I enjoy running and playing sandbox games.

As a player, I like the freedom and ability to help create the world. I'll make a goal for my character and find motivation to go on the party's latest quest as a way of nearing my goal. Example: A halfling character of mine had been separated from her twin brother as part of her backstory. Her goal was to find him or what happened to him. When the party took the quest to hunt the swamp witch, my halfling made it known that her brother disappeared in a swamp just like this. She would look for clues about her brother, in the vain hope that it might be the same swamp or perhaps he might have been a victim of the witch. And if not, at least she might learn about swamps and the kind of fate that might have befallen him. My halfling had a strong reason to keep the quest moving. When things stalled, she had something to keep her going. When another character wanted to give up, she had a reason to argue.

As a GM, I try to subtly suggest goals and motivations to players, if needed. I find many players don't need the help and dive in and bite all the hooks. But sometimes I have a player who, despite being a full participant for many enjoyable sessions, doesn't know what his character wants or why the character has been doing all this stuff. This player might be great at solving the immediate problem at hand but might struggle with sandbox freedom. Recently I had a case of player ditherimg where I wanted to shout "You're stinking rich! Go buy a country house, hire a small private army, and sack the town that keeps fucking you over!"

What have you done as a player or GM to create goals and motivation in your games? How do you help a player who seems to be suffering an existential crisis with their character? Do you know of any tricks or resources to quickly or randomly generate compelling goals and driving motivation?

Ideally, motivation is part of character creation, and it is something that is a drive that is never complete, but it does inspire goals that can be completed. If a character lacks motivation, the character is not an adventurer. This was far more eloquently covered by the AngryGM.

Quote from: https://theangrygm.com/simple-campaign-characters
A Motivation
No matter what they think, players don't actually need any sense of their character's personality, backstory, or goals to start playing. That s$&%'s a crutch. Worse, it impedes roleplaying and encourages, self-centered play-by-portrayal.

But players do need to know what motivates their characters. And so do you.

Motivation refers to a character's inner drive. The thing they want out of life and can't get enough of. It's not a goal. Characters don't need goals. Roleplaying games are already full of goals. Every adventurer's got a goal. Often a few of them. Campaigns usually develop a goal. Even if they don't start out with one. Multi-adventure arcs can crop up with goals of their own. And characters usually adopt and complete numerous personal goals throughout play. TTRPGs are good on goals.

Motivations aren't goals. They explain goals. A character's motivation explains why they accept the goals they do. Most of them. And why they reject the goals they do. Most of them. Yes, characters will take on goals that don't feed their motivations. Just like real people. That's because characters have needs. Money, survival, the trust of their allies, and so on. But a character's motivation is the one that spotlights the most meaningful of their goals.

Motivation's described with a single word or a short phrase. No more than three words. I like to form them as combinations of verbs and nouns. Amass wealth, acquire power, serve good, help others, learn the truth, explore the world... look, I'll include a big ole sample list below, okay?

Meanwhile, understand a motivation's a nebulous thing. An inner need. It can be fed but never fulfilled. A motivation's never done. If a player proposes something that they could actually complete, they're choosing a goal. Ask them why their character wants that goal and you'll be closer to a motivation.

Some systems do included drives to choose from, such is the list in Ashen Stars, but that list is somewhat setting centric. Another possible resource is AngryGM's Memo to Players #2, relevant part quoted below.

Quote from: https://theangrygm.com/memo-to-the-players-2/
Start Small and Build
The more you know about your character at the start of the game, the less room it has to grow. And the less chance it has to surprise you. But that's okay. Your character's a low-level nobody when you start playing. And that's great. Because everything that happens to your character before the game starts is something you won't get to experience at the table.

In other words, skip the extensive backstory and character analysis. Instead, try this:

Step One: Come Up with a Prompt
Think about your favorite character from that Netflix series again. Think about what they were like when the show first started. In a single, short phrase, how would you describe that character? That's how you describe a newly-minted RPG character too. One short phrase with room enough for one or two ideas. A motivation, a simple trait, a defining moment. That's all.

