also had a habit of reading whatever rules or pieces of rules benefited his ability to pump out big numbers while conveniently "not knowing" all of the rules or pieces of rules that state that's not how it works. I had to audit his shit every couple weeks. Among other problems.

Another player made builds specifically to show off his ability to "beat" a part of the game. A build that didn't need healing, a build that didn't run out of some resource, etc. He aimed to coup-de-grace everything I could be convinced was a combat opponent regardless of the character or its potential use or innocence.

Another player, after a year I'm not entirely sure if he knew what game we were playing.

Another player used alignment/race to justify being standoffish, or a lone wolf, culminating in him just walking away during dangerous combat because "my character doesn't care".

Another player that was pretty new to the group so I can't fault him too badly on anything, but like all others in the group save guy#3, he wanted to cycle characters(statblocks) frequently with no investment in them or anything else in the game despite it being billed as a large level spanning long term story rather than a grinder or dungeon-of-the-week game.

The game has been canceled but this all could have been avoided and I could have been saved a crap ton of time and effort if anyone bothered to respond to the questions at the start about what they wanted out of the game.

1- Have someone appraise the guy's work and try to undercut him. Or a rival craftsman begins stealing his stuff to reverse-engineer it and becomes more popular.

2- Bulk Bogan, Hulk Hogan's Australian cousin appears and trains your fighter over the course of several sessions to grapple better if he takes a grappling feat at his next odd level. Give the player a bonus to grappling for undergoing training with Bulk Bogan. Also you get to have him around as an NPC.

3- Kick him out of your group or give him one more character and tell him if the character dies, he dies in real life. These people fucking ruin games and tear groups apart.

4- Reflavor the class so it fits the world. This guy doesn't know enough about character optimization to do any serious damage to your campaign anyway.

5- Kick him out of your group.

6- Kick him out of
>He is kicked from the group.
Good show.

7- He's bored and uninterested. Talk with him one on one to see what he wants. A good roleplayer is someone you want around, but not if they're going to be a cranky fuck.

I literally start my players out either in a tavern or in prison. nothing else works for these guys.
past that, they sandbox pretty well and do manage to pick up on hints well enough.

I have a hombrew setting with more lore than all of forgotten realms combined (with fewer mary sues) that i've been working on since 3.0 dropped. I have no one to play, never have and likely never will.

oh you have more

Actually after reading all this, find better players. These guys all sound awful.

>People should not be this stupid.
They aren't that stupid, that's a fictional quote said by no one ever you made up to comfort yourself. People, your players in this case, want to play with elfy stuff so they grabbed it. They don't care that you said there are none because they figured you'd cave if they pushed it.

They were right.

>People like having choice, few enjoy total freedom.
Also agreeing with this.
There's actually science behind people becoming more indecisive and unable to initiate action when presented with too many choices.
But just compare the questions "What do you want to eat?" and "Do you want burgers, pizza, Chinese, or something else?"
Even offering only choices they won't like helps them frame their desires.

13- If you just put something which can be seen as lewdl, they will bail and say that I want them to go into my magical realm."

14- Making a barmaid to piss on the face of the orc barbarian and eat her own feces should be anyways allowed according to them because "muh character freedom."

15- "I won't come prepared to the sessions as a player and I want you to entertain me and keep me awake, DM. And I will castice you each time you tell me you aren't my joker."

16- Male players are constantly diving into suicidal situations because "fuck it!". Female player doesn't agree in character with their ways, they start to sperg and yell her in a bad way ooc. I tell them to maintan interior voice and to continue in character. They drop the game because "I was white knighting that pussy." Funny enough, I hided the fact she was my gf and behaved like I didn't knew her too much in order to maintain equality among the players.

17- "I totally hate this NPC and having any interaction with her. I totally hate her and she makes me puke. So, I will make my character have a romance with her and bitch every night how much I hate that NPC."- A player of mine.

18- "I won't take anything seriously in your games because, lol, I just want to have some giggles XD. I will, however, behave like the most serious person in the world when you make a comedic session, killing the mood and joy of the other players"

19- Player will remark anything which barely looks like a videogame, TV show, film or book and remark I have any originality in my stories. Even when I didn't knew the origin of the reference he is seeing and stopping the session to yell about the rest of the table

20- Player will sperg out each time he rolls low in a dice and the enemies rolls high, and he will state it is me cheating, to the point of physically assaulting me. I punched him hard in the face and kicked out of my house.Other players don't talk to me anymore because I has been rude to him.

If the players asked for X and said they didn't get what they wanted you gave them Y.

Jokes on you. This is all the shit I have been enduring with several groups. Now I am just playing with my wife and two childhood friends of mine twice in a month. Not the best sessions but, at least, they behave correctly and want to have fun

Of course, almost any of those situations ended with someone getting kicked out of the group. But, from my experience, kicking a players looks like it promotes the dissolution of the gaming group. Which was making me always angrier about the typical "that guy".

Duly checked. Storytiem
Yeah, I was going to post up some proper responses, but you nailed it.

