PC Motivations?

[zephyrkinetic]

I may deserve a flogging if this is already a sticky somewhere; I did a quick search, but I didn't find anything.

Long version:
So, I've got a player who has decided Chaotic Neutral is the alignment for him; that's cool, I encourage players to be whatever they like, provided they actually play what they've chosen. Problem is, he's playing a CN who apparently has no interest in personal gain, and I can't seem to get him to bite on quests. It's a one-on-one campaign for the moment, he's only at Level 1, and he's (rightfully) insistent that his character has a steady job (as a bard), doesn't care to be rich or famous, and therefore has no desire to save anyone, collect on any rewards, or stop any terrible crimes. How, then, do I properly prepare an adventure? The guy's not wrong; in fact, he seems to be playing his character perfectly. I don't want to lead him by the nose, here, but I'd like to have something prepared, instead of having to continuously "wing it."

So, my main question is this: what sorts of creative ways have you come up with/experienced when motivating PCs with no real (in character) desire to adventure?

[FelixG]

Mix things up in the game world, if he has a steady job have the town get attacked, the owner of his establishments daughter gets kidnapped, his employer begging him to go help, he seems like a decent person so he may do as is asked and use that to lead to more interesting opportunistic?

[zephyrkinetic]

Mix things up in the game world, if he has a steady job have the town get attacked, the owner of his establishments daughter gets kidnapped, his employer begging him to go help, he seems like a decent person so he may do as is asked and use that to lead to more interesting opportunistic?

I don't know. He honestly may still sidestep a request like that.

Here's an example: last session, he was privy to information implying that a string of recent murders in town had led to numerous false accusations/executions. He witnessed another such falsely-accused man about to be executed. I painted the most obvious picture of "the-bad-guy-who-is-clearly-at-fault," and he still only barely collected a reward. I had to almost drag him through the concept of bounties, and rewards for gracious families, and all that. He let the guy get hanged, he didn't care about the sobbing widow and kids, he didn't even kill the BBEG, just let him be arrested.

[FelixG]

If its a one on one campaign, you may ask him what he expects out of it in that case?

Its not like there is a party he can follow around to make songs about for when he retires...It would be useful to know what the player thinks good motivation for his character is then cater to that?

[onthetown]

This might be perceived as cruel. My major pet peeve is players who set out to make their DM's experience even harder to enjoy than it already is.

Hang him out on the clothesline by his toes. He has created a character that is preventing you from running a campaign. And it's not his character's fault -- the poor bard doesn't know that he's supposed to be participating in anything more than his day job, after all. It's not like this guy is trying to break the game or run around and destroy everything in his path, but he's just sort of standing in the lobby of a building saying, "No, I don't think so. I don't like these doors and options. I'm just going to stand here until I can't stand here anymore."

His character is content with his life in-game. That's sweet. Destroy it. Adventurers can be content with their life, but they always have some sort of motivation to make them go out -- and if it isn't for personal gain or the feeling of the open road, then it might as well be because they don't have anything else they can do. If he currently doesn't want anything except what he already has, you're going to have to change his mind.

I've got a suggestion fitting for traumatizing the bard, and one for boring the player to death. Here's the one that could set his poor character up for CE, but it might get him going somewhere:

That place that gives him his gigs? Burn it down and make a clear enemy out of somebody so he can go get revenge. Kill the manager. Give the bard some friends, DMPCs are fine; kill them, too. Maybe leave one alive with a horrifying defect or injury. If he isn't sure, have it be his bestest friend forevar and said BFF desperately appeals to him to go find who did it. If it sounds like he might tip to CE during all of this, make the bad guy cause a lot of widespread damage and have him go for a "saving the world" (or at least a small portion of it) route, appealing to whatever goodness is left in him after watching all that happen. He could even travel with his BFF.

Oh, and make sure to get his house and his little pet dog, too.