Bathar is a dishonored ex-soldier trying to redeem himself.

Step Two: Keep that Prompt Handy
That prompt? Write it down. Type it out. Don't just keep it in your head. Put it somewhere on your character sheet. Somewhere you can see it.

Step Three: Refer Back to Your Prompt
At the start of every game session, read your prompt to yourself. Read it again whenever something happens in the game that feels big or important. Read it whenever you have to make a choice and you don't know what to do.

Step Four: Trust Your Character
Did you come up with a prompt? Did you write it down? Do you refer back to it? Great! Don't do anything else. Don't analyze your character. Don't explain your character. Don't change your prompt. Don't write stories about your character. Just refer to the prompt whenever you have to. And then do whatever feels right. Make whatever choices seem best. Gradually, the character will grow in your head. They'll start making choices. They'll start talking out of your mouth. It will happen. You just have to give the character space to grow and time to grow in.

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 02, 2022, 08:28:09 PM
What have you done as a player or GM to create goals and motivation in your games? How do you help a player who seems to be suffering an existential crisis with their character? Do you know of any tricks or resources to quickly or randomly generate compelling goals and driving motivation?

Sandboxes are better with toys.
I remember playing Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and there is a sailing ship in the module. (Spoilers!) Our group took that ship after the module and went on a bunch of sailing adventures. I put stuff in adventures that just seems neat and see what the players make of it. Sometimes it generates more adventures, sometimes they're not interested.
While "preset" goals and motivations are fine, I really like the process of "organic" discovery of goals. ("I want to harvest eyeballs from monsters and start a Monster Eyeball shop"... )

A player who seems to lack motivations... I'm also a big fan of switching things up. Maybe a nice linear, structured adventure is more their style. You can always weave linear adventures into the sandbox as you go.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 02, 2022, 09:26:53 PM
A player who seems to lack motivations... I'm also a big fan of switching things up. Maybe a nice linear, structured adventure is more their style. You can always weave linear adventures into the sandbox as you go.

I've seen the "player that lacks motivation" most often when a particular game doesn't appeal to a player, but they play anyway because the rest of the group wants to play. Their motivation is basically to have fun with their friends, but the game itself holds no attachment to them. Sometimes this works out, and sometimes it doesn't, depending on how well they can fake it.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 02, 2022, 09:26:53 PM
A player who seems to lack motivations... I'm also a big fan of switching things up. Maybe a nice linear, structured adventure is more their style. You can always weave linear adventures into the sandbox as you go.

I've been thinking about this since the OP posted earlier today.

I've never understood sandboxes. I don't mind modules or planned adventures. (Leaving aside stuff like "there is only one way to solve the module" type stuff -- the real railroads.) There are lots of conversations from 4 years back where we discussed this in the design forum -- basically, make sure that the GM and the players are playing the same kind of game.

But I work in a creative-ish job. I'm a software developer. I don't necessarily want to go through the effort of coming up with a business plan for selling monster eyeballs. (I like the idea though.) Give me a mystery or a problem to solve and stand back. Watching the unexpected ways my players would come up with to solve stuff in "standard" modules was always the best part of being a GM. I spend all day in a sandbox -- I play games for simpler, more relaxing stuff.

There's nothing wrong with sandboxes per se, but they just don't work for everyone. Ratman's comment about adding linear adventures into the sandbox seems to describe best how my group ran and I really like the part HappyDaze and I quoted.

For starters, the GM should not approve a character if it lacks a motivation (i.e., a reason to adventure). Sometimes this can be as lame as, "I want to amass as much wealth as I possibly can while I'm young and live like a pig in shit until my dying day." Just as long as the character has a reason to CONSIDER the the next adventure.

