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?

I've launched my first proactive role-playing campaign with a group of teens and elementary school kids and it's been an absolute blast. The world that they've created feels fun and vibrant and all of the tools that you guys provided worked extremely well. I want advice on how to help them think about smaller goals that will get them to their bigger ones. They had no problem thinking through their big long-term goals which are: 1. Recover a magic item that was taken by an abominable yeti in a group of evil paladins. 2. Overthrow the dominant political force and free a smaller land that's being oppressed by it. 3. Free and underground Dwarven City that's being oppressed by a giant purple worm. 4. Defeat an evil druid that is overthrowing powerful demigods of the land and siphoning their power for himself. Needless to say these are level 14 and up goals as I see it. So where I'm struggling with is where to start them off. We're starting at level one and our first session is on Thursday. I have an idea to start them going towards the abominable yeti but again that's not something I would want them to go up against by themselves. How do you think I could start things off to help them get to those bigger goals?

I’ve been talking with some people about the pacing of their games—I tend to run long form games, so my preferred pacing tends to be pretty stead and then speed up into a dramatic climax once in awhile. The nice thing about proactive play is you can use your goals as a metric for pacing in longer games—how many short term goals are you usually accomplishing per session? One every few sessions? Multiple every session? What’s your preferred pace, and is it what you’re currently at?

I'm starting my first world building session with my youth D&D program tomorrow! Exciting times. I'm working from this template to guide the discussion, and I noticed establishing key factions and geographic locations is missing. Is that intentional? Where in this flow would you include that?

I LOVE the idea of creating a world together as a group. I watched Tristan's overview of how he does that and instantly I can see how the buy-in would increase. I'm about to start a youth D&D program, and there are several kids that I know are going to want to go buck-wild and dive into all kinds of obscure world-building questions like detailed histories, deity structure, etc. My question is: How do you (or do you) limit the amount of world-building your players do? Building on that, do they *continue* to build the world as you play? I can imagine that could get a little dicey if a player decides they want some new aspect of the world 8 sessions in. Do you time-box the world-building? Thanks!