So what's my motivation?

[DagdaMor]

Hi, I am relatively new here. I have been lurking for a while seeing how this place works, and I finally have my first point to make, I hope this is the right place...

For me there is a great "trap" that a lot of RPGs fall into, and I always had in my head a clear idea of why it happened, but then when I try to take my own ideas past the initial phases I find myself stuck in the same trap.  And thats purpose, in the early days of RPGs purpose was never really that much of an issue, you were an adventurer you went to a village heard a tale about a lost dungeon, found the dungeon, hit the dragon, took the loot. You could add all sorts of meta-plot you wanted around it you could build your character to be as indepth or as shallow as you like, but you always had something to fall back on as a guide.  But it got dull, because when you wanted to move outside of the Dungeon, the whole world fell apart, they hadnt thought about how to deal with the outside, apart from as vague lists of important NPCs and plot ideas.

Then, picking an example at random, WoD style games came along, you had the wonderful evocative world, these amazing things and places and your imagination was the only limit, and the world seemed great, then you came to write your character and it hits you like an actor thats lost his part "What's my motivation?" Ok so I am a vampire, I am dead, but why should I care? Why I am here?  I know a lot of people will say well thats what the roleplaying part is, but if you have nothing to work from, you get lost, or everything becomes a carbon copy.  

An example of the sort of game I think gets a nice balance is Shadowrun, which despite being a relative gamist heaven with one of the crunchiest systems there is, it has a massively involving and evocative world, BUT you have a purpose, you always know at a basis where you fit in this world. You are once again your little adventurer knowing what he needs to do - meet the johnson, rob the corp, get the pay - but on top of this if you step outside of this world it doesnt suddenly crumble, you have this massive range of possibilty of  who you are and what you are here for to make every existentialist jump with delight.

So it seems simple, but it never is, and my question is really this - How do you avoid your system turning into the existential framework of WoD with no guidance to why or how, whilst keeping away from falling into the trap of being a little adventurer with no scope?  Or am I thinking to much about it, do you have success with a very loose, or rigid, framework in your games and worlds?

Thanks
Ash

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Ash and Welcome to the Forge!

There are a number of games that have cut this Gordian knot rather tidily. Some of them to look at are:

Sorcerer: Each player decides why they are there and what motivates their character. It's called a Kicker and it's the GM's job to run the game so that Kicker gets played out. Deciding what your motivation is, is central to prepping and running the game. I highly suggest you check it out. When I finally understood it, it blew my mind.

The Riddle of Steel: Characters have traits called Spiritual Attributes that provide a mechanical measure of their sense of purpose. For example, Wesley loves Buttercup so much that he gets 3 extra dice whenever he fights to save her.

My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vinyard: The game text tells you explicitly what your character's purpose is. In MLwM, it's to gain enough Love so you can overthrow your vicious, belittling, megamanical Master. In DitV, it's to go to the next town and put an end to the sinnin' goin' on in them thar parts.

[clehrich]

Ash,

Welcome to the Forge!

You bring up an interesting point, which is a kind of double layering of purposes.  On the one hand there's what might be called the mission goal (clear out the dungeon) and on the other there's the character goal (what's my purpose in life?).

In a number of recent games, such as My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyard and The Riddle of Steel, already mentioned, the character goal is in a sense hard-wired in mechanically.  This is built through-and-through in MLwM and DitV; in TROS it's a separate mechanic.  By setting this up in the mechanics, players are encouraged not only to have a motivation but also to act on it.

What Sorcerer demonstrates nicely is that this doesn't necessarily need to be mechanical, because actually players like having a motivation to guide them, so if there's a Kicker it gets them in motion and keeps them there.  Note that the Kicker is written by the player, not the GM; it's something that whacks the character's ordinary life for a loop and forces him to do something about it.

In large-press commercial games, one nice example is Unknown Armies.  In terms of story, your character has been kicked into motion by encountering the weird and supernatural, and now nothing can ever be the same.  In terms of character, your PC has (at least in the level of the game I like) an Obsession, which is a kind of motivation that is essentially so extreme that whenever your character has more than 2 seconds to think, he starts obsessing about that thing he obsesses about.  This is also what drives magic: focusing on your obsession and sticking to its framework makes you powerful.  It also makes you insane and makes you slowly fall apart: a Dipsomancer is obsessed with alcohol, which is a not terribly nice way of saying that he's also an alcoholic, and he needs to drink a certain amount just to stay "functional," and needs to drink quite a bit to get powerful.  Not surprisingly, Dipsomancers also have a limited shelf-life if they don't use magic to prolong their lives, and since that magic came out of a bottle....