Another thing a GM needs to do is establish the "party mentality" early on. This can be contrieved by requiring the characters develop connections with the other members as part of their backstory (e.g., you're all part of the same guild, etc.). If the characters are strangers thrown together by the plot, the GM needs to craft some opportunities for members to build trust between each other. Then when new hooks are introduced, the motivation doesn't need to extend much further beyond "We do this as a team."

Quote from: rytrasmi on September 02, 2022, 08:28:09 PMWhat have you done as a player or GM to create goals and motivation in your games? How do you help a player who seems to be suffering an existential crisis with their character? Do you know of any tricks or resources to quickly or randomly generate compelling goals and driving motivation?

Well i'd start with a distinction just to avoid misunderstandings.
Motivation (or purpose) is a long-term innate tendency to something in your life. It can hardly change and, due to its nature, is defined once at the character's creation (and ideally agreed with the DM).
A goal can be either a long or short-term concept...
The long-term can be tied to the character's motivation: namely it is the "reason why" the character uses to follow the adventure path. It can be the association to a guild, the fellowship with other adventurers, the search of something vital for him.
The short-term goal is a temporary achievement like the one of an advnture module or something similar. This is out of scope in the current discussion if i understand correctly.

Re to the original questions, my 2c: it is all a question of a good character generation and concistency in character's background, alignment and hooks provided by the setting. The first two are tasks of the player, the last one is on charge of the DM.
Afaik there no or little hopes to have a "correction on-the-fly" for a motivation not properly working... this is the "baseline" of the character and it cannot be fixed once the character is acting... The problem can be worked out with a new character.

Sometimes I wonder if we're not just culturally broken people who just doesn't have what it takes to play RPGs anymore.

I remember seeing some reactions/reviews to Village of Hommlet (sans temple) with one of the criticisms being that there doesn't seem to be any adventure there. The only real thing to do is explore the moathouse, and there's no reason given as to why anyone would go there.

Of course back in the day, we never really needed a reason. Oh, there's a dungeon there? Cool. Let's go explore it!

When I was a kid and first started playing RPGs, I lived in the city. But back then, my city had plenty of wooded areas. Just a couple months ago, I moved back to my old neighborhood. A lot of the wooded areas have been replaced by houses. The school I went to was torn down, a builder one built. It had a small pre-fab playground area, when the old school had two large open grass fields and a huge asphalt school yard to play in. A large factory near my home had a massive wooded area. We used to be in and out of there all the time. Now everything is fenced off.

Back in the day it was, there's woods? Cool. Let's go explore it! Now, that's off the table even if you wanted to do it.

Nowadays, you want to do thing, you hop on line, look up thing, find out how to do it.

Back then, you might have wanted to do thing. But you didn't know if there was even a way to do thing. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. And if there was, you had no idea what it was. You'd just have to go out. Explore. Connect with people. Find out what was going on. It might be the thing you wanted to do. Or it might be something you never considered doing but sounds fun when you find out about it. And then you might end up having a great time doing something that was never on your list.

Having something you need and want to do, then you go out and do it, that's more like a shopping list than it is a real adventure.

The most basic story in the world is, you want X. So you go out and get X. It's not very interesting.

A more interesting story is you want X. So you go out to get X, but Y is in the way. You try to overcome Y. If you succeed, you get X.

A more complex story is you want X. So you go out to get X, but Y is in the way. You try to overcome Y. But while trying to do so, you learn something new that causes you to re-evaluate your goal. Maybe it's because you so utterly fail in your quest for X, you have to find new purpose. Or maybe you succeed only to find X wasn't what you thought it was and that you should really pursue Z instead.

The difficulty with focusing on motivations and goals in RPGs is that no matter how much work you put into your character, they're still incomplete people. If you pour 20 hours into writing up your character's personality and background, it's still only 20 hours of development. Not 20 years of development, or however old your character is supposed to be. Motivations and goals sound cool for play in theory. In play in practice, you don't have sufficient basis to properly "roleplay" your character in terms of taking bait that doesn't match the motivations and goals on your sheet. Motivations and goals are often insufficient to actually take part in the exploration that is a real adventure.