Now, to something far less drastic that still might make him reconsider being difficult:

Oblige him. Seriously, have an entire session where it's just the bard's daily life, with no pressure to do anything but what he loves. Roll a Reflex to avoid tripping over the little pet dog that's lying in the doorway, give a little boost to his Charisma with a quick brush of the teeth, then it's out to the kitchen to make breakfast. He botched his Craft on the gourmet approach -- quick, make a Fort! Ouch, another botch. After he's recovered from a bad bout of indigestion, it's off to the tavern to run the usual show. Perform, Perform, Perform, Perform, Per...form... Fort save versus boredom during that really slow, kind of stupid song that you wrote and you hate, but the audience seems to love it to death. Reflex from a thrown tomato at the quick joke you interjected between songs. Guess it wasn't a great pun, after all. Well, it's just about closing time! Collect your pay and your tips, make a Diplomacy and some other Charisma-based checks to see if you'll finally convince that comely bar maid to go to bed with you -- wait, sorry, that would indicate personal gain and/or desire and/or motivation. The bar maid can be lonely for another night. Back to bed, another Reflex to avoid the stupid dog that your aunt Millie gave you for your birthday and you would feel bad about adopting to somebody else even though you hate the little monster, eat some of those noxious leftovers from the morning, and go to bed with an upset tummy.

If your player doesn't want to kick his bard out onto the open road after that, I'm not sure what you could get him to be interested in.

[Gray Mage]

His character is content with his life in-game. That's sweet. Destroy it.

I must say this made my day. :smallamused:

+1 to the "talk with your player" advice, but I'd keep onthetown's as a backup plan (provided your player is ok with that).

Edit: A less violent way to do it is make the bar close doors (a sudden increase in taxes or it was trashed in a barroom fight) and the bard must either move on or help the owner out.

[Zaq]

The burden of motivation is on the player. If he makes a character that's perfectly happy to stay where they are and live a normal life, that's fine, but the rest of the group is going to be off adventuring. It's not your job to force them into it. If they want to stay home and raise goats, let 'em. But don't let them complain when you then shift the focus to the crumbling ruin that's been taken over by Aboleths, because that's where the fun things are happening.

It's your job to tell a story and provide the setting. It's not your job to make sure that Joe Goatherder comes along.

In other words, when a player makes a character with no motivation to go out adventuring, they're basically saying that they don't want to play. If they want to be part of the group, then they need to give themselves a reason to be part of the group. Honestly, it matters little what that reason is—in any game that I run above 1st level, I state outright that it's assumed that the PCs have been pushed together by some blend of circumstances and that they've decided to stick together for convenience/survival/friendship/spite/whatever. After a few sessions, they'll have their own ideas about why they're there.

You're running a game about adventure. They knew this when they signed up. If they don't want to adventure, it's not your place to coax them into it.

[JonestheSpy]

I'm inclined to go for the "Fine, bore him to death approach" if he's going to be so contrary, but that's probably less than fun for the DM. An alternative to destroying his life could be designing an antagonist specifically to push his buttons. He's CN, so have a massively lawful evil, Empire of Blood-style regime take over. Tons of paperwork, permits, crushing taxes on the poor and freelance types like him, horribly harsh punishments for those that slip up and don't have their papers in order. If he doesn't react to that, then he doesn't want to actually play and is just wasting your time.

[broli]

i dont know if this is going to help you.

but in a campaign i DM, the party derailed form what they have been doing, and spent a lot of in game time, tracking down a bard to kill him.

why you ask? because the bard was telling the story of "<name> and his friends"

<name> was happy as hell, the others where quite enraged.

and i really enjoyed playing that bard. it was like one of those Hollywood movies. "a normal dude, with a normal life, gets pushed to the verge of sanity by a group of people that wants to kill him for now reason"

make a fictional party, and without explanation force him to be on the run

[Techsmart]

I don't know. He honestly may still sidestep a request like that.

Here's an example: last session, he was privy to information implying that a string of recent murders in town had led to numerous false accusations/executions. He witnessed another such falsely-accused man about to be executed. I painted the most obvious picture of "the-bad-guy-who-is-clearly-at-fault," and he still only barely collected a reward. I had to almost drag him through the concept of bounties, and rewards for gracious families, and all that. He let the guy get hanged, he didn't care about the sobbing widow and kids, he didn't even kill the BBEG, just let him be arrested.

