But Why? — Motive in Live Roleplay
Warfare is nothing but a means of negotiation between states. War breaks out even when there is no hatred. Territory, resources, or interests that you are determined to own. Ideology, religion, pride. Wars are fought over those objectives all the time…Anger and hatred, those are nothing more than tools to tilt a war in your favour.
It’s usually pretty easy to tell people what they will be doing in your game. You will be fighting large battles. You will be engaging in PvP politics. You will be trying to dance with the Prince. Most of good game design is about creating interesting ‘whats’. That’s not what I’m going to write about here. Here, I’m going to write about whys.
Why are [your players] doing whatever your game is about doing?
What motivates the characters in your game to do the things the game is set up to make them do? What drives them to take the risk of going onto a battlefield, of betraying a former ally for personal advancement, or even just getting out of bed in the morning? Why are they doing whatever your game is about doing?
Hold up now, I hear you crying, This isn’t a game with pre-genned characters. It’s not up for me to come up with reasons why characters want to do the things this game lets them do. And you know what? I agree with you — on an individual basis. But in any sort of game that prioritises player agency, your players are going to need to have Personal Goals in order to have Fun.
A character with Goals is essential to most LRP. The chorus reply given to any new player complaining that they are not enjoying themselves at a game above a certain size where they are not going to be in receipt of a constant stream of plot and content is is almost always ‘Have you made sure you’ve come with some goals? Plot and excitement won’t come to you — you have to go to it!’
This ‘have you tried going outside?’ refrain is solid advice for LRP.[1] Don’t sit in the shadowy corner of the beer tent waiting for a bunch of Hobbits to come to you — go make your own plot. But the inevitable follow up question, ‘Okay, so what should my goals be?’, is exponentially more complex a thing to answer than a simple ‘Why aren't I having fun here?’
So you answer that question. Ascend to the Synderion as Peligane. Pick a faction as your enemy, drive them before you, and here the lamentations down the pub after Time Out. Make loads of money. Achieve renown and acclaim. Isn't this supposed to be obvious? Why didn't the player come up with this off your own back?
The answer is galling but simple — your game has insufficient motives and motivation for momentum. Your players know what they can do, but don’t have any reason why they should care — particularly if they ‘why’ involves some level of effort and risk. As a game designer, you should care about the ‘whys’ of your game almost as much as the ‘whats’ — because it is the ‘whys’ that will actually be the driving force of play.
So, what motivates us in live-roleplay?
Because The Player Finds It Fun
This is the most OC of motivations: our characters do things because the people playing them are going to find them enjoyable. Why does Sylvana of the Elven Forest go off to battle? Because Jane her player wants to hit some nerds with a padded stick.
‘Never give the players a chance to have a bad time — they’ll take it’.
OC fun usually provides motive for the least IC risky courses of action. Our characters rarely get into duels to the death because we as players enjoy sword fighting, but we’ll happily engage in non-lethal honour battles or training sessions for the same reason. We might be willing to take part in the roleplay of a ritual we don’t care about for the fun of it, but we’re unlikely to spend any of our precious mana on it.
The failures of OC fun as a motive is encapsulated in the theory of ‘Never give the players a chance to have a bad time — they’ll take it’. I actually think this theory is misleading; I think it’s more accurate to say that players will value their character’s IC motives over their own fun. Let us illustrate with an example from Odyssey — the player of a warleader knows that they will likely have more enjoyment OC by being part of the big pitched battle with roughly equal sides. However, they chose to defend their Home Territory alone against a meek challenge which they will easily win because IC the character would never not defend their home. The player chooses the ‘bad time’ — but for strong In Character reasons.
If not you, then who?
A Thing needs to be done, and you are the Only Person Who Can Do It. Maybe your character is the Chosen One. Maybe an NPC has turned up at the door of your adventurer’s guild because you’re the only swords-for-hire in town. Maybe all the other candidates for General have proved themselves to be blisteringly incompetent, and so despite setting out to play a simple actor, you must heed the call.
With the possible exception of the amazingly confident player/character who genuinely believes themselves to be the Best Candidate For Accomplishing Anything, this fundamentally a reactive rather than proactive method of giving player’s motive. It might be an easy way of motivating a small number of characters who find themselves close to an important Happening, but it falls down in any event of size which characters have chosen to attend of their own free will.
Because I Am Evil
Why do I want to accrue power to myself? Because I am evil. Why do I want to crush Another Faction? Because I am evil. Why do I want to research ways to turn the whole world into my zombie empire? Because I am evil.
