Storyboard: Motivational seekers
Every character has a reason for adventuring. Call it what you will, depending on setting, but there's always a reason you're out in the midst of danger rather than sitting back at home with a nice cup of tea, even if that reason is "home isn't an option any longer." Motivation is one of the big elements informing the entire archetype discussion series of columns -- it's all about why a given character would do one thing and not another.
Of course, the game itself doesn't have any way of integrating that motivation.
Much like the issues with lore, the problems of reconciling a game's stated motivation with your character's actual motivation can be pretty thorny. Especially in this day and age of quest hubs and heavy storylines, it can sometimes feel like all the efforts to draw you into the game world are pretty severely curtailing your ability to enjoy it. After all, you've envisioned a set of reasons for your character's actions already, and by all accounts she shouldn't even be talking to a questgiver -- except that said questgiver is the only way she's going to keep advancing in the game.
Some games, of course, don't have this problem. Star Trek Online, for instance, is premised on the fact that the players are Starfleet or KDF personnel. You're in a military organization, and you have to adhere to that organization's rules, which makes individual motivation more or less a non-issue. Similarly, Lord of the Rings Online presents its core storyline in such a fashion that you're more or less swept along by the events taking place around you -- your character has ample reason to fight against Sauron, and you have plenty of space to work around quests that seem out of character.
The problem creeps in when such motivations are added after the fact or assumed to be present. World of Warcraft, for example, presents a setting in which factional allegiances are regularly violated by NPCs... but players are expected to remain a part of their own factions. Even if your character considers himself to be a member of a group that doesn't care about the conflict in the slightest, you're still locked out of making any meaningful decisions about this for yourself. More to the point, you don't really have the option of just skipping several quests, since the game is currently locked into a rigid progression -- if you skip an early quest in the zone, you're likely to not be able to get any later quests.
So your character's motivation is at odds with the stated motivation. What's to be done?
First of all, you can always go with what I like to think of as the Crono Trigger route. To wit: The fewer words you say, the more words are put in your mouth. In-character, no, you don't really want to be a part of the Grand Companies in Final Fantasy XIV... but you did a few favors for people, and the next thing you know you're considered an honorary enlistee. And at least they pay you or give you extra priveleges or even just avoid too much intrusion in your normal life. Your character is still at odds with what he or she is being asked to do, but the reasoning behind those actions is simple expediency.
But the far more entertaining way is to go out of your way to work this in to your character's personality. In a tabletop game, a good GM would go out of her way to ensure that all of the characters have a personal stake in what's going on. Here, you have to do that work from both angles -- you have to give your character a personal stake in what's happening even if it hadn't come up before.
For example, let's assume that you're playing a Defiant character in RIFT and your character really doesn't hate the Guardian faction. Sure, Guardians are kind of sanctimonious, but you don't want to be at odds with them when the world is facing far bigger threats. Unfortunately, there are a lot of quests that require you to act against the Guardians, some of which go so far as to involve torture and outright assault. (To my understanding, at least -- I freely admit that my knowledge of RIFT comes secondhand.) That's not the sort of situation in which you can just assume that words were put in your character's mouth.
How do you reconcile that? Well, perhaps your character really wants peace with the Guardians... but her efforts to talk with them have been summarily shot down, and she's hoping that browbeating the faction enough will convince its members to start listening to reason. Or perhaps the Guardians did something so unforgivable that even a naturally peace-loving character can't see the option for true peace any longer. Or you could take a page from the Milgram experiment and have your character just be following orders, even with the knowledge that she's betraying her beliefs (which aren't as deeply held as she'd like to think).
The last resort for all of this is, sadly, the least appealing. When all else fails -- when there's no reasonable way to make your character follow his or her game-stated motivation -- then the only real option is to just call it off. Invoke a strict clause of gameplay and story segregation and say, "No, she's not doing this for any in-character purpose... but she's doing this in the game because she has to."
The funny thing is that sometimes, this still works pretty darn well. Guild Wars has a relentlessly linear storyline that assumes your character cares about things she might not... but usually they're things that she has to pretend to care about. Sure, you don't actually give a rat's rear end about what happens to the people of Ascalon, but there's no really good way to get across the Shiverpeaks on your own, and it's hard to sneak out from the country at this point. So sure, you'll act like you give the tiniest crap about Prince Rurik... and hey, look, now he's going over the mountains anyway. So that worked out OK.
Above all, though, the important thing is to realize that when the game throws you curveballs aimed directly at your motivating centers, your best bet is to play along. No, you're not going to want to take part in all of it, but there's a certain point at which you need to recognize your situation and play accordingly. Coming up with justifications for why your character would do something seemingly out of character is almost better than having a ready-made answer.
If it hasn't been said enough, I'd love to know what you think about this column, so let me know via mail to eliot@massively.com or just leave me a note in the comments below. Next week, I want to talk a little more about which sort of events make a good foundation for having fun and which events sound like good ideas but generally just turn people off.
Every Friday, Eliot Lefebvre fills a column up with excellent advice on investing money, writing award-winning novels, and being elected to public office. Then he removes all of that, and you're left with Storyboard, which focuses on roleplaying in MMOs. It won't help you get elected, but it will help you pretend you did.
