Hi all, I'm 6 months or so into my first proactive campaign. I'm doing it for a group of kids (9-14) in my community. Overall it has been a lot of fun and they really loved the collaborative world building component. But I'm noticing is my motivation and creative inspiration has been dropping significantly. Every week when Thursday rolls around it feels like a slog to design the encounters and do the additional worldbuilding. I have a few thoughts that give context to this and I'd love everyone's thoughts. First, one of my main motivations for proactive roleplaying and collaborative worldbuilding is because I love facilitating the creativity of a group. I used to be an orchestra conductor and I loved creating containers for people to play and be creative while I gently nudged them along. This is true in other contexts as well. I love workshop facilitation, group discussions, and anything like that. Thus, I leaned into collaborative worldbuilding because I wanted the creative ideas to come from *them* while I shaped them. What happened in reality is that, no matter how much collaborative worldbuilding we do, it leaves at least 60-70% of quest design, and other details of world building for me to do. There's just SO MUCH detail that goes into even making a small scene interesting that I'm finding there's no way to have the players cover even half of this world we are playing in let alone the actual encounter design. So, the first thing that's contributing to this dip in motivation feels like I'm actually not interested in doing nearly this much world building myself but this approach actually leaves a surprisingly large amount for the DM still to write. Second... the fact that it was *their* ideas that generated the world (and not mine) I think contributes to this dip in creative motivation. It's not that I *dislike* their ideas outright, but they just didn't pop out of my own creative brain. When I did a DM coaching with Deborah Ann Woll, she emphasized the importance of a kind of "scratch test" that writers do to see what inspires them. Like when you get tested for allergies (or used to), they would put certain allergens on you and see what bubbles up. So she encouraged me to do the same thing for writing / DMing. Write all kinds of scenes, tropes, story archetypes and see what moves you.

Hi, first post here. I've been DMing 5e for my friend group for going on 6 years now. In the last year I've been trying to use the principles of proactive roleplay, to highly mixed success. We play remotely, due to geography, which obviously introduces quirks and nuances not present at an in person table. Personally, I think it weakens the community element, but short of a significant lottery win I don't see how to change that. But getting people to send me their goals is unreasonably difficult. I've made it as low friction as I can, with a shared Google Sheet. They can punch in goals, things they want their character to buy, a wishlist of sorts for items, a column for little downtime activities. They've got a box each to tick when they're done. Doesn't mean I need a weekly update, so long as that box gets ticked each week and I know I can export that to a to-do list for prep. In the last 3 months I can only count 2 weeks where that tickbox has been done by the whole group. This week, none of them did so. We've had discussions, and people have said in the past that they're all in on the idea; they like it and think it makes for a better campaign. But they don't follow through on their part. 2 of the 4 have DMed, so they know that prep can be a slog. Something a player wants to do, that they came up with with a few minutes, can turn into hours of finding/making maps, picking enemies, writing NPCS etc etc. Right now, I'm in a bit of a hole of being angry and disappointed. I've written 3 different drafts of what I want to say, but I don't know if any really hit the core issue well enough. Part of me wants to just take "carry on and try to do better" off the table. We've been there before, and people did not do better. Some did worse. The other ideas I have are less satisfying, like dropping the approach entirely, or don't hit the real problem, like moving to a fortnightly game to give them more time. So how do people keep their groups on track?

I’ve been working on a homebrew campaign setting and campaign for about 4-5 months now. The group is set to have its session 0 in late January. The campaign setting seems fine, just some short gazetteers on nations, cities, leader NPC’s, etc. As for the campaign I may be overdoing it, over planning, and frankly I think it’s set up for reactive gaming. I finished the book Collaborative Campaign Design a couple of weeks ago and I just started Proactive Roleplaying. I’m only one chapter in and I think I’ve gone way overboard on the campaign. I have created an entire outline for the campaign already. I started with the BBEG, made 4 lieutenants, one per tier-arc, and worked backwards to make this campaign outline. Now I haven’t planned every little detail. My plan was to give the players “missions” that they could choose from. However, I still think this is reactive gaming. The overall arc of the campaign is that a new leader took over a nation and has become a tyrant, attempting to control magic users, remove all influences of races other than human, etc. I based all this on the Earth Civil War from the 90’s Sci-fi show, Babylon 5. The players already know some of this as I gave them the following as the campaign pitch: The first campaign takes place in the Free Concord, a nation founded on liberty and open debate, now buckling under the rule of a new High Chancellor. You’ll begin the story as fugitives, pulled into a growing resistance as cities fracture, laws tighten, and magic itself comes under suspicion. This is a campaign focused on political intrigue, moral gray areas, and meaningful choices. It’s about deciding what freedom is worth as the costs continue to rise. So, they are expecting that. I already have the first two short adventures created. Should I just scrap all this work I’ve done and wait until session 0 to get the character’s goals? I’m sure I could probably work their goals into what I’ve already created somehow. As I read chapter 1 of Proactive Roleplaying, I thought to myself that I should just scrap it. Explain the campaign setting to the players at session 0, then let them decide where in the world they want to play, instead of forcing the Free Concord Civil War on them. What to do?

We are unbelievably excited for the launch of the second book in the Game Master's Handbook series, and follow-up to the Proactive Roleplaying book: The Game Master's Handbook of Collaborative Campaign Design! This book walks GMs through planning and executing full campaigns, from a full Session -1 system to kick things off to finishing every arc in a satisfying conclusion. We are so, so, so proud and grateful to share this with you, and we can't wait to hear what folks think! You can find it on Amazon (link below) or with all major book retailers, so check what's available near you! We can't wait for you to read it! We'll have more news for you soon, so keep an eye out! Thank you all again for being a part of the journey, and we'll be chatting with you a ton in the coming days. There's an invitation to this lab in the book this time, so we're expecting a few new friends in the coming weeks. We can't possibly convey to you all how grateful we are for the welcoming, helpful, and kindhearted people here, and we trust that vibe will continue as we meet new folks. Talk to you soon! Tristan https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Handbook-Collaborative-Campaign-Design/dp/1964487048

I'm getting my first proactive game underway and I'm debating about how I want to continue forward, whether guiding them more or treating it more like a sandbox. Let me explain. The first goal the players are going after is recovering a lost magical Chalice that has been taken by a group of evil Paladins who are serving an evil Sentient beast. They are obviously too low level to take that on right now, so I'm thinking they will need a couple lower level issues to take on that lead them there. Here's my question: Do I just leave it up to them to figure out how they are going to get ready for this big quest? Or do I plan some bread crumbs for them to follow? It would be super easy to create (say) a few villages where the evil paladins have recruited from and come up with some smaller encounters within them, but part of me wants to just leave it up them with minimal leading. What do you all do? How much do you all lean into Sandbox mode vs. a more guided approach?