So if that's your approach and your focus to playing RPGs, you might have some success in some campaigns when the group chemistry is just right. But I think the path to more consistently having fun is engage first, figure out how your character fits in later.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 02, 2022, 09:26:53 PM
Sandboxes are better with toys.
I remember playing Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and there is a sailing ship in the module. (Spoilers!) Our group took that ship after the module and went on a bunch of sailing adventures. I put stuff in adventures that just seems neat and see what the players make of it. Sometimes it generates more adventures, sometimes they're not interested.
While "preset" goals and motivations are fine, I really like the process of "organic" discovery of goals. ("I want to harvest eyeballs from monsters and start a Monster Eyeball shop"... )

A player who seems to lack motivations... I'm also a big fan of switching things up. Maybe a nice linear, structured adventure is more their style. You can always weave linear adventures into the sandbox as you go.

This.  Especially, the "sometimes they are not interested" part.  You want players to bite on things?  Put out a lot of things, and eventually something shiny or moving or tempting will catch their attention.  Thinking back of all the goals that players have adopted in my games, the ones that were best for play always started that way.

The best kind of linear adventure mixed with this does two things:  1.) It gives players without a clear goal or preference a place to start.  2.) It exposes them to a bunch of options that they might do later.  Treasure maps are an obvious application, but anything in the linear adventure that can't be resolved within that adventure, can also work.

It also ties into what Lunamancer said, too.  What can you do as a GM to help this along?  Don't force it, but do create an environment with some life to it.  Don't chop down the wood and put a fence around the factory, because now not only are you doing the opposite of putting lots of things to bite on, you are killing the places where those things might be.  You are draining the lake and then wondering why no one wants to fish.

Also, I've found that it is not necessary that every player be that engaged.  It's only necessary that about half the group be engaged, and the rest willing to go along.  If you've got a particularly charismatic player (player, not character) or two in the bunch, that's usually sufficient by itself.

Finally, it should go without saying but somehow it does not that whether the adventures are "linear within the sandbox" or more properly sandbox open, there has to be the option not to go on them.  That doesn't mean that the players should be constantly ignoring everything in the world, but having chosen to engage with X, it's not the worst thing in the world if Y is changed or even gone by the time they get around to considering it again.  In other words, drop the hooks out there and dangle them, but don't get in the habit of leaving them forever.  Note, this will be a lot easier to achieve if you can into the habit of making adventures that are interesting because of their circumstances, more so than the unique characteristics of the creatures and things in them.  Setting up the world this way will cause the players to be more likely to engage with any given thing, because they'll know it might be gone later.  Players are perverse and cynical about such things.  Make it work for you instead of against you.

This might be an unpopular take, but I regard PC motivation as being almost entirely the responsibility of the player. When you sit down to make a character, part of your job is to make a character who has a reason to go on the kind of adventures the game entails. If you're playing D&D, you make someone who for whatever reason, will choose to go into a dungeon full of monsters and treasure. If you're playing Call of Cthulhu, you make someone who will get involved in paranormal investigations. If you sit down to play the game, and you don't think your character would want to go on the adventure, it's your job to figure out why they actually would.

As far as I'm concerned, that's just part of the unwritten agreement you make when you join a gaming group, right along with agreeing to cooperate with the other players and not cheat. Roleplaying is great, but as far as I'm concerned it takes second place to the basic things that have to occur for the game to happen. I won't waste my time trying to force players to be a group, and I won't waste it trying to cajole them into participating. If a character doesn't want to go on an adventure, they can sit in the tavern and wait while everyone else has fun.

All that said, a GM still has an obligation to try and meet the players halfway. Your job as GM is not just to make adventures available, but to try and give your players plausible reasons to get involved with them. Personally, I like non-monetary rewards as incentives, particularly social rewards like allies, influence, lands and titles.  In most RPGs, it doesn't take long for adventurers to become rich, and there often isn't much to spend that money on. Allies and real estate, on the other hand can be used to generate almost infinite follow up adventures, as the players now have to protect their friends and position from new threats.

