Player character motivations have an influence on the psychological and
social interaction side of a player character’s personality and conduct.
Understand that these do not mean a player character has to
cartoonishly adhere to a particular set of personal motivations or
personal beliefs, but they still nevertheless have a certain influence
on a character’s opinions, attitudes and behaviour.
As noted earlier, much like a player character can choose from one to a
maximum of three Specialisations, to guide the development of each
player character in terms of skills, they can also choose one to a
maximum of three character Motivations in their character’s backstory
(part of the brief starting biography), to influence the expression of a
character’s personality in various situations, but without making this
influence too rigid. As with individuals in the real world, every single
player character has a certain unique personality.
Though the players are welcome to bring some sense of consistency to the
personality and behaviour of their own player characters, they are
equally encouraged not to play their characters as if they came from a
template, but to play them as believable individuals, with their
characters’ strong suits and weaknesses, with the confident aspects as
well as fallible aspects of their player characters’ particular
personality.
Motivations are not like character stats. They’re more abstract
in nature, in keeping with their degree of impact on the narrative and
roleplaying aspects of the game.
The only thing related to Motivations that has some numerical expression are character Traits.
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BRP system Traits unique to Chaosium’s RPG Pendragon:
Chaste / Lustful
Energetic / Lazy
Forgiving / Vengeful
Generous / Selfish
Honest / Deceitful
Just / Arbitrary
Merciful / Cruel
Modest / Proud
Prudent / Reckless
Spiritual / Worldly
Temperate / Indulgent
Trusting / Suspicious
Valorous / Cowardly
These traits can be in balance (10/10
out of 20) or predominate in one particular direction (e.g. 14/6 out of
20, 12/8 out of 20). The Traits are used whenever the player comes
across a skill or situation involving putting this character Trait to
the test.
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Equivalent Trait concepts influencing the Motivations in Thick as Thieves:
Bravery / Cowardice – player conduct concerning their tendency for bravery or lack thereof
Caution / Incaution – player onduct concerning the levels of caution preferred by the playerBravery / Cowardice – player conduct concerning their tendency for bravery or lack thereof
Credulity / Wariness – player conduct concerning the carefulness to trust/distrust
Fairness / Wickedness – player conduct concerning the fairness or lack of it towards others
Forgiveness / Vengefulness – player conduct concerning the willingness to forgive or not
Generosity / Selfishness – player conduct concerning whether they’re magnanimous or not
Honesty / Lies – player conduct concerning the honesty of their intentions towards others
Humbleness / Vanity – player conduct concerning the materialistic side of one’s ego
Humility / Pride – player conduct concerning the idealistic side of one’s ego
Liveliness / Stoicism – player conduct concerning their usual outwardly expressed emotions
Mercy / Cruelty – player conduct concerning their inclination towards mercy or cruelty
Planning / Whimsy – player conduct concerning the thoroughness of their decision-making
Spry / Layabout – player conduct concerning their general attitude towards any activities
Humbleness could also be called Modesty.
No hard numerical values yet, but there would be a scale between these two poles and it could evolve over time, depending on a character's personal development.
The maximum of three (main) Motivations for a player character are influenced by a player character leaning towards either end of the Traits scale, or staying in an equilibrium, in the middle.
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We've been thinking about the topic of psychological traits in my own RPG project. To be perfectly honest, as with the basic stats and the various skills, I don't want these to balloon, for there to be too many. Nevertheless, I think incorporating a few traits, merely as a possible or optional subset of a specific character's Motivations, could add something interesting to roleplaying.
In the game design thus far, the two dominant scale-style stats concerning psychological and social aspects of roleplaying are Trust and Reputation. Both are more focused on social interactions and social perception of a player's character.
A player can add a description of their character's motivations whenever they make a basic, brief biography for their character. However, I've always found the idea with motivations to be somewhat undercooked in terms of use within gameplay and roleplaying.
All the more that my project is heavily narrativist in nature, ergo, it would only make sense to have the traits in Motivations play a slightly more significant role than just something semi-cosmetic.
Earlier, I suggested players should pick a maximum of three main character motivations. These wouldn't force them to do or not do anything, but they could have an influence on how the character would express their personality, based on their Motivations.
I was thinking of something akin to Chaosium's character traits that they have in the Pendragon RPG's iteration of their Basic Roleplaying System. Not exactly that, not incorporated in the manner they do it in Pendragon, but still something similar.
Certain Motivations would be preferred by a particular character, Motivations they feel fairly strongly about or that are important to them personally, expressed through certain combinations of traits or certain aspects the basic Motivations.
Naturally, the exact Motivations of each character will differ based on their personalities, backstories and interests.
Social interactions game mechanics are not an afterthought, but crucial to the gameplay. That's been the general idea since 2014, when I started from scratch. The entire emphasis of the project has been on exploration, stealth, dialogue and creative solutions to problems, rather than the n-millionth "murderhobo" paradigm.
