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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 1120169" data-attributes="member: 9254">I think this tends to fall under "character motivations," something that gives GMs fits when the players do something weird.  It doesn't need to be a 10 page biography detailing the anger BBEG holds against his mother for dropping him on his head as an infant but newer GMs need something to guide them.  Heck, one Dungeon module I ran in the early 90s had a black dragon that was an obsessive/compulsive coin collector.  The PCs were supposed to negotiate, hand over some coin and be on their way to the real plot but they decided to fight it out (no chance of survival).  I was looking at TPC until someone noticed his irritation at the messed up coin piles and fired off a windstorm spell to mess everything up.  The dragon immediately breathed acid on the caster and moved in for the kill.  At least until a kender-like elf said "Ohhh, your acid is melting all the pretty coins" pointing at the rapidly corroding silver.   I mentally flipped a coin and decided that the dragon went catatonic and the players were able to escape mostly intact.  That one minor detail proved to be the crux of the encounter.(BTW: if anyone knows which issue of dungeon that is, please let me know.) I know that 90% of the time it'll be completely useless but the other 10% of the time it makes or breaks the situation.  It's worth it to me to buy the mods where the authors spent the extra 10 minutes to briefly describe key NPCs motivations.</blockquote>

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