Quote:
Originally Posted by trooper6
*I wanted to say something about drive. Your player said he needed drive for his character. I think you would do well to mandate that each PC must have a short term and long term goal. Not all drives should be handed to the players on a plate by the GM...the players should also be doing some of the work to motivate their characters. Telling them that they need a short term and long term goal for their PC at character creation actually will help you craft interesting interactive adventures, but it will also place some of the generation of "drive" in the hands of the players...which will result in more buy in from them and a better game long term.
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I would add to this and say I would be disappointed with drive handed to me by the GM; if my character does not have goals or ambitions of his own then he is boring. A goal given to you by someone else is a much weaker motivator than a goal your character actually cares about because of that being who they are.
My holy warrior wants to earn a knighthood - but to do it righteously, so he might get offered a shortcut which turns out to have bad consequences. Or he wants to help a group of escaped slaves build up their independent colony (which means he might end up assisting them in piracy).
My Canniborc wants (aside from to eat people...) to receive the full initiation to becoming an Unholy Warrior of Asmodeus, meaning he needs to perform various human sacrifices, assassinations on behalf of a cleric, he wants to assist in the dreams of an outcast dwarf of organising the orc clan into a mighty force equipped with machines and siege engines... he also wants to gather rubies as ingredients for magical gear, and he wants to systematically dismantle a kingdom...
My vampire character wants a stable food supply, because hunting is unpleasantly risky and she's something of a coward - so she is looking for ways to gather slaves or mind-controlled thralls in enough numbers for her to regularly feed.
Get them to set goals for themselves, and make sure they get to actually experience the progress; NPCs who were haughty jerks towards them before are almost fawning over them later (applies more for evil characters...), or in the paladin's case, each mission done for the maroon colony makes life visibly that much easier for the people involved (maybe they can build something new with the supplies from the last raid?).
If players cannot supply motivation for their characters, you will really struggle to supply it for them.