To my mind, the point you bring up is essential in a lot of game design.  Characters have to have at least two levels of motivation, so that when one thing is actually dealt with or in a stable state, the character doesn't just sit there.  I think that if you want long campaigns, it helps also to have relatively complex motivations like this, and for them not to be entirely in agreement.  So if the Dipsomancer wants to become the head of a powerful cabal, he's got a problem, which is that getting that kind of authority and acceptance is sort of at odds with being a wino.

Another very useful kind of motivation is a separate third level: why does the character want to stick together with the rest of the crew?  There are of course lots of different ways to do this, and of course it's not necessary in every game, but I think if that's a different driving motivation from the mission and the character motivation, you get some nice conflict just waiting to happen.

Does that help at all?

[Roger]

I think the greater pitfall here is the possibly confusion between the character's motivation and the player's motivation.

I've seen numerous games fall apart because the DM has tried very hard to build situations which engage the characters, while missing the mark entirely as far as the motivations of the players.

Conversely, as far as I can tell, if the players are motivated and satisfied, then the character motivations just work themselves out.



Cheers,
Roger

[M. J. Young]

As has already been suggested, there are quite a few ways to approach the problem, and different games use different ways. Also, the idea of whether to hook the character or the player has arisen, and that's very important. I'd like to suggest another distinction that you can see in some of the games mentioned but which hasn't been brought to the fore, one which I see all the time in Multiverser.

There are motivations that spring primarily from within the character, and motivations which spring primarily from outside the character.

Whenever I bring a player character into a new world, I'm acutely aware that everything depends on what the player through his character wants to do. I might have very specific ideas concerning the expectations for this world, but if he's not interested in that, they don't fly. Still, the degree to which I have expectations expressed in the setting and situation is going to impact what the player does.

For example, a lot of the bigger worlds are very open-ended. If I drop you in NagaWorld, the first question is going to be, you see these different things in different directions, which way do you want to go? I don't care which way you go. Some of those places are interesting, some are deadly, some have hidden benefits or hazards, but no matter where you go something will happen. Even if you stay where you are, something will eventually happen. You will react, and we will have interaction. If you want to survive, you have to do something eventually--but you don't really have to survive, and that's fine, too.

On the other hand, if I land you in The Dancing Princess, after you've had a bit of time to get settled and oriented to the world, you're going to hear that there's something wrong with the princesses, and that the king is offering a substantial reward to anyone who can save them from whatever curse this is that no one can understand. The longer you stay, the more serious this call gets. If you ignore it, there are repurcussions for the whole world--the demons will take over, and you'll be forced into a very bad situation. You can ignore it, though, if that's what you want to do. Still, the motivation to help the princesses is strong, and presses on the character from outside.

Thus a critical question when designing something more limited than Multiverser is whether the motivation for the character comes primarily from who the character is (e.g., D&D makes you an adventurer, so this is what your character does; WoD makes you an angsty inhuman creature, so your motivation comes from who you are), or does it come more from the world around you (in Sorcerer, something has just happened and you have to respond; Unknown Armies forces you to confront a supernatural reality of which you were hitherto unaware).

Granted that the line between these is sometimes blurred, it's still something to consider. More importantly, you'll run into the kinds of problems you identified with D&D if the internal and external motivations don't match--the adventurer has every reason to explore the dungeon, but when the situation starts pushing him into court romances, he's out of his element and doesn't know what to do or why to do it.

--M. J. Young

[Trevis Martin]

This is part of what makes games like tRoS and Sorcerer so good.  With the invention of a kicker or Spriitual Attributes, you have the player, communicating on a real level, what is important to them, What they think is interesting and exciting about their character and what potential situations they'd like to see.  The player gets to tell the GM flat out, through their character design, what they want to play.  GMing these becomes easy, you throw as many opportunities for those types of situations their way as possible and run with what sticks.  Character motivation is an after the fact issue in these games.  Player engagement is what counts (like Roger)

I think that a lot of systems present a character creation system that presents a static object.  Sorcerer, TROS, DiTV and MLWM all create a force in motion.

