Motivations to become an adventurer

[Stephan Hornick]

Hello fellow nerds,

In my campaign there is an NPC who is developing into an adventurer (funnily suggested by one of my players).
She is a milk maid, but decided to follow the passing wine merchant as she fell in love. Now, the wine merchant is a well-known NPC in my campaign that asked the PCs to protect him at least for a part of the way back to the capital.
So, the PCs got to know that milk maid also. And she got attracted suddenly to the bard and experienced the journey on the road, got attacked by dire wolves and was able to see the wonders of magic, a huge water spirit, helped extinguish a burning building and survived a flood, found with the PCs horribly killed people and was at the bard's side as he was poisoned and on the brink of dying. And now she made a wish to their will'o'wisp companion and asked the bard whether she could join their band of adventurers.

Thus, I thought a lot about her motivation to become an adventurer.
I stumbled upon this nice summary below and would like you to add here more motivations you can think of.

Go on an adventure

• 5 – It's lucrative! You get a lot of gold adventuring. ... (extrinsic motivation = greed)
• 4 – Wanting to know what's out there. Most peasants never get more than a few miles away from home, after all. ... (extrinsic motivation = curiousness)
• 3 – Desire for fame and legacy. ... (extrinsic motivation = need for belonging / self-actualization)
• 2 – Questing for something specific. ... (extrinsic motivation = ?)
• 1 – To get away from bad circumstances at home. (extrinsic motivation = fear)

(The suggestions of possible motivations in brackets are from me)

@JohnnFour : You are very good in identifying extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, I understand from your course. What do you think are possible extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to become an adventurer?

 

[JohnnFour]

Hola!

For my NPCs, I'd reverse extrinsic and intrinsic. And then I'd add a Phisophical one that connects to a belief, moral, or ethic.

• External Conflict: It's lucrative! You get a lot of gold adventuring. Greed.
• Internal Conflict: Prove yourself worthy
• Philosophical Conflict: Is life better as an adventure with all the terrifying risks, or is is better to stay safe and warm at home?

What part of the iceberg does your world exist in?

If the top 10%, or a "surface level world" in my lingo, the above is good enough.

If the bottom 90%, or a "deeper world", I'd go further by looking at the milk maid's role in society and how that role gets treated.

In general, society exists to form bonds. Those bonds connect, but also constrain. So I would derive many NPC motivations on their cxonstraints.

For example, let's say the NPC is a Farovian milk maid.

In Farovia, cows are considered dirty animals. Therefore the job is dirty. Therefore the role is dirty.

In Farovia, gnomes are outcasts. So they typically take the dirty jobs because they already have stigma.

In Farovia, females are second class citizens denied many rights others receive. However, gnome society grants rights equally to all folk.

From that basis, we can start delving into the exact rights granted and denied. Perhaps gnomes are not allowed to own land and cannot amass more than 1,000 gp in wealth. For Reasons. Perhaps females are expected to be artists and great thinkers in Farovia. Etc. Run through all the categories of what makes up culture, and decide how your game pieces fit.


So in this example, there are several tensions. Society vs. women, society vs. gnomes, society vs. cows, lower class vs. upper "non dirty" classes.

Now if we put ourselves into a female gnome milk maid's shoes, she's perfectly serving the role carved out by Farovian socety. But on an individual level, she could have one or more ambitions frustrated by the handcuffs imposed by society.

She might want wealth so she can buy ____ or gain entry into the nuveau riche class. She might want fame and power so she can change gnome rights or female rights. She might want gnomes to be treated as equals because that was her mother and father's values.

Look at the constraints imposed by your world building, and then foil an NPC's desires with those. That often reveals External, Internal, and Philosophical motivations.

* * *

As an aside, I mostly run top of iceberg worlds. My main groups have always wanted to play RPGs as a fun escape. So we play beer & pretzels style.

I don't often run worlds with heavy themes in such detail because my players have said they want other types of stories.

So I'm not advocating for deeper world building or saying one part of the iceberg is better.

