Priming

As an opener, we should be clear that running a game world without walls and passages, where the players can go where they will and initiate their own adventures, does take a level of skill.  A world that functions like "a real place" will not come about of its own accord.

We are encouraged to begin campaigns with a dungeon, which is all walls and passages.  We are encouraged to set up a "home base" for the players, which ties them to a single place which, as DMs, we can control.  We're encouraged to provide the characters with a region "backstory," which is designed to prime the players, getting them to respond to the stimulus we select.  Many DMs write out this backstory, and other "essential" details about the surrounding area, so that it can be read often by the players, cementing the information we want the players to concentrate upon in their minds.

These methods work because they allow the DM to motivate the party.  I can persuade you to follow a course of action by putting the idea in your head.  I can adjust your thinking indirectly through phrases and incidents that cause you to think you're making up your own mind about things, where instead you're being influenced.  Clever DMing does this so seamlessly that players believe they're really pushing the boundaries of the world, when in fact they're locked into a predetermined format.  I've done this hundreds of times.

Players will often say that they want plain, direct adventure modelling.  Here is a quote from reddit, where yesterday someone linked one of the earliest posts on my blog (which received much criticism, still, all these years later):

"... I like to have some shiny hooks dangled in front of my face. Give me a nudge towards something enticing and I'll take it. It doesn't take much, but I need a little something. If I'm a Cleric, give me something to cure or banish. If I'm a mage, give me something to research or recover. If I'm a big beefy barbarian, give me something to smash. Don't hold my hand but let me know it's there, and I'll do the rest."

Essentially, he's asking to have his hand held, he just doesn't want it called that.  The reaction is familiar, and comes from experiences with DMs who try to present a sandbox, but do not understand that priming that sandbox is essential.  You cannot just drop people in a setting and expect them to locate an adventure; if you try that, you will get players standing around without anything to do.

At the same time, you don't need to be as bald-faced as the commenter puts it.  You don't need to limit your game world to dungeons and homebases, curing, banishing, recovering and smashing.  These tropes are indicative of a lack of imagination; and the commenter's embrace of them only reflects his preference for cliche over sitting, talking, waiting and indifference.

A game world has to move.  Players have to be moved.  But the hooks don't have to be blatant and shiny, they don't have to be dangled in front of the player's faces, we don't always need to satisfy the crying need for momentum with a dungeon and we don't need to saddle the players with a homebase to ensure a setting that is manageable.  There are alternatives.  Seeing these alternatives needs training; the individual needs coaching to see how priming works.  Blatantly obvious adventure hooks are fine for young, inexperienced children; but adults really do want more.  I want us to see that single-adventure campaigns are juvenile in outlook.  Like a film that includes three or four  plotlines, players should be able to experience three or four adventures moving along simultaneously; so that even as one ends, there are others ongoing.  This eliminates the possibility of boredom, or the post-adventure lull that so often destroys a campaign.

We can talk more about this tomorrow.