Sorcerer is my usual counterpoint to Vampire specifically because you can't accidentally be a Sorcerer.  Even if you don't  have much knowledge, you have to mean it and mean it for real.  Calling and binding and demon is an act of will.  Such an act implies a passion, a want that has gotten to such an internal pressure that the character in question chose this incredibly dangerous and difficult act in an attempt to satisfy it.

TROS, you have to create SA's, these are your passions, things that put the character in motion.

DiTV.  The game assumes, from the outset, that you have been called to an office of high responsibility within the faith.  YOu have accepted that office and now people depend on you to do your job to the best of your ability.  You are in motion.

MLWM puts you in a situation of intolerable pressure from a master who is terribly abusive (group creation of the master makes sure that he's someone they can all hate.)  One of the central things we humans strive for is relief from oppression.  GM's job in this game?  Play the master to the hilt.  Up the pressure.  From the beginning the characters are understood to be in motion trying to escape this pressure in some fashion.

Trevis

[John Kim]

So it seems simple, but it never is, and my question is really this - How do you avoid your system turning into the existential framework of WoD with no guidance to why or how, whilst keeping away from falling into the trap of being a little adventurer with no scope?  Or am I thinking to much about it, do you have success with a very loose, or rigid, framework in your games and worlds?

I would answer "yes" to the latter question.  That is, I don't think there is a right answer to this, because different people will prefer a different balance between rigidity and looseness.  I think you're right that there is a balance, but I don't think there is a "right" spot between the extremes.  

So, for example, games like old D&D, Shadowrun, My Life With Master, or Dogs in the Vineyard all have a very focused template for adventure.  i.e. There is a clear thing which you are supposed to be doing: respectively, looting dungeons; accepting shady jobs for hire; following orders while looking to rebel; and clearing towns of demons.  

On the medium side, there are games like Sorcerer or Champions.  Here there's a loose template for what adventures should be like -- i.e. mess with demons or fight supervillains -- and the player is directed to further specify what it is like, through the Kicker in Sorcerer, or through disads like Hunted and DNPC in Champions.  I think The Riddle of Steel and maybe Ars Magica are similar.  

Then there are the loose games, like Vampire: The Masquerade,  HarnMaster, or The Pool.  Here the games provide very little direction as to what adventures should be like.  The GM and players have to come up with what that direction should be.  

I think the preference between these varies from person to person.

Edited for grammar/clarity in first paragraph

[Dr. Velocity]

I was struggling with this idea the other day also, and wrote a couple of way-too-long posts to some other people I do forum RP's with - I'm glad there's other people with this same current thought - my group seemed to think I was thinking about it a little too much.

One thing I thought was kind of neat in some games is that they have a "team" setup, where your generic motivation as to why your character is playing at all, is hard-coded into the entire game - Chill uses SAVE, an organization made up of people who have encountered "The Unknown" (anything "weird"), and who decided to join together to investigate and foil the Unknown - so rather than being a lost puppy or a character who's first game session will usually be their first encounter with the Uknown (like Call of Cthulhu), your background is assumed, you've already had your first run-in with the Unknown, and were driven to become a member of SAVE, so anyone playing (under the standard rules) is going to be a member of a local SAVE branch, and the other people are all usually team members of the same branch; sort of like X-Files or CSI. Its kinda constrictive and limits some character development and maybe provides too much security (SAVE is a secret org. but sometimes hands out "kits" including weapons, clothing, money, computers, etc) - all in all though, its a pretty stable but no-brainer "fix" for glossing over the basic motivation as to why you're in the town graveyard tunnels at 3AM looking for ghouls.

[shlo]

I think the greater pitfall here is the possibly confusion between the character's motivation and the player's motivation.

I totally agree with this. As a player it's easy to create a character with an original motivation, and playing this character turns to a nice exercise, but lately I realised that I prefer being motivated myself and having fun rather than doing exercises, even if it means playing always similar PCs, because now I play RPG to let off steam.

As a GM, use the PC abilities as a hint to build the journey: regularly involving the PC's abilities and traits looks like the best way to involve the players in the game. Sorry for writing this obvious sentence, but I'm sure we forget it too often. Most of the time this failure comes from pre-established scenarii combined with the GM's inaptitude to improvise.

In addition, ask the players what side of the game they want to explore, especially in RPG where many genres are possible.

