[@BrokenPromise] Yeah, I'll use variations on things instead of the name or the pronoun overandoverandover.  Though I tend to reuse the same ones a lot for any given character.  And for sandboxing/no sheets, there's always OOC discussion to figure out what will work well.  If you/the GM want X to happen, one of you approaches the other and says "Yo, so I want X, why would so-and-so end up in situation X?"  In the end, it's not up to the GM to decide on the actual motivation.  ...I'm phrasing this poorly.  Also having trouble thinking of an example.  But yeah, absolutely discuss what would kick characters in the rear and get them heading towards a useful goal.  And as a player, there's often a need to have at least a little flexibility to either have bad things happen so that a character is pushed out of their comfort zone, or even take an option that's...not against the character, but maybe it's their second choice instead of their first, and in the instant of decision, for whatever reason, they went with that.

[@The Elvenqueen] Since I look at rp from a standpoint near storytelling, there's something to be said for allowing plot twists to be a surprise, and leaving things out for later discovery.  It also helps things stay fresh and exciting.  It's the same reason a DM doesn't tell you the endgame of a plot at the beginning in many cases.  I rather feel char sheets are a place where less is definitely more.  ...I also may have had a problem early on with players that didn't know or didn't bother to separate IC and OOC knowledge of things, which has has given me a real bias against revealing super secret stuff about my chars.  That's my own problem, though.