cignus_pfaccari
First Post
From what I understand, the title character's impending serial-killerhood was recognized by his foster father, and channeled into something relatively productive. I.e. his victim of choice is other serial killers.
Brad
Basic PC Motivations
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From what I understand, the title character's impending serial-killerhood was recognized by his foster father, and channeled into something relatively productive. I.e. his victim of choice is other serial killers.
Brad
roguerouge
First Post
Addiction: Perhaps it's ale. Perhaps it's whores. Perhaps it's adrenaline. Perhaps it's the fine spatter blood makes when axe hits flesh. In any case, you can't go long without it.
Lone Gunman: They have a plan. You have a conspiracy theory. Nobody (except these other 3 people of varying races and classes) will listen. So it's time you did something about it.
Afterlife: You know that your actions here will determine the nature of your eternal afterlife. It's imminently rational to suffer here and risk everything now to live in heaven forever.
Control: Some people have to control their own fate. They trust only themselves to make the tough call. So when that hobgoblin horde is on the horizon or the evil cultists are holding an entire nation hostage, they'll never go looking for a DMPC to solve it. (Example: Jack on Lost).
Art: There's a beauty to violence, a poetry of blood, a sweet spot amidst the vectors of slashing blades and flying fists, and every fight is a dance of bodies in motion and a theater of cruelty. Some people like to watch arena battles and sports hoping to witness these moments, but you? You're an artist creating them. (I had an orc punk bard/barbarian who traveled with the party not because of plot, but because they supplied the very best violence.)
Lone Gunman: They have a plan. You have a conspiracy theory. Nobody (except these other 3 people of varying races and classes) will listen. So it's time you did something about it.
Afterlife: You know that your actions here will determine the nature of your eternal afterlife. It's imminently rational to suffer here and risk everything now to live in heaven forever.
Control: Some people have to control their own fate. They trust only themselves to make the tough call. So when that hobgoblin horde is on the horizon or the evil cultists are holding an entire nation hostage, they'll never go looking for a DMPC to solve it. (Example: Jack on Lost).
Art: There's a beauty to violence, a poetry of blood, a sweet spot amidst the vectors of slashing blades and flying fists, and every fight is a dance of bodies in motion and a theater of cruelty. Some people like to watch arena battles and sports hoping to witness these moments, but you? You're an artist creating them. (I had an orc punk bard/barbarian who traveled with the party not because of plot, but because they supplied the very best violence.)
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Jack7
First Post
When you're young you can go a long ways on ale and whores. When you're older the benefit to cost ratio inverts.
Anywho, these are my entries...
Exploration (of the unknown) - Going someplace first, or going someplace few others have ever gone to. Which is very similar to adventure in some respects, but not the same.
Danger - Because only danger really makes one feel entirely alive. Very similar to adventure, but not quite.
Saintliness, or Champion of Good - The desire to embark on a Crusade to do good, because you cannot stand the thought of the evil in the world being free to operate as it does now. And/or because you wish to be a representative of the best aspects of God operating within the world. Very similar to Heroism, or rather a particular variant of Heroism, which is more religiously and spiritually based, than psychologically and personality based.
Service - The desire to be of service to others, and to "fix things." Not necessarily Heroic or Saintly service, but just to be of simple service to others when they are in need. In one respect this is a form of Charity, or Philanthropy tied to adventure. The adventure of being of in-the-field, hand's-on service to others, especially of service to those who cannot really help themselves.
Renaissance Man - This is similar to Vocation but the motivation is to be many things in life, not just a single thing for the entire course of one's life. "Going out into the world," discovering it, and working in it, is one mesons of achieving this end.
Wisdom - Similar to Knowledge/Discovery, but the motivation for the motivation is different, because wisdom is different from knowledge.
Worldliness - Similar to Knowledge/Discovery, but you have a definite end and reason for what you are discovering about the world. You want to use it for your own benefit, to make contacts, to establish yourself, to socially and professionally advance. You don't neat money for the sake of money, but to use for the power and influence it brings within certain spheres of activity. I've even seen others use it as a status symbol, but to me the real motivation with worldliness is "influence towards those with power."
Mastery - To become and expert in your field or fields, to know how tings actually work, and to know how the universe operates. This is similar to what in one sense we today would call "science" but the intent is nit just to know, but to "master."
Evil - Some people are motivated by evil and enjoy committing acts of evil.
I would suggest though, as with any individual, motivations are complex clusters and sets of drives and desires (including both internal drives, and external ones - i.e. both invocations and evocations), and any functional fictional character (or real person) is very likely to be driven by more than one basic motivation. Or they may have one chief motivation and a series of shaded sub-motivations that color behavior. As well as the truth that, to be honest, motivations change over time. Not to mention the fact that motivations can obviously or subtly shift in importance depending upon situational circumstances in particular situations.