It’s a simple enough proposition — if LRP is poorly equipped to make you the hero who must fight of the encroaching threat of the Dark Lord, make yourself into the Dark Lord. There’s a lot of fun in playing the antagonist — but as any writer will tell you, antagonists are best we they have their own motivations for their actions, not just because they wrote ‘Chaotic Evil’ in the Alignment box. Evil is a thing you do, not why you do it.
Because I Need to Survive
In the real world, survival drives action. We go to work because we lack food, and we need to trade our labour for food by whatever method that might be. Although modern life is highly abstracted away from any state of nature where we must directly work for our survival, our first and foremost motivation in existence is to do what is necessary to continue that existence.[2]
Outside of games specifically oriented towards survival, most games don’t make their players scrabble for food (either the real stuff or some downtime equivalent.) The basic necessities of existence are below the abstraction layer. That said, LRP contains many other forms of existential threat — murder by rivals, conquest of a Nation, even a loss of resources — that encourage players to get of their arses and do things, if only to avoid their complete destruction.
Threatened characters will quickly develop a series of goals to allow them to defend themselves better. They will pursue every advantage they can with greater vigour, for the stakes are the highest they can possibly be. Combat, trade, diplomacy — everything is suddenly much more important when your life is on the line.
The best thing to genuinely threaten players with their complete destruction? Other players.
Because I Want To Win
The other side of the coin to being motivated by survival is being motivated by victory. You’re not fighting to defend all you hold dear, you’re not struggling to maintain the status quos — you’re fighting to be number one.
What do you need in your game to make victory a viable thing for your players to pursue? Well, you need a clear win condition and you need for that win condition to be total and achievable. It can be small and personal — construct an Elegant Residence to live in, or it can be huge — wipe out another faction from the game. What’s vital, though, is that the player thinks it can be done — however slim the margin.
Let us compare a victory condition of ‘Destroy an opposing faction’. If this is a victory condition in our game, then we are almost guaranteed the knock on motivation of ‘survival’ among our players. In one game, it is made clear that an opposing faction can be permanently destoyed — and the mechanics how are explained. In another, it is suggested that it’s impossible to permanently remove a faction from the game, but that PvP between them is encouraged. At this point, I will quote Machiavelli:
One has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.
What does this mean in terms of LRP PvP? Basically, in our second example game, where there is no mechanic for ‘final victory’, you are unlikely to find your players looking to attack another faction because they know they cannot win utterly. It’s a good tactical position — if you don’t think you’re going to win utterly — roll the entire camp, destroy every last one of their nation, beat them down until there is nothing left…then don’t bother. It is better to make friends. But making friends makes for boring games. If you want to motivate your players with the chance of victory, you’re going to have to also give them the chance to defeat others.
What does this mean in terms of LRP design? It means that if you’re going to want to motivate your players with changing the world, it’s going to have to look possible to do just that. Alongside your big, world changing victory conditions (destroy a faction) you should populate your world with small-but-concrete victory conditions (win a territory in the Arena, build an Elegant Residence, become Cardinal). Players are motivated by their chance to make a mark upon the world.
Because My Culture
This section was initially called ‘Because I Hate Them’, and then ‘Because God Told Me Too’. But ultimately, it boils down to the same thing — motivation by IC culture and ideology.
You gen in a culture with an IC religion that states that Orcs are abominable and should not be suffered to live. You hit the field — and instantly have an enemy to try to defeat, and to try to defend against. You gen in a culture which thinks that the person who dies with the biggest pile of cash wins, and so start chasing trade, robbery, and conquest in the name of money. You gen in a religion that tells you to perfect and uphold the written law. You gen in a culture with a homeland invaded and colonised by the rest of the playerbase. You gen in a culture that has always hated Carthage, right back to the time of your ancestral founders.
If there is one thing that drives humans more than survival, it’s our ideology — whether religious, political, or historical. If you want to provide your players with motive to drive them to action, you do that through your culture briefs. The rivalries that develop in play may burn more deeply than the ones laid out on the briefing sheet, but it is the ideologies of your setting that will create them, fuel them, and drive them.
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[1] It is important to bear in mind that just because people are telling you that it’s your job to play the game better, doesn't mean that the game is actually good. I'm informed that kids back in the olden days used to have fun with sticks and hoops; that doesn't mean that sticks and hoops aren't still just inferior forms of entertainment to an Xbox. Also, telling someone that the problem with a bad game is probably them often makes you seem like a sanctimonious asshat.
[2] There are, obviously, exceptions. Martyrs make for fascinating characters.