I'm not a real huge fan of specific story motivations (missing siblings, quests for revenge, etc.). I prefer characters with more general motivations such as knowledge, exploration, or personal advancement. But if a character rocks up with something like that in their backstory, its usually pretty easy to just lace them into an existing campaign. Say one of your players' parents were murdered by a mysterious knight, well that knight now happens to be one of the characters already in the campaign.

For players who are not happy with their character, either for story or mechanical reasons, there's a ton of fixes out there. If we're in the first couple of sessions, I'm usually fine with them just changing their character and pretending that's who it was the whole time. Later on, I'll go to other options. In newer games, you can often give them an opportunity to multiclass or otherwise change their progression path. In older ones, it's pretty standard for people to have multiple characters. For example, I'm in an AS+SH game right now, where I'm a bit sick of my character. We're over a year into the campaign (real-time), and the character is pretty tightly tied into the main quest. What I'll probably do, if I decide to switch out, is suggest that my character decides to return to his keep, and becomes an NPC that the party can go to when his involvement is necessary for things to move forward.

EDIT: In fact, I don't think that specific player motivations are necessary at the start of a campaign. I try to run my games as almost like more exciting life simulators. The characters are plopped down in a world full of danger and adventure, and they have to find a way to get along in it. Optimally, their motivations should grow out of the things that happen to them along the way.

(Hit "Quote" when I meant to hit "Modify")

Quote from: Lunamancer on September 03, 2022, 07:15:14 AM
Sometimes I wonder if we're not just culturally broken people who just doesn't have what it takes to play RPGs anymore.

I think it is more that we are fractionalized into ways to play. This site is definitely in favor of sandboxes and no planned plot/story. Other sites tend to run modules with nothing hooking them together. Each method of play seems to see the other way as broken.

When you think it is up to the player to add plot and direction to the story and a player doesn't or can't do that, you tend to think the player is broken. When in actually, he just has a different way he likes to pretend to be an elf.

It comes down, I think, again to stuff we were discussing 4-5 years ago here, where everyone at the table has to have the same expectation -- in whatever direction -- before you start playing.

I would take modules, keep the maps, monsters, and NPCs -- with tweaks to match our ongoing story. Keep the plot to a degree and modify it to fit the long term story we were playing (figuring out where one of the character's parents were from). We made sure everyone understood, we were playing a certain module, but how they solved that module was up to them. I don't have the bandwidth to prepare dozens of adventures/modules only to have them ignored. I have too much real life stuff to be doing. Some GMs might be able to create really good, intertwined stories on the run from nothing, but not me.

But because we all agreed and knew what was happening, we all had fun. I'd set up situations and the players would resolve them -- and they always came up with solutions I'd never imagined. (I was also flexible enough to roll with their plans and tweak the set up if needed.) And a constant theme behind each module was one more clue to the mystery of where one girl's parents came from. (Hint: the last module was Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.)

Quote from: Lunamancer on September 03, 2022, 07:15:14 AM
I remember seeing some reactions/reviews to Village of Hommlet (sans temple) with one of the criticisms being that there doesn't seem to be any adventure there. The only real thing to do is explore the moathouse, and there's no reason given as to why anyone would go there.

Of course back in the day, we never really needed a reason. Oh, there's a dungeon there? Cool. Let's go explore it!

Gave this it's own response, to not buy it in the other response.

It is funny, because that's exactly how my players are. They came up with backstories and motivations for their characters -- but they'd charge that moat house and ransack it from ceiling to cellars just cause it was there. If nothing else was useful, one of them would turn it into a temporary church for her chaos goddess and hold (paid) services.

I tend to be pretty dark with my motivation. By this I mean I will invite players into the worldbuilding process and then point a gun at the game world's head which will clearly destroy whatever worldbuilding the players just did should the PC do nothing. Bonus points if the PCs themselves will definitely be collateral damage. I find this is pretty effective at getting PCs to do something without necessarily forcing them into any given quest line.

