I'm not talking about your preferences as a GM, but your group: are they ruggedly independent in the sense of wanting to be pro-active about their adventuring? Or do they expect you to set up adventures for them, to basically point a big arrow at where they should go and what they should do?

Or, again, something in between?

Out of a group of 8 or so regulars...

I have 2 who always know what they want to do and will bulldoze a path through hell to get there...

3 who are fine with the paths those 2 pick as long as they can work out the logistics...

1 who just does whatever he wants...

And 2 who don't care what the plan is, they just want to blow shit up.

It varies a lot by campaign and by system as well as by group. If you set up a Defenders of the Hearth game, expect players to wait for threats to arise. If you tell them they are roguish treasure seekers you will get proactivity.

It is a problem if the GM expects proactivity and players turtle. It is a big problem if players reject a hook as too dangerous and demand something easier but refuse to go out and make anything happen. Twice recently I have seen it happen in different campaigns that when Player X was absent the game fell apart, both groups were accustomed to relying on her and refused to take action. In one case I called the session early, in the other I gave them a trivial threat which a player complained about.

All of the above.

Overall the group either prefers a module or equivalent to work through. Or some adventure 'hooks' to investigate. But they will sometimes forge off on their own agendas. The group trusts me to run modules such that they have alot of freedom to go about it as they please.

Usually a couple independently pulling in different directions, one who doesn't really care much as long as he has a good time, and a couple that could go either way depending on how convincing the proponent of a plan is.

I get fairly close to the full range, from casual go-along with whatever players to very active drivers of whatever is on their minds.  However, the bigger variance is circumstance and time, not the individual players.  Several of them have blood sugar issues.  When their metabolism is up, it's full active, all the time.  When it's down, it's almost purely reactive.  Sometimes, different people will take charge, but those kind of issues tend to go in patterns.  I once watched 3 otherwise active players all go through the same crash within seconds of each other.  What we eat for lunch and snacks affects very strongly how we play afterwards.

New group, so, still gauging. Here's what the few sessions we've managed to get together have so far revealed:

Wife: Comedic Relief (her characters are always like this): She mainly doesn't like standing around, so she'll nudge the party, if she gets bored.

Married Couple #1, Husband: veteran player and GM of other systems (particularly, 13th age). Creates great characters. Really smart about resource management. Doesn't seem to concerned with charting the character's own course--yet.

Married Couple #1, Wife: Oh, what a trouble maker.:-) Her character does what he wants to do. Ran off when the group got into trouble the first time. Tried to put one over on the folks who hired them, and collect the rewards. Talked her way out of being slain by the party members who survived. Definitely does her own thing, though, her warrior is tagging along, now that she's levelled, and is more bad ass.

Married Couple #2: Husband: quiet type, as a player. Seems to see everything as problem solving. Doesn't seem to care about  agency. Just likes to play.

Married Couple #2, Wife: bad luck with dice. Character has turned from a barbarian type into a sort of anti-paladin (bit of a long story). Not driven by her own agenda, though the character definitely has one, based on interactions with the evil war guard, who has sent her spirit back twice after death (for purposes I am figuring out). Goes along with the group...so far.

Single Dude: Just wants to roll dice, and hang out. Character has the weirdest luck in that, he's always making a crucial dice roll and succeeding spectacularly. No interest in pursuing anything outside what group wants.

My observations tell me that these guys would be content with me plopping them down in a situation and going with it. I would like to get a bit more form them, hook-wise, and I think I might...if we can ever get the party together again (real-life scheduling is a bear).

Quote from: Dumarest;1017416Usually a couple independently pulling in different directions, one who doesn't really care much as long as he has a good time, and a couple that could go either way depending on how convincing the proponent of a plan is.

This pretty much describes every group I've ever had.

A lot of "all of the above."  As often as otherwise, I come up with plots.  But I run a near-to-complete sandbox, and the players have every right to ignore or reject them, as well as to come up with their own ideas to pursue.  As to that, a lot of my plots stem from player decisions.

For example, the most recent one.  The nation's in the middle of a civil war.  One character's quite appallingly rich (indeed, the player's premise was to see how well money worked as a superpower), and his family's backing one side in the war.  So he goes to the queen, right after her coronation, and asks her if an interest-free loan of a sum equal to about a century's worth of an average person's wages would be of service.  Since her predecessor had cleaned out the treasury before fleeing the capital, and she couldn't even make the payroll for the palace staff, her reaction was what you could imagine.  So what he wanted in return was a minor landed title, independent of his family.  Since handing out estates was pretty much the only way the young queen could raise money (and a finite supply of the same), he gets handed a modest domain ... in enemy-held territory.  He wants the land, he can fight for it ... and so the adventure began.

Pigs on ice ain't in it!

Mostly mine want breadcrumbs to follow. Lots of them. With a neon sign pointing to the breadcrumbs.

Drives me crazy.

Led around by the dick.

Campaign One: The player with the higher social-status character has assumed a leadership role. He doesn't exactly push people around but the other two are fairly agreeable with whatever he suggests. They had been on two trips through an area of wilderness in my sandbox and had returned with some money and gained a bit of a reputation. I thought they would recruit some help, more player-characters or some NPCs, and go back because there is clearly more to be found out, but CJ had been offered a job recovering a lost object that he thought looked interesting and he got the other two to go along. One of them had recruited an NPC to go back where they had been but she was ok with the change of plans.

Campaign Two: All of these characters are new to my campaign, to my system and two of them are ten-year-old twins who are new to gaming. Their introduction to the campaign has been more linear than my usual campaign but soon they will reach the big city and have some decisions to make.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1017341I'm not talking about your preferences as a GM, but your group: are they ruggedly independent in the sense of wanting to be pro-active about their adventuring? Or do they expect you to set up adventures for them, to basically point a big arrow at where they should go and what they should do?

Or, again, something in between?

I'm just a referee. The players can do anything, including player vs. player if they want to. I never tell players what their characters do, say, feel. I refuse to have human die-rollers at my table. And I refuse to use encounter tables.

Varies based on the players. I've had pretty much all kinds, but currently they aren't very independent and are more interested in a mission style of play than a simple here's the world, what do you want to do sandbox.