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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7426593" data-attributes="member: 42582">Right. They're not bad motivations if I'm bringing along a PC to a new club game or pick-up game. For a more satisfying or deeper campaign I think something a bit richer might be better.Even Conan, while something of a loner, is often loyal to the given sidekick of an episode. The loner-ish-ness seems more of a literary device than a deep feature of his personality.I ran a session of Castle Amber using AD&D rules a couple of weekends ago. (Half the gang couldn't make it to the session, so we did something else for a lark.) One player rolled everything about his PC (race: half-orc; class: cleric; alignment: LE) but even so came up with a personality for engaging the NPCs ("I'm here to collect taxes. If you have't got a valid notice of assessment for the current period, then you'll have t pay up!"). The other two played elves, who were cousins, and in short order were engaging with the mystery of the module (where did the grey mist come from? - the module answers this one; how did an ogre get in and kill Janet Amber and hide her body up the chimney? - the module leaves this one as an exercise for the reader).So even silly classic play, it seems to me, can easily lead to, or have room for, PCs with a wider range of motivations than merely looting. (Although maybe Castle Amber is distinctive for its number of NPCs? Tomb of Horrors is probably different in this respect.)When it comes to DL-type adventuring, I think it makes sense to have the players take part in establishing the set-up and the relationships between the PCs. That way you get richer motivations than simply "defeat evil", and you have more player buy-in from the start. I think that is also more likely to get you things like Kitiara (? have I got that right? Tanis's ex-girlfriend now being an evil dragon hierarch) than simple GM fiat: which also means your "dungeon" now has more than just treasure and magic items. (Even back in the early 80s Roger Musson was writing about the importance of NPCs in dungeon design, although I don't think he talked about the "next step" of players participating in establishing the backstory and situation.)To finish this post with a new tangent: the Gygaxian playstyle relies pretty heavily on GM authority (to design the dungeon; to adjudicate the traps/tricks; to reveal the secrets only when the players make the right moves, like using divination magic; etc). The DL-type approach carries this over, but I think in more of a cargo-cultish way than for any particularly good reason. It's bad for Gygaxian play if the players know what's in the next room by the PCs don't. But it's good for DL-type play if the players know that the GM is going to work their ex-girlfriend, now bitter and probably fallen in with the wrong crowd, into the situation in some fashion even though the PC doesn't know anything about what's happened to her since they parted ways years ago.</blockquote>

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