I think the biggest thing here was that, to him, there wasn't really any good reason to go out of his way to get the job done until you introduced bounties. As said by the other posters, just because the average joe sees something wrong being done doesn't mean they are gonna step in and stop it. In reality, the average joe (true neutral) is most likely going to turn his head the other way when something happens because there's nothing for him in it, good or bad. When you offer them money, there's some motivation, but there aren't really any bad consequences. If I were DMing at that point, I would have had him accused right after the man he failed to save died. It would have been deemed a "private execution" to the public, so the BBEG could meet with him face-to-face. He would tell the player that he had a proposition to do something the player would hate doing, such as burning down the tavern he was in, then leaving town as a fugitive. Something like this would, if it were my group, really motivate the player to do something. At the very least, then you can have him in a story as a fugitive seeking redemption, or you can start a new character :smalleek:

[Firechanter]

Or maybe the kinda-evil Regent of the land has been given a prophecy that he would be overthrown by a bard, but nobody knows about that. Hence, all bards are now outlawed and persecuted. His hometown's people kick him out, out of fear for repercussions.

But before you do something like that, I also support the idea to first try the soft approach by simulating the daily life of a bard in minute detail to his heart's content and then some. Then you can go from there.

[Ajadea]

Dragging out an evil cannibal sorceress (who existed as part of the campaign premise) seems to have worked for my PbP group. Especially the little 'oh crap' moment I think they got IC and OOC, when they realized that said sorceress had been living for a year under the nose of zealot magic-detecting paladins, in the same city as 2/4 of the families of the PCs.

And she's kidnapped the factotum's friend (it's part of her cannibalism thing).

And for some reason, they don't think she's a leader. Mind you, she sent the paladin in to negatives twice without even being in the same building. And she's based on divination and abjuration, with only a handful of offensive spells.

Basically, find out what the PC cares about. Do you have local villains who can threaten it? If yes, you have a plot. He doesn't want to be a hero. That's fine. He still can defend what he cares about, with word or sword, it doesn't matter. If he cares about it enough, or enough is taken from him, he will be motivated to fight. And the campaign is about rebellion.

Or send the country to war. He doesn't have to adventure like a normal adventurer. He doesn't want to fight goblins. That makes sense. Most people don't. But in wartime, he has to deal with rationing, drafts, increased taxes, decreased city population, soldiers moving into his beloved hometown, so on, so forth. What happens to the families who lose a parent? What if that is the only parent they have? How long can he ignore the orphanages filling up because of increasing draft? How long is it until his 'steady' job is cut off because the tavern owner can't pay him anymore? And, despite the urban environment, it becomes a campaign about survival.

Or send in the heroes. A party of DMPCs, fighting to keep a lich from being reborn or some parasite plane from encroaching upon the material plane. They're bloody, bruised, exhausted, depressed, only barely enduring, fighting a battle that will never end for them or for their foe, to put another temporary patch on a situation that won't stop deteriorating. They also have ancient treasures and magic weapons for sale, they're staying at the bard's tavern, and they need a tour guide to show them around the city.

Have them keep coming through on occasion. This time with a crystal mask that might let them read the inscription on a statue, the next with half the plans for a special staff that might let them get an edge in a hopeless battle. And then have them come back with one of their number dead. For one reason or another, they think that the bard is the dead adventurer reincarnated or some other 'nonsense'. They might be right, they might be wrong. Either way, they've kidnapped the bard...

[Xefas]

Rather than being adversarial, or keep throwing things at him randomly until something sticks, why not just ask what he cares about?

I would say D&D is actually in the minority in how it handles a player's creative agenda - which is to say that it doesn't at all. Most games out there have some sort of mechanic where the player sets a goal for his own character, and then is rewarded for pursuing it.

It keeps the players interested (hint; everyone who has problems with their players messing with their computers/phones/handheld gaming consoles/etc instead of paying attention to the game - this is the solution), takes some load off the GM, and gives characters a bit of an anchor into the world.

And make sure to emphasize that it's what the player cares about seeing in the game world, not the character. If the character is a celibate monk, but the player thinks it would be interesting to see that character develop by falling in love with a princess and see how his ideals and desires conflict with one another - that's a great goal to have.

When you treat your players like respected peers and less like ignorant sheep to be herded (which they will act like if you treat them that way), the game gets better for everyone.