For instance in my case, when young, my (real world) motivations were primarily (borrowing from this list):
Probably Primary: Heroism, and Duty/Commitment (to God)
Secondary Motivations: Fate (I prefer the term Wyrd), Proving Worth, Exploration, Knowledge/Discovery, Danger, Mastery, Adventure, Building Stuff (Construction), Proving Worth, Rebellion, Love (Romantic), Fortune, Worldliness
But at this stage in my life my motivations are mainly:
Primary: Saintliness, Duty/Commitment (God, Family, Community, Church, Nation, World), and Wisdom
Secondary: Renaissance Man, Wyrd, Mastery, Service, Exploration, Knowledge/Discovery, Building Stuff
Tertiary: Adventure, Danger, Rebellion
Romantic and sexual love is not really a motivation per se, because being married, I possess it and am in no danger of doing without to any significant degree. Things I safely possess are no longer motivating factors to me, or of much interest as far as "desiring or hoarding." I have, so I do not need. I suspect that same phenomenon would be same for fictional characters as well, even gaming ones.
Other things, like Rebellion, well I still feel rebellion against the government and other things (I've never been a big fan per se of large, inefficient, and ineffective organizations) in one sense, and want them reformed and improved and made functional, but I don't rebel anymore against organizations just to rebel against them. Nor do I feel any animus against the stupid inefficiency of large, corporate organizations, I've come to accept that this is just the way they are to some extent, by nature and structure. Nevertheless I still automatically rebel against their wastefulness and inefficiency, but not in the same way, or to the same extent. I point this out to show that a motivation itself can remain, and yet mutate or change in character over time.
The same with danger to me. I still adore situations of danger, but I am much more 'cautious about the kinds and types and extent and frequency of dangers in which I engage because I have other obligations, and others relying upon my survival. My family, for instance. So my obligations towards them sometimes make me outweigh my natural desire for and inclination towards danger for the sake of danger. But when I was young and single danger was an untempered and very enticing drive, all by itself. (I never thought back then I'd live past thirty, once I did things began to change in the way I view the world.) So I would say that motivations always exist on an "environmental scale," relative to what else is occurring in the background.
One other thing I would point out from my psychological observations of myself and others; many times an individual may possess contradictory or at least competing sets of motivations. The very best people and very best characters often do (also sometimes making them unpredictable) and it is in the acts of tensions between these obverse or competing motivations that one finds the birth of exceptional deeds and achievements.
Personally though, I would allow for and let motivations be flexible and fluid in the setting (whatever that is), not set in stone or fixed in time. Over a period of maturation of the character you let the character's motivations develop naturally and organically and to change as they evolve. Time changes not only the motivations one feels impelled by, but how those motivations actually work on, for, and around the character.
Well, I gotta breakfast and get ready for church.
See ya, and good thread.
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JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Guilt: The player survived some horrible event that wiped out the rest of his comrades.
roguerouge
First Post
Meta The character is aware that some higher power is controlling him, a god, fate, some guy in peasant clothes eating bright orange puffs... The character either wants to meet his controller, gain independence, or control the controller.
Faith: A character may decide to go on a pilgrimage or spiritual quest to become closer to their deity.
Friendship: All my buddies are going on this quest. I have no interest, but I don't want to abandon them.
Costumes/Blinging their Avatar: It may sound strange, but my group of players would go on a hundred adventures if I suggested a really cool pair of sunglasses might be at the end of it, which they couldn't get any other way.
Survival: Seeking water in a desert, or shelter from a storm.
Basic Curiosity: The GM describes a cave and a PC decides to take a look inside. They have no motivation, expectations of reward or anything else of the sort, but just feel like having a look.
Fun: There's a bungee platform at the top of the mountain. Climb a dangerous path through monsters, etc, just so you can do a bungee jump.
Tourism: The desire to travel to another country, just for the experience of it.
Change: Doing something because it's different to what they usually do all day every day. After two years hunting dragons, maybe the offer of hunting a werewolf will catch their attention out of sheer variety.
Competitive Drive: You don't really want to do it. But if you don't then that damn other group of adventurers will do it and they keep on taking all of your best cases away from you. Let's see how they like it.
Test an idea: Does holy mistletoe burn demons? Let's hunt one down and find out.
Friendship: All my buddies are going on this quest. I have no interest, but I don't want to abandon them.
Costumes/Blinging their Avatar: It may sound strange, but my group of players would go on a hundred adventures if I suggested a really cool pair of sunglasses might be at the end of it, which they couldn't get any other way.
Survival: Seeking water in a desert, or shelter from a storm.
Basic Curiosity: The GM describes a cave and a PC decides to take a look inside. They have no motivation, expectations of reward or anything else of the sort, but just feel like having a look.
Fun: There's a bungee platform at the top of the mountain. Climb a dangerous path through monsters, etc, just so you can do a bungee jump.
Tourism: The desire to travel to another country, just for the experience of it.
Change: Doing something because it's different to what they usually do all day every day. After two years hunting dragons, maybe the offer of hunting a werewolf will catch their attention out of sheer variety.
Competitive Drive: You don't really want to do it. But if you don't then that damn other group of adventurers will do it and they keep on taking all of your best cases away from you. Let's see how they like it.
Test an idea: Does holy mistletoe burn demons? Let's hunt one down and find out.
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