Need advice for making a story that won't force players down a set path

[Hituro]

So I'm very new to D&D tabletop and I'm going to DM. I have a decent idea in mind but my biggest problem is trying to find the starting point for the story. Anyone have tips for how to bring 4 heroes together out of the blue and to get them to work towards a common goal? I don't want to force them down the main story path but rather have it come to them and give them choices so they don't feel as if they have to simply follow the story in a straight line. Any ideas? :)

[Knaight]

Get the players to make their characters so they already know eachother, already have reason to stick together, and already have goals that they are pursuing with some degree of actual overlap. Sure, you can try to jam a bunch of disconnected adventurers who've never met together, but it's more trouble than it's worth most of the time.

[ScubaGoomba]

Start with them already working together on the quest and sort out the details later.

[Godskook]

So I'm very new to D&D tabletop and I'm going to DM. I have a decent idea in mind but my biggest problem is trying to find the starting point for the story. Anyone have tips for how to bring 4 heroes together out of the blue and to get them to work towards a common goal? I don't want to force them down the main story path but rather have it come to them and give them choices so they don't feel as if they have to simply follow the story in a straight line. Any ideas? :)

Sandbox is kinda bad for first-time DMs, because:

1.Players going where you don't expect too often is going to give you overload, especially in your first campaign.

2.Not all players/DMs are a good fit, and sandbox environments lend themselves poorly to tidy break-points. In your first few campaigns, you want break-points to give people a chance to quit gracefully via "this campaign is done, wanna join the next one?" rather than "I'm sick of this game, so I'm leaving". Everyone will be grateful for it, trust me.

3.Giving your players time to learn what your train tracks look like makes it easier for them to jump off and back on to the rails when they want when you later stop railroading them.

[Knaight]

This document (www.feartheboot.com/ftb/wp-content/uploads/resources/2_GroupTemplate.pdf) (Episode #2, Group template here if that link doesn't work with your browser) essentially works to get the group together. It's a quick framework, but it works well. The questionnaire is also decent, though I'd disagree with some of the underlying assumptions.

[hemming]

For most players, just baiting with a reward (gold, xp, influence) and dangling a plot hook is enough to get them to bite.

My advice would be to ease into the story line you have in mind - have the first few sessions/adventurers be about the players learning about the setting/NPCs and developing goals and relationships.

Once the story begins to affect the setting (the people and places your PCs now have a connection to) and interfere with their personal goals, most players will decide to do something about it

On bringing the players together initially: you give the players a starting point (a city/town/tavern/road/clearing in the woods) and they need to give you justification for why they are there via a backstory. The most common routes to bring people together initially are to give them a common employer/organization to work for, a common enemy or a mystery/prophecy that links them together.

[Fouredged Sword]

Yeah, I suggest a short intro adventure that is fairly straight forward to get them set on a path working together, then talk to your players OOC and say that they need to find reasons to work together after the intro section is done. All goes well, and you can have someone hire them for a quick one session mission then open the sandbox after that.

[The Prince of Cats]

Starting is easy; give them one or two background features like 'you grew up / lived in this town' or 'you have come for the funeral of this NPC' or even the classic 'you all meet up in a tavern' and use this as the unifying point.

You can also go with variants like everyone starting on a naval ship after being press-ganged. Each player can then decide if they were drugged, grabbed in an alley, volunteered (!?) or whatever. Variants like being arrested and offered service in return for their freedom also work.

As to sandbox...

I echo the sentiment that it is a pain for a newbie DM or players. If you do want to go that way, my advice is to plan a session at a time. Make sure you know what they will encounter that week and then let their actions in a session decide what they will encounter the next week rather than trying to adapt on the fly.

[Mootsmcboots]

As for not making players feel like they have to follow a set path, go with the illuision of choice. Many video games use this, it's easy.

Give them choices, which ultimately lead to exactly where you want them to go. Path A maybe longer, Path B maybe more difficult, maybe path C is a change of setting but all three ultimately bring players to where you want them.

It doesn't work if the choice and result are immediate. It needs some space to make the choice feel like a choice.

Say their decision (Choice C) takes players out of a lush forest setting, into a stoney, arid, ruins type joint, where they find item X which leads them to mysterious tower where you want them to be. Choice A may have led them through a bandit camp where upon interrogating a head bandit he would reveal mysterious happenings coming from a mysterious tower!

But oh do we chose the ruins? Or the Bandits? They seem unrelated, and like entirely different courses.

This works for locations, characters, items etc. Anything you want to direct your players to. Illusion of choice.

[Amphetryon]

Re: The Illusion of Choice - I know many Players who have objected strenuously to this approach, as it made them feel they were being intentionally lied to by the DM about the type of game they were in and the impact the PCs were allowed to have on that game's direction. I cannot personally recommend it.

As far as making a story that won't force Characters down a set path is concerned, you're going to have to define your terms a bit, here. In the broadest sense, any story follows a path, and some particularly jaded Players may instinctively equate such a path with railroading; by that definition, it's all but impossible to avoid sending your PCs down a set path.