I was wondering about the motivation of the central character in RPG... in games with a nice story, it''s quite alright to create a background story that explain the presence of the character(s). But how do you motivate an open ended RPG''s character ? (think Morrowind). I mean, freedom is one thing, but given man''s natural tendency, why on Earth would you want to travel the world and risk your life at every corner when you could settle down with a lovely wife and kids ? (and no, they cant tragically die killed by your archnemesis as part of the game, that would be a plot driven motivation ) So I was thinking of taking the pen&paper RPG approach (as usual, cRPG have only a tiny portion of the depth those games offer); make the player create not only his character, but also his background : where he comes from, what his parents were doing, etc. I have seen that done in ADOM, and I must say the influence on the gameplay is minimal (I think it influence only your start gold and items) but at least, it''s there. These background elements could be dug into to create little plots (if you have ver seen a proper p&pRPG you know what I am talking about), NPCs that you could encounter who have some sort of significance for you (a childhood friend could be living in a nearby town and be in a position to give you help), etc. But this still doesnt justify a future hero from leaving his home town and wander the world. So I thought the player could choose a motivation for his character, a reason why he does all this, an ultimate goal to achieve. This could also be a sort of victory condition (if you achieve this, you win the game, in a way). So here are some I thought of : Glory/fame in your domain of expertise. You want to be known, you want people to recognise you in the streets, or at least your name would be famous. If you are a simple stable boy whenyou start, you wanna become a knight of the king, if you start as a student you want your books to be recognised by your peers and mark their time, if you are an assassin (of course, you would travel under a different identity...) your name should be spoken quietly for fear you might hear it, if you are an craftman, kings would seek your skills to make the best gift for their love interest, etc. Romance. Well, you want a woman... or something like that. The only thing you only really want is to settle down and have a family, unfortunately you havent found the One yet. So you decide to go where you might meet her(him)... Power. "One day, they''ll bow down before me!", or simply you want to change he course of your poor country and restore it to its former glory... whatever your reasons, you are a social climber, and the only treasures you seek his status, power and influence over your lesser. It could be for a good cause (the king is evil, religion is forgotten by all), or simply for the sake of power and egoistic needs (you seek immortality, the Philosophal Stone, you want to manipulate people)... note that this is different from the Glory motivation, as you can have tons of power and still be only a shadow behind the throne (think Grima Serpent''s tongue). Illumination. this is a motivation for the intellectual/spiritual type. You simply seek to achieve a higher state of mind. Becoming one with your God, reaching Nirvana, being so powerful that you dont use your powers anymore, accumulating knowledge and offering it freely, being one with your sword, etc. Again, it''s a bit similar to the previous goals, but here you only seek perfection for the sake of perfection, possibly you seek a student to which you could transmit your knoweldge. Exploration/discovery you get bored really quickly if you stay in one place. you seek that place that one day you''ll call your home. You like nothing more than travel, discover new cultures, new places, etc. Maybe one day they''ll name a place after you, but you dont care, you''ll probably be already gone on your next trip. Wealth Well, who cares if people know your name, all you want is to amass as much gold as possible. Maybe one day you''ll have too much gold to spend it, but in the mean time you''ll see how much you can have. Of course you could use that money to become powerful, but really who cares about power and its games, you''d rather live happily in a castle and let others worry about those things. then there are the plot driven goals : revenge of a fallen kin, recovery of a loved one, discovering your origins, etc. Those goals could be more or less long, more or less intertweened with other goals (your long lost brother is evil, it turns out your wife was not exactly "stolen", she just decided to leave you, your father wasnt actualy killed as you thought, he commited suicide, etc). Still, I''d like to know what kind of motivations you guys can come up with. if they enter one of the category above, don''t worry. I thought of quite a few special cases for each of the types of heros I could think of, but I''d still like to know what I could have missed. any help/comments appreciated ! Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

Revenge is one that comes to mind, quickly. The hideous nobgobblers attacked and ravaged your home town, killing your parents, yada yada.

Well-used in game stories (and movie stories, and novels, and...) but there are some interesting possibilities for gameplay depth, here.

Another way to look at it is if you took a game system like GURPS, which allows you to take advantages and disadvantages for your character (each advantage costs some number of character points, and each disadvantage gives you more points back). In a game system like this, you can tie the backstory neatly to the advantages and disadvantages, which will create even more gameplay opportunities.

I like where you''re heading with this - I''m anxious to see where the thread goes!

Cheers,
Russ

Survival.

A good example is Half-Life, even though it's not an RPG.

[EDIT] Err.. I can't believe I typoed Half-Life.

[edited by - rk on July 20, 2002 5:04:32 PM]

Survival and revenge are both what I called earlier plot based/driven motivations.
But by reading your answers I think I can clarify my thoughts a bit more.
My basic assumption is that we are talking about an open ended game. In this regard, we should assume that there is no plot whatsoever. Think Elite (the space navigation game), rather than Morrowind. I am not posing this condition because I think it''s interesting, but rather because it makes for an interesting thinking exercise.

Once this is understood, I think you can divide motivations in two categories : the external motivations, and the personal.

External would be what I called earlier "plot-driven" (I guess this was a bit incorrect), mainly because they are forced unto the player.
They are initiated either by the environment (you are trapped in open terrain when a blizzard starts blowing...),
or by other people either actively (an old enemy relentlessly tracks you) or passively (your children and wife are taken by a slave merchants while you were in town...)
Can you think of other ways of classifying those ?

One thing I find worth mentioning is the scope of those "motivations" : they are more limited in time than personal motivations. Which is one of the reason I want to find personal motivations, something that will keep driving a character to risk his life or generally live and adventurous life.

Personal motivations originate from the character himself. Those are part of the Nature of the character, they emerge from his characteristics, his skills, his moral standing, his beliefs, his education, etc.
I thought of quite a few specific examples, mainly because I tried to go with a few classic types of characters (the vile assassin, the powerhungry diplomat, the wise ermit of the woods, the young and brave squire, the ancient vampire, and quite a few others...) but most of those motivations tended to be easily grouped under those categories I mentioned previously.

My problem is : is there more ?
And which one are worthy of a player''s time ? Is it really interesting/fun/rewarding to play a guy whose goal in life is to manipulate others to finally gain a powerful status in society, or a monk seeking wisdom, and more importantly, how could it be implemented in terms of gameplay ?

ComponentFault : yes, disadvantages and advantages are one thing I was also thinking of to create plots and events in the character''s life. They are vey useful little things to compose a role and giv it more depth.

rk: survival (I hadnt thought of that one), would fall in the external motivations.
Possibly you could be infected with and incurable disease or something, but I would still consider that external (though that would bring an interesting touch to the adventure! )



Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

I don''t know if this qualifies, but from observation: Moment to moment satisfaction. It seems to be the driving force in quite a few people''s lives that I know.

If you have a supple, modifiable environment can one motivation be to change the environment to something they find more favorable?

Let''s say that there are marauding armies sweeping the land. This isn''t so much plot established as it is state established. The player, given proper inputs into a part of the world state, can somehow alter some aspect of the army (say destroying their supplies to slow them down, or giving them an artifact to increase their power).

They may have either a simple or complex motivation for changing any given state. They may want to simply see what arises. In a game where services offered to the player can be affected (or even destroyed / removed), they may have a selfish interest of convenience or even survival. In a world where there''s some concept of identity and praise, they may secretly accomplish something just to hear it commented on by the NPCs.

I think external and internal motivation begins to overlap with this idea because as the player changes the environment and the environment responds, the world will push them to do things and they''ll have a desire to change the world.

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Just waiting for the mothership...