 

[Stephan Hornick]

Thank you for that perspective, Johnn!
I always play in a deeper world, and I like that. And my players appreciate it.
I was originally gunning for a reason she might want to „go out there“, like a desire to look for someone (lost family member?), but it would have been just another quest in a completely different direction. Also, it felt stale.
Your direction to look at her society and what she did and how she was treated seems much more compelling now.

Let’s see:
So she is human, young, good looking, and female.
She was born in a border town in the shadow of a high mountain peak specialized on silver mining, beats planting, and horse and buffalo breeding.
Her father is a breeder. As a milk maid she was responsible for milking buffaloes, making cream, butter and cheese and care for the animals.
She may long for more in her life. Far away from actual civilization, she feels stuck with a life she did not decide to lead. Possible husbands are limited. And she is already an adult that hasn‘t found her place in life. But one thing is clear: she doesn‘t want to be a milk maid all of her life.
She might actually wonder whether a life as an adventurer or at least far away isn‘t better.
She left on a whim, she didn‘t even take much with her, and trusted her companions to care for her as she was always cared for but hasn‘t yet realized.

This works for the beginning. Thank you. Johnn!

 

[JonGraHar]

Hello fellow nerds,

In my campaign there is an NPC who is developing into an adventurer (funnily suggested by one of my players).
She is a milk maid, but decided to follow the passing wine merchant as she fell in love. Now, the wine merchant is a well-known NPC in my campaign that asked the PCs to protect him at least for a part of the way back to the capital.
So, the PCs got to know that milk maid also. And she got attracted suddenly to the bard and experienced the journey on the road, got attacked by dire wolves and was able to see the wonders of magic, a huge water spirit, helped extinguish a burning building and survived a flood, found with the PCs horribly killed people and was at the bard's side as he was poisoned and on the brink of dying. And now she made a wish to their will'o'wisp companion and asked the bard whether she could join their band of adventurers.

Thus, I thought a lot about her motivation to become an adventurer.
I stumbled upon this nice summary below and would like you to add here more motivations you can think of.

Go on an adventure

• 5 – It's lucrative! You get a lot of gold adventuring. ... (extrinsic motivation = greed)
• 4 – Wanting to know what's out there. Most peasants never get more than a few miles away from home, after all. ... (extrinsic motivation = curiousness)
• 3 – Desire for fame and legacy. ... (extrinsic motivation = need for belonging / self-actualization)
• 2 – Questing for something specific. ... (extrinsic motivation = ?)
• 1 – To get away from bad circumstances at home. (extrinsic motivation = fear)

(The suggestions of possible motivations in brackets are from me)

@JohnnFour : You are very good in identifying extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, I understand from your course. What do you think are possible extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to become an adventurer?

Hey Stephan!

I love thinking about the topic of beginning the adventure, so I thought I'd throw in my ideas riffing off of your list.

• 5 – Making money is a great means to accomplish the motivation which in her case, would be to start up a winery, or better, her own dairy farm.
• 4 – did the Will o Wisp show her a bigger world and give her a question that needs answering?
• 3 – Self Actualization is a solid desire, especially coming from a person who feels trapped. Getting out into the world can be risky, but better than churning butter.
• 2 – Something Specific? - perhaps she seeks an antidote to the poison that laid low the bard?
• 1 – Fear is a great motivator as well, but not enough to launch the adventure - however, with her fear of stuckness, beatings, poverty combined with the opportunity of adventuring with another party, perhaps she will then take the plunge and join the call of the wild?

Also, I was thinking that introducing her to an item (a thing) without telling her what it is or does creates a totem that represents her destiny or call to adventure. And only after she progresses in her adventure will the item reveal itself its nature.

Great content for thought Stephan!

