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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9418587" data-attributes="member: 42582">Golin is a Dwarven Outcast. His Belief is that Elves are fickle and unstable! In our most recent session, his Goal was To find something useful on the way to Nulb.More examples, and fuller discussion of how Goals and Beliefs factor into play, can be found in my AP thread: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/torchbearer-2e-actual-play-of-this-awesome-system.691233/" target="_blank">Torchbearer 2e - actual play of this AWESOME system! (+)</a>To me, it seems that the issue you raise sit more on the GM side than the player side.Pages 218-9 of the Torchbearer 2e Scholar's Guide gives the following advice/direction to the GM:In Torchbearer, we give you four tools you can use to make your expeditions more than just loot hunts and massacres. Beliefs, creeds, goals and instincts all contain the potential to hook in players and push play to another, more intense level. If, during an adventure, you find an opportunity to present a player with the choice of either playing a belief or acquiring loot, then you’ve offered what we call a meaningful decision. At this juncture, the player must decide what is most important: satisfying that belief or scoring some loot. Torchbearer thrives on choices like that. The game presents many opportunities for the players to earn benefits and improve their characters - through the rewards mechanism, advancements and acquiring loot. If you pit acquiring a reward against acquiring loot, your players will squirm and struggle with that decision. And the ultimate outcome will be more meaningful for the tension. The game becomes even more interesting once you present decisions that set a belief and a goal against one another. If a player has a belief to soak up loot and a goal to teach their young companion, what will they do if their young charge is captured - but they’ve also stumbled on a statue with glittering gems for eyes? Will the player waste time prying out those gems or will they hurry to the rescue? If a character has a belief about making it rich but a goal about serving the common good, the game master can create tension by offering conflicts that fork both priorities. Don't Force Decisions The key to playing Torchbearer is to insert those situations into your adventures and leave them there for the player to decide. Don’t force them. You can prompt a player to make a choice, but let them make the decision. Neither outcome is correct or better. It’s the decision that matters.This advice is derived from similar ideas found in Burning Wheel.In your example of the Goal To rid the temple and catacombs of evil, the GM should be presenting situations that put pressure on this goal: simple pressures, like obstacles in the way of the goal; and more thematic ones, of tensions between achieving the goal and pursuing a Belief.This is what will then lead to character discovery/development.</blockquote>

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