Quote Originally Posted by LansXero View Post
Hey you are like a me who has the decency to not subject his players to improvised sessions! weird that, huh. I guess I should try to get into that sort of agreement some time.

I wish I had plot-breakers like you guys do. I DM mostly as a way of mental gymnastics. But its becoming very very tiring to have players trying to figure out how to "please" me and where my plot leads. Well, it used to be that they used to try and figure it out so they could run away from it, but then they gave up (since I dont actually have a plot) and now are trying to find the rails and get back on track. Which is equally futile. I just want them to do what they want to do, and then they go and decide they want to do what I want them to do. Damn players.
to be fair, it wasn't sandbox from the beginning.

since nobody in the group but me had experience with 3.x when I started the group, I used this little "teaching module" with the explicitly stated warning of.

"hey, since we're all learning here, I'm going to run us through this teaching module, as much as I hate it, I'd like you to do me a huge favor and not hop off the rails for the duration of the module."

however, once the module ended, the rails ended. I told them "well, having cleansed the dwarven halls from grobi filth, and restored the dwarf lord to health, you have several options before you"

and I listed (I think ) 4 adventure paths for them to pick from. they went with "lets go get that dragon" and from that point forward it's been a "what they said last time" game.