 

[sheaeugene]

I'm a fan of the flashback... it does not always go over well at the table but the folks I play with have learned to expect the triggers.
For example...
"You approach a merchants cart in the town market. There an aging human woman sitting on a stool who greets you and asks what you might be interested in. Without waiting for a response she stands and starts scaveging through her goods and pulls out a braided necklace. As she places it in your hands to inspect, the texture and color of the braid triggers a long-lost memory... tell us about it."
Sometimes this falls flat... but other times it really builds substance for the character... connecting what once was to what is.

For this reason, and a few others, I like starting new PCs at Level 3. I give them the expectation that a lot of crazy and cool stuff had to happen to get them from the place of being just a commoner (10's across the stat board) to where they are now... and that from time to time I am going to ask them about those happenings. They can make it up on the fly or pull from their pre-written backstory or ask the DM to help fill in gaps.

I almost always tie this question of how they decided to become an adventurer to their choice of class. For Monks... the trope is obvious... orphaned or dedicated to the temple at an early age they have known little about what lies beyond the walls of their monastery. Like the Reshemen coming of age saga - Dajemma, there comes a time when the monk must begin learning lessons from the world instead of from their teachers.

For characters like a Bard... the path is super-obvious... to gather stories to sing and tell. Each class probably has some similar low-hanging ideas...

Then the question becomes "How did you decide to become a bard?" or whatever. My goal as DM is to try to bring all this stuff out, bit-by-bit slowly over time during a campaign through the flashback rather than have everyone sit around in session zero and read off their backstory. The reason why I attempt this is because it takes time to get to know your character... Sure I could roll against a motivations table somewhere... but it usually results in better ideas if you pull that stuff after a character has taken some actions in the world and had interactions with other characters.

 

[Stephan Hornick]

That is great, @sheaeugene !
I do this usually every session in the beginning. A prelude of sorts. It lets the players find into their role for the session, sets a tone for what is to come and gives highlights to character background, motivation, fear and relationships.
I wrote more about that and some ideas of what I typically do under this post: How to begin a session.

 

[pbianchi]

I'm a fan of the flashback... it does not always go over well at the table but the folks I play with have learned to expect the triggers.
For example...
"You approach a merchants cart in the town market. There aging human woman sitting on a stool who greets you and asks what you might be interested in. Without waiting for a response she stands and starts scaveging through her goods and pulls out a braided necklace. As she places it in your hands to inspect, the texture and color of the braid triggers a long-lost memory... tell us about it."
Sometimes this falls flat... but other times it really builds substance for the character... connecting what once was to what is.

For this reason, and a few others, I like starting new PCs at Level 3. I give them the expectation that a lot of crazy and cool stuff had to happen to get them from the place of being just a commoner (10's across the stat board) to where they are now... and that from time to time I am going to ask them about those happenings. They can make it up on the fly or pull from their pre-written backstory or ask the DM to help fill in gaps.

I almost always tie this question of how they decided to become an adventurer to their choice of class. For Monks... the trope is obvious... orphaned or dedicated to the temple at an early age they have known little about what lies beyond the walls of their monastery. Like the Reshemen coming of age saga - Dajemma, there comes a time when the monk must begin learning lessons from the world instead of from their teachers.

For characters like a Bard... the path is super-obvious... to gather stories to sing and tell. Each class probably has some similar low-hanging ideas...

Then the question becomes "How did you decide to become a bard?" or whatever. My goal as DM is to try to bring all this stuff out, bit-by-bit slowly over time during a campaign through the flashback rather than have everyone sit around in session zero and read off their backstory. The reason why I attempt this is because it takes time to get to know your character... Sure I could roll against a motivations table somewhere... but it usually results in better ideas if you pull that stuff after a character has taken some actions in the world and had interactions with other characters.

Great suggestion! I have to apply it somehow...

 

[Gedece]

There are several classes that answer to a calling, so perhaps she's starting to feel the call but not consciously. For example, a soon to be Warlock might be on the verge of receiving a pact proposal, or a future priest a communication from a god, a future bard might be inclined to the arts, a prospective druid (and I really like this option for the ex milk maid) or perhaps ranger could be driven into a transformative encounter with the wild.

So besides normal reasons, perhaps the calling solves it all