My advice for user, presuming his descriptions are 100% accurate, would be:
"Don't play with dicks, emotional children, or anyone invested in causing drama."
Literally 75% of those players were unsalvageable.
The rest were acting like idiots, which can be managed sometimes.

Ah, so you did improve your choice in ing gaming groups.
But just so you know, generally if you can list 20 examples of how groups you ran for were ruined by others, you have to acknowledge and examine the common factor as well.

Well I have new players, and honestly freedom to do whatever is weird for people. I've been easing them in. Maybe show them the world exists outside of them, have NPCs show up, maybe die off screen. Stuff to make them feel the world not just see it.

You have a shitty dm
- a DM

>Ah, so you did improve your choice in ing gaming groups.
>But just so you know, generally if you can list 20 examples of how groups you ran for were ruined by others, you have to acknowledge and examine the common factor as well.

The factor was "me", certainly, maybe I was too permissive with them to the point of them loosing total respect towards me, or maybe I was just like them but I didn't know. Indeed. it was something that had me quite depressed, actually. Thinking about what was my part of the fault. With the years, it could be said I grew a back, I ditched that social group (oh, yes, everyone of them came from the same social circle) and looked outside for new blood. First with Magic: The Gathering in other LGSs, then trying out DMing for new people. Let's see the future.

>I ditched that social group (oh, yes, everyone of them came from the same social circle)
Dear lord.
I sincerely hope you used enough lye in that ditch.

>Players enter a Kobold Lair to try and retrieve half a magic mask they stole
>Took a suggestion from someone on Veeky Forums the other day that they were venerating a Plesiosaur and treating it like a God of Water Dragons since they're all blue scaled
>Last room has 32 kobolds feeding the Plesiosaur
>Instead of doing anything like turning invisible or attempting to goad the Plesiosaur into attacking the kobolds, they all charge in like retards and fight
We did it in four waves of eight while the other three did various other actions, but the damn encounter took like two and a half hours because they're level 4 and the only thing they have are a bunch of shitty uncommon magic items that lets them summon a million animals. Everyone had fun but I try and give them encounters that don't require them to charge head first but they do it every time. At least it was just a million kobolds that automatically died on a successful hit though.

number 9, this is strictly a dick move, WTF
they wanted you out and used that.

Risus, use risus. Oh God I love seeing this kind of player struggling with this game.

Most players have a double digit IQ

'sup Storytiem

Let me just say that I am a fan of your work, the ten commandments for GMs

Have you tried not playing with fa/tg/uys?

>Describe a room to the party
>Mention some important features about the room that are meant as clues for puzzles
>Unless the feature is explicitly marked on the physical table map they completely forget that it exists as soon as I finish talking.

Alternately
>Describe a room filled with furniture - tables, chairs, barrels, boxes, etc.
>Combat in the room happens
>None of the characters think to take cover behind shit when using ranged attacks
>Not even when the enemy starts kicking over tables to use as cover do they think to do the same

I once had a player that wouldn't accept anything unless it was on the battlemap
I could describe an NPC walking over to the group and telling them everything they'd need to know, but his character wouldn't acknowledge they existed unless I put a token down and moved it to wherever they moved to.

Later he took over GMing, and was just as anal with the players, including killing one player because a square didn't line up with the cover he was hiding behind (even worse because taking cover took an action, so he'd forgone attacking to get the benefit) and refusing to pay the group because the character getting the reward picked the wrong token out of a room of identical ones.

I agree with user, my best games started with almost iron rails and removed those as the game was played.

>you just hide he tracks
Tracks in the Sand.

Please don't do this. You're cheating your players out of choice and agency. Nobody cares about your precious story.

There are very, very few groups that actually enjoy total choice and agency.

Most groups don't know what to do with it and get nowhere.

The actual choice that matters isn't what to do, but how to do it. Choosing a path to solve the problem is something almost all players enjoy, choosing a problem to solve isn't something that most players enjoy.

Not to be a dick, but...

This is the main reason I don't DM. I tried it once, players (aside from one) had to be handheld and didn't do anything I didn't throw in their face.

And as soon as they lost an encounter (which wasn't even bad, they just got mugged) they grumbled after the game about me going hard on them.

For context, they traded a large amount of gold in a tavern, in public, at night, were injured and tired, and then split the party in half to walk home alone. I rolled stealth for the muggers and they passed.

As a DM, I want players to surprise me and put in as much creativity I do. It's the only way I see the give and take between DM and players being fair. Otherwise I'm just indulging their power fantasies and watch them win at everything automatically with little to no input. Who enjoys that?

but the joy of PnP is that there's no programming or anything that actually stops you from just giving a level 1 fighter grandmastery in shitflinging. the "limitation" is entirely self-imposed

>I am a STRONG INDEPENDANT PLAYER.
>WHO DOESN'T NEED NO GEE EM!
Holy shit you're autistic.

Try reading that pdf.
Plot and freedom is a sliding scale, really.
"True Railroading" is awful and miserable.
"True Sandboxing" is awful and miserable.
If you put your players on the rails and they literally never notice because they never actually have their choice and agency actually limited, then you've done nothing wrong.

tldr: Putting your players on the rails isn't wrong, forcing them to stay on them is.

