why are the players going to talk to a guy eating soup? Why are they going to talk to a girl with flowers in her hair? Why does the person with the bow draw their attention? Is it just a matter of 'these people are in the room, go talk to them'? That's the sort of no-direction sandboxy claptrap I hate in a story, where's the hook? Why should I talk to these people? Why do I have reason to believe they know anything at all about the artifact I'm searching for? Because they're in the same inn as me? That's terrible associative reasoning, aka: logical fallacy.
yes, the adventure is to accomplish the goal assigned to you in exchange for money. Which is the motivator of 80% of adventurers in games I play in(the motivator for the other 20% is doing good and helping people, which this adventure also has covered). The other motivator is to see a puzzle solved and see the plot thread resolved.
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They care because they are being paid to care and because if they figure it out they can save people's lives. Some of them do it because it will make them more famous. Some do it because they want to prove they are better at solving puzzles than other people. Some do it for the mystery. Some do it because their friends want to do it and they'll go along with their friend's goals.
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They all follow the same basic formula:
NPC comes up to the PC and asks them to do something for them. Sometimes for money, sometimes out of the goodness of their hearts. The PCs agree and accomplish the mission by fighting monsters, solving puzzles, and defeating obstacles. Then they get paid. Sometimes by someone else other than the original employer.
Whether that mission is "Go into that hole and save my family from the goblins who captured them" or "Find the evil magic item in this room".
I think it's fairly clear why the characters should talk to the people in the room: because the players know that this is the scenario into which the GM has framed their PCs. In other words, the motivation is almost entirely metagame - the players know that they're playing a game, and to progress the game they will have to talk to these people the GM has described to them.
The in-character motivations that are meant to throw a figleaf over the metagame motivation - the offer of pay, or acclaim, or doing good - seem so feeble to me that the fig-leaf may as well not be there. Especially if earning money, or gaining acclaim, or doing good has no impact on the content of the campaign, and makes no difference to how the game unfolds in the future.
Just speaking for myself, this is an approach to RPGing that has almost no appeal. In the context of the soup module, for instance, I would expect at least one of the PCs to have a genuine reason to care about the forest, or perhaps about one of the NPCs.
Actions are just one part of making a character(or characterization). In order to be a well rounded character we need to see their description, get a glimpse at their thoughts and see how they react in a variety of situations.
Christopher Kubasik isn't giving a definition of characterisation taken from Wikipedia. He's not
describing literary criticism - he's engaging in it! He's putting forward a view of what makes for compelling character, in drama and in RPG play.
Especially in an RPG, the inner life of the PCs is not easily accessible to the audience (ie the other players), because there is no narration and, generally, little or no soliloquy. It is by declaring actions that a player shows what his/her PC is moved by.
If a character needs nothing but actions then most D&D characters would be defined as 90% identical to one another:
"I attack." "I search." "I attack."
In fact, literally, the most important different between one fighter and another fighter is that one likes wine and fine tobacco and another likes riding horses and reading books about cowboys.
You are describing here an approach to RPGing that has very limited appeal to me.
In the last Rolemaster campaign I ran, two of the PCs were samurai, wielding katana and wakazashi (anachronistic but fun), wearing heavy armour, etc. One did study the history of swords, while the other did not, but this came out not through esoteric monologues but because this character made swords, appraised swords, etc. Being a crafter, a builder and also a giver (whereas the other fighter was a taker) was part of his character expressed through his actions over the course of the campaign.
Even if we focus just on attacking, there are different ways of attacking: different targets to choose, for instance, and - at least in some RPG systems, including some versions of D&D - choices to be made between recklessness, caution etc. Different things to fight for.
And there are different things to search for, too.
Without playing this adventure, I would have no idea that the character(played by the player I mentioned in the original post) had any motivation other than killing monsters and searching for treasure. He hit on the female elf ranger with the purple bow during the adventure. Which means he is, at the very least, attracted to woman as well.
I don't see this as a counterexample to the idea that, in RPGing, character is best expressed through action.
since D&D is a ensemble game, it's very difficult for individual goals to be pursued much during an adventure without splitting the party or forcing the other party members to put their own personal goals on hold to pursue yours.
I don't agree. It just requires a different approach to adventure design and adjudication from the one that seems to be presupposed in the adventures you describe.