I do think it's overkill and I would not recommend you use it for every campaign.

Quote from: Tod13 on September 04, 2022, 12:48:20 PM
I think it is more that we are fractionalized into ways to play. This site is definitely in favor of sandboxes and no planned plot/story. Other sites tend to run modules with nothing hooking them together. Each method of play seems to see the other way as broken.

When you think it is up to the player to add plot and direction to the story and a player doesn't or can't do that, you tend to think the player is broken. When in actually, he just has a different way he likes to pretend to be an elf.

The reason I brought up things I experienced in my childhood was to point out that it makes just going out and exploring seem like a perfectly natural thing in an RPG. I didn't make any statements as to whether or not I prefer a sandbox. That's not something that's relevant to what I was talking about. Even if that's not my preferred way to play, at least I understand it.

But in a world where we have all the information we have on our fingertips, we don't need to explore in life. Some still like to, and that's awesome. But we don't have to. And so now, why a sandbox is fun and what you do in it requires some explanation. As I pointed out, people are genuinely puzzled by Village of Hommlet. It's a real phenomenon, not just a logical corollary to how the world has changed. Gamers these days need that explained to them.

So it's important to point out, this is not the same thing as people having different ways to pretend being an elf. This is some people who pretend to be an elf one way just not understanding people pretending to be an elf a different way. A lack of understanding is not the same as a difference in preference. Preferring one thing or another is not inherently better or worse. Lacking understanding, on the other hand, is a straight up inferior position.

QuoteIt comes down, I think, again to stuff we were discussing 4-5 years ago here, where everyone at the table has to have the same expectation -- in whatever direction -- before you start playing.

There are a number of reasons I never liked that idea. One in particular that stands out in my mind has to do with the state of RPGs in the 90's. There's a reason Whitewolf kicked D&D's ass in the 90's. And only part of it is Vampire being something fresh and edgy. A huge part, if not the bigger part of it is D&D just sucked ass in that era. And part of why that was is they were losing share to Magic: the Gathering. And one reason Magic: the Gathering kicked D&D's ass is because you can start and wrap up a game in a half hour. It's great for the college crowd. You could easily play a hand or two between classes.

It was a reminder that a roughly 4-hour standard RPG session really is a lot to ask. We're hobbyists, so we're down for it. For players on the margin, though, it's tough as it is. Add a session zero of singing kumbaya and discussing each others feelings and preferences, it might work for some players. It might work without a downside for hobbyists. But for players on the margin? I think for every one player you lose after experiencing a very uncomfortable table flip moment, you lose 5 gamers on the margin by raising the barrier to entry.

In general, I find practical concerns trump preference. Most of the people I play with and have played with, myself included, would prefer to have grand campaigns that produces a great story, where we can see characters grow from zero to hero, and a whole lot of other shit that virtual every gamer agrees to. But instead I tend to run mostly dungeon crawls where you begin and end each session in town.

Why? Because it's more practical. I've seen campaigns stall simply because week after week there was no play as the player of one key player or another was a no-show. After a few missed sessions, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Players stop blocking out the time slot, because why give up the opportunity to do something else if you're not sure you're even going to get to play? The simple act of we start in town means being able to seamlessly continue on no matter who shows up. And something approximating a series of dungeon crawls just makes continuity easier. Also, despite it not being the preferred mode of play, players do still have fun. Some have a lot of fun. And all have more fun than the alternative--hackneyed schedules, stalled sessions, and stories that might have been great, if only they'd been seen through to completion.


On message boards, you can always invoke "preference" as something that is unassailable. I could know all there is to know about RPGs. I don't know jack shit about your preferences. You invoke preference, I have to either hold my tongue or make an ass out of myself. And so preference ends up seeming oh so significant on message boards. I just don't think it's the most important thing in actual play.