Starting a sandbox campaign by picking premade character goals?

[Yora]

The classic sandbox problem: The players are supposed to come up with their own goals and their own plans to pursue them to get the campaign going. But at the same time they players have no real knowledge of what goals are reasonably realistic in the setting and thematically appropriate for the campaign. One solution to this is to make it a completely generic setting with completely generic goals, but that's really not the way to go to get everyone enthusiastic about the campaign.

Players can not pick from infinitely many options when they don't know what their choice will mean. So how about the GM writing up a couple of one-paragraph story opening for why a PC took up a weapon and decided to go out the door and then letting the players pick whichever they find the most interesting for the PCs they made?

Giving the players an immediate adventure hook probably wouldn't work so well, because then the party would have half a dozen adventures they immediately want to follow. Instead, I think it would work better if the players know that there are clues and trails somewhere in the general area they are starting in and it is up to them to snoop around until they find a hot lead. Kind of a variation of a rumor table.

#1 A relative of the PC was murdered. The murderer's trail leads to the starting village.
#2 The PC has clues to the hiding place of a treasure but it's always been too dangerous to check it out alone.
#3 The PC has sword to hunt vampires and has heard rumors that might indicate the possible presence of a vampire near the starting village.
#4 A relative in the area of the starting village has not been heard from in years. The PC has decided to find out what happened.
#5 The PC is a priest or initiate and on the quest to find an abandoned shrine and restore it.
#6 The PC is fed up with the bandits attacking travelers on the road and wants to put an end to it.

These might not last terribly long, but as they players are pursuing their initial goals they should be learning more about the setting and what is going on in it so that later they are able to really come up with their own goals to pursue later on.

What do you think of this? Any other ideas for generic motivations that a GM could tailor to a worked out sandbox?

[Becca Stareyes]

Works for me. I'd leave a few blank spots. For instance, the 'missing relative' ones, let the players set who the relative is and what their relationship is.

[Pleh]

In addition to leaving blanks, allow some mild editting.

I like how 5e requires some backstory, but isn't very hands on about giving you one. There's a list in case you have writer's block and advice on how to make your own.

[SirGraystone]

I would start with #4 but missing for weeks not years. But create the missing npc with your players, ask them list of questions about the npc. And choose together what's the sex of the npc, the race, job/class, etc...

Then have each player explain how he knows the NPC and his relation to him, family, mentor, old army buddy,...