How long has it been since you were a player?
People gloss over such things. It's natural. Mark that shit on a map or it's your fault.

Baito daze

Did they have a plot hook or goal to act on? Or did you just start screeching when they had to think about what they'd want to do in a sandbox environment that doesn't conflict with your setting and background info?

If it's really as bad as you say get a new group rather than bitching about it on a Cambodian shadow puppet board.

I find some light rail road (Yes intentional rail roading) helps free up player minds. After they taste one extreme they crave the other.

roll20

>tfw we are all gods going through the self-imposed restrictions of mortality

Are you playing wit Civilisation 5 A.I.s?

>As a DM, I want players to surprise me and put in as much creativity I do.
Too bad the DMs I tried that went 'you cannot do that' or pulled an asspull just to say 'gotcha'.

You can at least make a book on the setting and sell it or something

Because to roleplay a character, you must first understand their motivation. What do they want? What are they trying to achieve? Such motivations are largely dependent on the kind of stories the players want to play out. If you just drop your players into your world, without discussing what kind of story they want, of course they're going to do nothing. You've given them a load of information, and no reason to care about any of it.

Do they want to play as a band of thieves? Point them at some of the wealthy cities in your setting. Do they want to be pirates? Tell them about your setting's seafaring culture. Do they just want to be wandering adventurers? Point them at the lawless regions of your world. Do they want a game of espionage and intrigue? Tell them about the political factions in play.

That's your fault for using a map.

To 3 )
Okay i got some experience with that case, as i'm that case myself and what i can say that there is almost certainly no bad intend behind it.

Fo myself i can say that i try to make mechanical interesting characters first only to learn the limits of those mechanics and become desinterested in the character as a whole, my ADD doen't help with that either.

But things that help me to stick with a Charakter are some simple tips and first of all is: offer help to create a character that fits into the setting, with relations, goals and stuff like that. Small and Simple is usually better that a large overarching plot alone. When the player wants to have a pet/child/parter it helps to feel involved when they can interact with them for 5 Minutes a session with seemingtly normal stuff like "how was shool ?". It makes the PC and his surroundings more tangible, relateable and well, more of a character.

My advice about the "becomes mechanical boring" part. Well DnD has the wizard for that, just get a high enough baseline to participate in meele/ranged combat/ utility/ buffing when he want's to do it. But be carefully about DnDs utility wizards encounter ending powers, Also buffers in general are compelling, because they exist in almost every system and take the focus away form "what can i do ?" to "what can i do so my friend can do it better ?", again less focus on the character itself and more on his close surroundings

And as almost any advice here on Veeky Forums that involves player+GM relations, talk with your dude about it, he might just want to feel usefull to the party and does not know how to do that, which leads to thinking about other character concepts, which leads to a new character with no solid job in the party and the cycle continues.

>Nobody cares about your precious story
How long have you had a campaign last user? A couple months at most?

Run an OSR game on the side. Anything with high character lethality, and make it painfully explicit beforehand. Tell them they WILL die if they charge in. Then just run the game as normal and don't pull any punches. Roll in the open, too. They've been conditioned to think they can survive shit, just show them that no, sometimes they can't.

I've never really liked that idea/definition, the continuum of railroad to sandbox determined by the amount of choices the players have; where a sandbox is a game of total choice. You can't really come up with a definition of what involves a meaningful choice that doesn't shift from campaign to campaign and group to group. If you're doing a go down and smash dungeon crawl, with no real plot or anything other than kill those monsters and take their shit, tactical and character-building choices are of paramount importance. Personally, I've never seen a GM try to make those choices for players, so does that mean those games are sandboxes? But it becomes less of a sandbox, maybe even railroading, if the aim of the campaign shifts to something else?

I've always thought a bi-axial setup is better, where player choice is its own thing, and a sandbox is determined not by the amount of choice the players have, but by where the ongoing plot is emerging from. In a sandbox, it's driven by player and character actions and desires, whereas a non-sandbox focuses on the player and character actions(hopefully) but they are driven by some other factor. (Usually the main villain).

>they are driven by some other factor. (Usually the main villain).
But in a sandbox that still happens. The villain still does shit, it's just that the PCs aren't being directed to respond to it. They can fuck off and play pirates or whatever, and they just hear of the consequences from people talking about news.

I'm not getting how your post contradicts what I said. If the PCs have the option of simply ignoring the villain and whatever shit he's up to, then he can hardly be said to be driving whatever plot is going on.

You made a game where the story revolves around elves, and then said they can't do anything elf-related. Those first two options are perfectly fine by what you've stated.

a fun justification is you gotta help cause there was amutiny that took half the crew and forced off a remaining chunk and now you got to help or maybe there was a pox that broke out and now all able bodies have to work to get back to port as a dm those are the things id do to force you to sail .

I was going to say that you were wrong, but I reconsidered and realized you're right about this. Good reply, friend :^)