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Giving Characters Incentive to Quest
First let me start by saying that this article idea actually came from Danny, but since he is not writing another article soon, I'll do it. (Of course I haven't written one in almost a year, but what the hey.)
How do you get players to want to travel together and continue following your quest? This is an age old question. Inevitably someone's character probably doesn't have the incentive they need to continue on the quest they are with. Maybe the draw was originally money or cool stuff, but usually that will get boring after a while. Plus if the only incentive that people have to continue is money, there is no investment in their character and you end up playing a hack-and-slash, give me cool stuff type of game which is not fun.
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So what do you do? Each player needs a way to get personally involved in the quest. Danny calls this the "X-factor" which just means that it could be anything that allows the GM to do something crazy. Let me give you a few examples. Narkstan Greenthorn became the first Bloodwolf by meeting up with his dead father's ghost. (The dead father came from good back story writing by Danny.) After he became the bloodwolf Tolbert had an X-factor. He had something that would keep Narkstan going and if he needed Narkstan to go somewhere he would just put Hobgoblins there (since Narkstan was out to kill Hobgoblins) or deliver a message to Narkstan via his father's ghost.
Another example would Josephus, played by Adam Caldwell, who has fallen in love with the unnamed queen. Yes, there is a main quest, but with the queen tied in it gives him incentive to stay focused and accomplish what he needs to get done. My character in the current campaign has a holy book from the true God and can't read anything in it. All I need as incentive to go someplace is the chance that I will find something there to help me decipher the holy book.
What this all comes down to is giving the players a connection to their quest or their character. Give them something that they truly care about. Sometimes it is a NPC character that becomes a surrogate son or daughter. Sometimes it is falling in love with a person and trying to protect them. Sometimes it is building up a great bad guy charcter who has real personality and is deeply involved in all that they do. Do what you have to do to give those players a connection, an investment, in the game.
One of the most useful things to do this is a character's back story. If you haven't had your players give you a back story, you really should. Most players come up with something on their own that they want to invest in. For example: their village was destroyed by a certain group, their parents were killed by so and so, they seek this one artifact, they grew up knowing they were destined for X, etc. If you can bring these all together, you are doing well. If someone's parents were killed by Bad Guy Bill, have the other players find out that Bad Guy Bill just invaded their hometown and leveled it. Then Bad Guy Bill kidnapped another player's girlfriend. Or Bad Guy Bill happened to run into one of the players and stole their most prized possession. Contrived? Yes. Does it work? Yes.
Even if some things are not quite believable, that's OK. (Remember you're in a fantasy world anyway.) Obviously you don't want to make the connections so ridiculous that players think it's stupid, so plan carefully. Something you can do to avoid this is reveal connections over time. Maybe the players are after separate bad guys, but after a few months of play you could reveal that they all work for the same guy. Now it starts to make sense why these things keep happening to the players.
You're still going to have those players whose characters truly would not continue with the quest. That's OK. Give them the option of quitting the game and rejoining at a lower level or simply leaving the game altogether. Be flexible especially with first time players especially. They are still trying to figure out what type of character they want to play. They may play a couple of games and decide they don't like their character at all. That's OK. Feel free to start over a new campaign or keep the old campaign but have those players bring in new characters. Your players will play best and find their own incentive to play when they enjoy their character.
The flip side of that coin is to not let players continually switch their characters so that they are changing characters every few games. I would suggest letting them change characters once, maybe twice, but that is stretching and would need to be done with good reason. After that the player should just sit out the rest of the campaign and let the others enjoy the game. The same rule of thumb applies to death. Some players will kill their guy on purpose to come back as a different character. Again, I might let them come back in once, or maybe even twice, but never more than that. Players need to take death seriously and there should consequences. That can give them incentive to invest in their character as well.
The last tip I have to offer is to make sure that characters are involved in the current game. There are always side quests, but if the side quests are too long they just end up being hack and slash and have no plot at all. Keep side quests to one or two gaming sessions. If the players see a major goal and really want to get to that goal, don't keep them in the side quest forever when all they want to do is get to the real quest. They are already invested in the game and you're keeping them from it. Not to say that keeping from the goal is part of building anticipation in the players, but don't delay so long that they lose interest.
Hope that helps some. If you guys have anything you would like to hear about, please email me. If you guys just have a quick thought or problem, please shoot me an email as I am here to serve. Thanks! (Plus it's easier to write columns when people give you ideas!) :)
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