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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StalkingBlue" data-source="post: 498792" data-attributes="member: 645">Hey, if shopping works for your players, let them shop more!! I mean it.  Give them stores, give them caravans with musty wagons full of stuff to browse through, give them markets.  I don't like to manipulate players through XP awards.  At all.  All the characters get the same amount of XP at the end of every session, no matter what.  I've found that you can have great success in guiding players by what they like.  Experiment.  If your players like to shop (my players do, their characters still enjoy haggling over silver pieces at fourth level <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" />), they may also enjoy downtime between adventures.  My players love it when their characters get to spend time training for gaining levels.  I don't formalise this - I just tell them the group will have a week or two at their disposal and I ask every player what his or her character would like to do.  Each came up with tentative ideas the first time round:  buy a new dress, stroll around town watching people, meet all the priests in town, gain access to where the militia trains and learn a few new tricks, sit in the attic and practice throwing my daggers blind.  Nothing to fill a week with, but so what.  I thought a bit about what every character would encounter doing what they'd planned, whether at the temple or in the attic or at the forge.  We played out one or two highlights from that first week for everyone, ending the session with a local tournament in which the PCs took part.  Everyone had a blast.  The PCs went back to adventuring very well rested, in good spirits and a lot more fleshed out than before.  Again:  Experiment.  If you have a player who already has a personal goal or piece of personal background, let that appear in the game.  Surround it with mystery.  Be sure to talk it through with the player ahead of time to be sure they'll want to play along.  Players like to be asked.  Players also like that extra bit of spotlight.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Examples:  Let the PC have a dream.  During the session, hand the player a sheet of paper with the dream on it.  Tell him or her in front of everyone that "you decide whether you want to share that".  Watch ears grow around the table.  Even if the PC shares the dream, the player will likely enjoy the mystery too much to tell the others just everything all at once.  Let mysterious people (from the PC's past) turn up and fade away before the others really get to see them, let strange letters in secret writing be delivered to him, let him find clues to something he or she would much prefer to forget.  Once you start this with one PC, expect all the other players to want something cool like that, too.  One by one, take them aside to ask whether they'd like to have something personal in the game, and step by step introduce their personal little agendas into the game.  Huh.  Got carried away.  Well. I guess I just love players.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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