I do have fairly in-depth combat, but it's meant to be simple and swift to manage and the more in-depth elements are meant to motivate players to focus combat on self-defence, to avoid combat, and also provide a bit of a challenge.
I made it impossible to be unstoppable in combat. You have to always mind your vulnerability and use your wits and skill, rather than brute force. In this, combat merely follows the design philosophy for my exploration and adventuring mechanics.
We've looked at how the traits are managed in the 5th edition and 6th edition of the game Pendragon.
What I've noticed is that they're somewhat rigid or pre-determined by a player character's allegiance to a particular culture or faction in the game's Arthuriana setting.
Not absolutely, but there's quite an influence on the nature of a character's traits depending on their origin.
Of course, when it comes to the design/system I'm working on, things aren't meant to be too dependent on a character's origins and culture, so I intend to implement something similar, but a little more flexible, though without it veering off uncontrollably into randomness.
The slight worry I have about traits that influence Motivations is, that if you overdo the concept, either in the number of traits or in broad definitions, you can create a design pitfall akin to the often controversial idea of "character alignment" (in D&D and elsewhere).
What I want to preserve is that, just like a player character specialisation in my system doesn't throw them into a cartoonishly rigid class, a player character trait influencing their potential major motivations should have enough room for nuances and ambiguities.
I really wouldn't want to create mechanics in my system that would give players the wrong impression that their player characters need to be exceedingly black-or-white, all-or-nothing type of character builds. I want to encourage the exact opposite, while setting reasonable limits.
No hard numerical values yet, but there would be a scale between these two poles and it could evolve over time, depending on a character's personal development.
The maximum of three (main) Motivations for a player character are influenced by a player character leaning towards either end of the Traits scale, or staying in an equilibrium, in the middle.
----
We've been thinking about the topic of psychological traits in my own RPG project. To be perfectly honest, as with the basic stats and the various skills, I don't want these to balloon, for there to be too many. Nevertheless, I think incorporating a few traits, merely as a possible or optional subset of a specific character's Motivations, could add something interesting to roleplaying.
In the game design thus far, the two dominant scale-style stats concerning psychological and social aspects of roleplaying are Trust and Reputation. Both are more focused on social interactions and social perception of a player's character.
A player can add a description of their character's motivations whenever they make a basic, brief biography for their character. However, I've always found the idea with motivations to be somewhat undercooked in terms of use within gameplay and roleplaying.
All the more that my project is heavily narrativist in nature, ergo, it would only make sense to have the traits in Motivations play a slightly more significant role than just something semi-cosmetic.
Earlier, I suggested players should pick a maximum of three main character motivations. These wouldn't force them to do or not do anything, but they could have an influence on how the character would express their personality, based on their Motivations.
I was thinking of something akin to Chaosium's character traits that they have in the Pendragon RPG's iteration of their Basic Roleplaying System. Not exactly that, not incorporated in the manner they do it in Pendragon, but still something similar.
Certain Motivations would be preferred by a particular character, Motivations they feel fairly strongly about or that are important to them personally, expressed through certain combinations of traits or certain aspects the basic Motivations.
Naturally, the exact Motivations of each character will differ based on their personalities, backstories and interests.
Social interactions game mechanics are not an afterthought, but crucial to the gameplay. That's been the general idea since 2014, when I started from scratch. The entire emphasis of the project has been on exploration, stealth, dialogue and creative solutions to problems, rather than the n-millionth "murderhobo" paradigm.
I do have fairly in-depth combat, but it's meant to be simple and swift to manage and the more in-depth elements are meant to motivate players to focus combat on self-defence, to avoid combat, and also provide a bit of a challenge.
I made it impossible to be unstoppable in combat. You have to always mind your vulnerability and use your wits and skill, rather than brute force. In this, combat merely follows the design philosophy for my exploration and adventuring mechanics.
We've looked at how the traits are managed in the 5th edition and 6th edition of the game Pendragon.
What I've noticed is that they're somewhat rigid or pre-determined by a player character's allegiance to a particular culture or faction in the game's Arthuriana setting.
Not absolutely, but there's quite an influence on the nature of a character's traits depending on their origin.
Of course, when it comes to the design/system I'm working on, things aren't meant to be too dependent on a character's origins and culture, so I intend to implement something similar, but a little more flexible, though without it veering off uncontrollably into randomness.
The slight worry I have about traits that influence Motivations is, that if you overdo the concept, either in the number of traits or in broad definitions, you can create a design pitfall akin to the often controversial idea of "character alignment" (in D&D and elsewhere).
What I want to preserve is that, just like a player character specialisation in my system doesn't throw them into a cartoonishly rigid class, a player character trait influencing their potential major motivations should have enough room for nuances and ambiguities.
I really wouldn't want to create mechanics in my system that would give players the wrong impression that their player characters need to be exceedingly black-or-white, all-or-nothing type of character builds. I want to encourage the exact opposite, while setting reasonable limits.
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