Failing motivation to adventure

[Quasqueton]

So, if someone <snip> can't agree with the rest of the party to go on an adventure, then that player can enjoy watching the rest of us have fun playing the game.

He would always seek motivation from me or the other PC's. Until one day everyone went "off to fight the bad guy" and he said he didn't have any motivation to go. One by one in character they all made their goodbyes... It was amazing how fast he found that motivation.

Have you ever seen a PC actually get left behind for some role-playing reason.

I've seen a party break up (in game) because they found they had no compatible goals, and no real reason to stick together. 2 of the 5 PCs continued the game with 3 new PCs joining.

Quasqueton

 

[Turanil]

Yes, I have seen it a couple of times. Usually it also degenerated into a dispute between players. It always involved incompatible alignments, where a paladin eventually decide he cannot go along a CE necromancer do some questionable things...

 

[Ibram]

Yea, I've seen it on occasion. As a DM I'm not about to stop the adventure if one player cannot think of a reason his character would go on the adventure.

 

[the Jester]

Yep.

I get really annoyed by this. I try to throw out motivation hooks for the pcs, but if you're unwilling to participate in the adventure, don't expect me to give you half the game to fart around, though. You'll get fifteen or twenty minutes here and there while the others get hours.

 

[Crothian]

Nope. THe people I play with are good people and they know what is expected of them.

 

[Psion]

Have you ever seen a PC actually get left behind for some role-playing reason.

After a player in one game I was in declared he didn't see a reason to go along, the DM declared that he was not going to conjure another excuse for him to go OOC.

I guess I'm too much of a glutton for punishment, because I typically bite the bullet and find "another way".

 

[Akrasia]

Nope. THe people I play with are good people and they know what is expected of them.

That's been my experience as well.

In addition, at character creation, I've generally tried to ensure that the PCs have clear goals and reasons to adventure.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Yup. This has happened on several occasions.

The first two of which I was the person who stayed out. I couldn't cast spells at the time, and there was bascially no real reason to get into the situation. The haunted cave had been there for weeks, it'd stay a while longer, same with the bandits. With my mighty +6 to hit (10th level) and whopping D4 hit dice, the risks (high) outweighed the benefits (curiosity).

The second set was a party division between the sneaky people and the not-so sneaky people. The sneaky people went out and tried, while the not so sneaky people didn't see it as worthwhile.

Now, what more often happens with my groups is that the under-motivated person tries to go and do something on their own, and leave everyone else behind.

 

[painandgreed]

Character motivation is somethign I really try and get the players to address when creating the character. I explain what the campaign is about and ask them to come up with a character that has motivations to support that. I've done that ever since had a really good player retire one of his characters. He was a good RPer and had a concrete character concept, but after several games he admitted that the character as written, had absolutly no reason to ever leave his house and do any of the things we were doing (so much for the solitary scholar achetype). Once he made up a new character with some metagamed motivations at the start, everything was grand. recently, another character was so disruptive we had to kill them. His new character fits in the party very nice.

 

[Wycen]

Our very first Eberron session my warforged didn't follow the rest of the group in the introductory adventure and I realized that nobody else was going to fit my character into the group, so I just went along for the ride.

As it turns out, more than one of us is still going along just for the ride. We've got basically 2, 3 or 4 different cliques within our 6 person party. 2 self centered/evil characters, one only interested in money, one Lawful Good, etc. Only generous use of action points and luck have kept us from a TPK.