Shlo.

PS: my first post here, hi everybody!

[Doctor Xero]

I cut my teeth at game mastering on Champions, and one of the things I loved about Champions is the use of such disadvantages as Hunteds and Dependent NPCs, some of which have become norms in the gaming community.  However, I always appended the questions, "Why?", "How does your character feel about that?", and "How do you want 'reality' to feel about that?" (i.e. how should I run this, and should it be dramatic, tragic, a latch for adventures, or comedic?) to each disadvantage.  If possible, we would try to tie several disadvantages together as well, such as a "Psychological Limitation: Phobia of Spiders" tied to "Hunted: Arachne."

Thus, for example, I never had to deal with a superhero which had "Hunted: M*A*D" -- I would have a superhero who was hunted by M*A*D because she had accidentally killed the leader's innocent son, who felt torn between guilt over the death of an innocent and outrage at M*A*D and its leader for putting her in such a position, and the player would make it clear to me that M*A*D appearances should be opportunities for his character to go through serious psychological frustrations as she dealt with the incident.

Because of this, I would also get characters with wonderfully odd disadvantages, such as the superhero whose Hunted was his own mother, a pushy stage mom who constantly endangered his life through her efforts to coerce him into milking his superpowers for celebrity status, whom the character both loved and feared, and whom the player wanted to be played for maximum comedic effect ("Use her to hose my character!" is close to how the player put it).

When these three questions are asked about Hunteds and DNPCs, the character enters the campaign with hooks already settled in ways that work for the character and satisfy the character's player.

Doctor Xero

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

In support of Doctor Xero's point: my experiences with Champions, specifically those very features and the very same techniques/emphasis of them, led me eventually to derive the concept of Kickers and related matters in the design of Sorcerer.

Best,
Ron

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

I think the greater pitfall here is the possibly confusion between the character's motivation and the player's motivation.

I totally agree with this. As a player it's easy to create a character with an original motivation, and playing this character turns to a nice exercise, but lately I realised that I prefer being motivated myself and having fun rather than doing exercises, even if it means playing always similar PCs, because now I play RPG to let off steam.

I suggest going further than that, and postulate three levels of motivations. One of those is the set of goals driving the character, as mentioned above. The two others (borrowing from my upcoming Nodal Point yearbook article) are External Participant Motivation and Internal Participant Motivation. EPM deals with "why do I play" (plot-solving, entertainment, social interaction, etc.), and IPM with "what do I as a player want to see in the game" (intrigue, combat, character attention, etc.)

Those categories may - and in the case of an enjoyable game, should - coincide, but that doesn't always happen. Thus it's important to see the difference of motivation levels. It lets the game participants (both GM and players) in on what needs to be fixed when the game isn't running as enjoyably as it should.

In my experience almost all "problem player" issues, for example, happen on the EPM level, but what game books suggest as their fixes deal with IPM-based issues. Thus they're less effective than they could be.

-Jiituomas

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Jiituomas, I think you're completely correct. As you probably know, these points are consistent with a lot of the ideas that have been presented here at the Forge.

Not everyone agrees about the following point, but Shlo and Ash, you might be interested in the idea that some of us find useful: characters' motivations are fictional, but real people's motivations are not. Whenever anyone is talking about characters' motivations, it's actually more constructive to examine what the real people want, and get that settled first - then, amazingly enough, the characters' motivations become easy and more exciting during play.

Best,
Ron

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

As you probably know, these points are consistent with a lot of the ideas that have been presented here at the Forge.

Of course they are. One can't really write several years' worth of (high-quality or not) rpg theory without having read these forums on occasion.

Anyway, the main point is that occasionally by defining some characteristics as separate phenomena, and naming those, it's easier to discuss the issues behind them.

By first solving EPM issues before the game, the group can proceed to create a balance between IPM and character motivation (CM) needs. For inexperienced players IPM and CM desires may be very much alike, but as players get more experience, those too seem to grow apart, and need to be addressed separately.

(As an example, think of a beginner playing for mostly "intrigue/challenge" EPM reasons, wanting IPM intrigue, and thus plays a smooth plotter. Then imagine the same guy a few years later, wanting to play an intrigue-heavy  game - but with an uncouth country bumpkin as his character. Now, imagine all the possible changes in the three variables that may cause this, and you'll see the complexity of the issue.)

-Jiituomas