Do you prefer proactive or reactive players?

Do you prefer proactive or reactive players?

Honestly both. A proactive player will initiate situations in which reactive players can shine. I suppose, though, if I had to pick just one, I'd rather have proactive players, they're more likely to take a hook, and therefore don't require as much coaxing.

Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower? No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap.

I prefer procreative players.

I've literally only had proactive players once in over 15 or so years of GMing on and off. It was kind of neat, but they seem to be such a rare breed that I'm not sure preferring them gets you very far.

God, proactive players, please! Reactive players just sit there and do nothing when they don't know what to do. They don't ask, they don't try, they don't think about the rest, they just do nothing.

Proactive players at least try to have an idea of where they are going. Even if they are going to do something that has nothing to do with the plot or not in the way you want them to go, at least they are doing SOMETHING.

Proactive players want to grab their own fun and they make it clear when you're not delivering it or what they want out of the game. Reactive players just sit in silence and wait until fun comes along just to swat it away and wait some more. They go to the tavern because they think it's the haven of fun and wait there... doing nothing and not having fun...

Proactive players are willing to experiment, to tap and NPC on the shoulder and ask some questions so the GM can give something in return. Reactive players treat the GM like a television screen just to receive information and give NOTHING to work with in return. What works is the back-and-forth-dynamic, but reactive players only want to get and hardly give.

Proactive players are good, when there's one or two of them. An entire party of them always looks like this.

Yeah, I know. Still, I had a group of fully passive players. Like "The DM should give me permission to do something" passive. Only one player was confident enough to do something even without a plan and they followed him even though nobody had a single clue what they needed to do. This guy was nice to play with, the rest was just so stuck in their heads and didn't bother asking around or do anything.

If they all want to do different things, then you just need to show that what they want to achieve is all in the same place. (A little improvisation and shifting of the plot, but hey, at least you know what they want to do.)

I find it a matter of degrees. While everyone pulling in their own direction can be a bit annoying I find it preferable to people that just sit there and do absolutely nothing, to the point that must ask why they even wanted to play.
The last couple of games I was in I found myself ordering around the other characters as if they were NPCs since the people playing them barely reacted even when given a clear prompt to do something. Needles to say the game ended quickly.
RPing is like improv and needs people reacting to each other to go anywhere, most of the time it's the GM, but the other players must be involved as well.

Players that can act or react when it is appropriate.

I prefer radioactive players.

here

After reading the post below mine, it occurs to me that I might be defining things a bit differently than was expected: I was thinking proactive players as ones that drive the plot of the RPG, whereas reactives ones are dramatically reacting to the actions of one or more others (the villain or villains, usually)

I get the sense that others are not using the terms in the same fashion. If you meant in the sense of actually forming plans and not needing to be handheld, then the former is clearly preferable to the latter and they're not rare at all.

Proactive, for the love of God.

Reactive players are the laziest shits, they make me do all the fucking work and never contribute anything to the game.
The moment I take my foot off the gas, the game splutters and dies.
They expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter, such that I have to even suggest courses of action and plans to them, justified through knowledge/lore rolls.

I wouldn't say that all reactive are lazy, some just need to be engaged differently but they will contribute in their own way if they are comfortable with the group.

What does being proactive as player mean? I'd surely want to be better player, but i often feel i should react to what DM has prepared in order to not ruin his game.

Proactive.

I've never seen a reactive player who also remembers the names of their party members.

The GM is supposed to be planning for possible diversions and fuckups along the way. If your GM isn't supporting players running the risk of changing the course of the campaign, they're a shit improviser and possibly a shit GM by extension.

It is not that i feel that way because of things happening at table, but it seems part of social contract. But we are also playing modules, so that may be part of it.

Ask questions in-game. Try to get the Who, What, Where, When, and Why on paper. If you don't have any of these, then either the GM didn't plan it, or you'll just wander aimlessly, going nowhere. That's how you're proactive and still stay roughly within the lines of the adventure as the question of How is all up to you and your party, not the GM.

The thing is, it's not just the GM's game, it's your game too. The GM relies on the players to influence his world and give him more to work with so that he can create more content for you to enjoy.

Talk to your GM about things that relate to or interest you or your character. Ask him what kind of hinky stuff is going on in the politics or international relations.

Remember NPCs and their associations, so that you can make use of them during future events.

Try, for the love of god, to remember details about locations and NPCs. I'm more than a little miffed that a couple of players of mine couldn't even remember the name of the city they were in, or the name of the inn they stayed at last session, when I mentioned it multiple times. Or worse, forget why they're in the city in the first place.

i prefer when there is one, max 2 proactive players, they challenge me to modyfi and come up with better nerrative, but when there is more proactivesessions are usually shit cause everyone wants to do something different and nothing gets done, plot is pushed only minimally forward cause i have to force it

You want a tv show of 50 minutes per episode to have so much exposition for a single character?

>gm says there's a rebel army guarding a precious archelogical site that our employers want to loot an artifact from
>offers a bog-standard solution of attacking it but clearly wants alternative ideas
>my character suggests destroying the region's communications network and then arriving with our ex-rebel-officer party member in a disguise to convince them that their side has surrendered and that they're to protect the archeologists on-site
>GM looks hype as fuck about the idea
>rest of party decides that attacking it head-on will be "safer", despite the rebels being so dug in that our allied army has been unable to dent their defenses
i try to be proactive but the comittee prevents me

They could abridge his speech to important bits instead of inventing a Cocksmoot. The right half of the image are actual, exact quotes from the show, and I have no idea how they came up with this adaptation.