What, Why and How — Goals, Motivations and Plans in LRP
In my last blog, I discussed Motivation in LRP. It prompted some good discussion on Facebook— which has prompted this further musing, incorporating some ideas that came up in the thread. This follow up blog is intended to clarify and expand on those initial thoughts, as well as present some additional considerations on a tripartite theory of Doing Things In LRP and Good LRP Design. These are the What, Why, and How of player action, or Goals, Motivations, and Plans.
First, let’s define our terms.
Goals are a thing I want to accomplish in a game. These can be very small, or very big.
‘Defeat the Graveborn Faction’ is a goal.
Motives are the reasons I am pursuing my goals. These can be both IC, and OC. OC motives are things I find fulfilling as a player. IC motives are usually my character’s ideology, culture, and personal desires.
‘My patron the Sun God hates undead, and the Graveborn Faction is full of undead’ is a motive — an IC one.
‘I like fighting, and defeating the Graveborn Faction will likely involve lots of fighting’ is also a motive — an OC one.
Plans are the methods by which I achieve my goals. These can be intricately formulated, or made up on the fly by seizing opportunities when they arise.
‘I will supplicate to the Sun God for blessings that hurt the undead, convince neutral factions that the undead need to be destroyed and they should ally with me to do so, and then launch a surprise attack against the Graveborn at dusk’ is a plan.
To put it another way: Motives are where your players start. Goals are where your players are trying to end up. Plans are how they’re hoping to get there. All can, and will, shift during play.
As a game designer you are responsible for creating and presenting your players with potential goals, and potential motives for those goals. In creating your setting, you will create the Graveborn Faction and also the Sun God who hates the undead. You might leave it up to the individual players to go all the way to deciding that they want the goal of ‘defeat the Graveborn’, but that goal is born out of motivations your setting has for them to adopt for their characters.
Depending on how much your game prizes player agency, the plan that your players come up with to achieve their goals will be their own creation. However, enacting their plan will often be the bulk of their roleplay and activity at one of your events. Therefore, as a game designer, it is your responsibility to provide them with the core gameplay mechanics for them to build and then actualize their plan.
Take the plan above to defeat the Graveborn. It is based around the following game elements and primary units of gameplay:
- Powerful NPCs (Sun God) which can be interacted with (supplicate) for mechanical benefit (blessings that hurt the Undead). Primary Unity of Gameplay: Dealing with the Gods
- Pluralistic groups of players (neutral factions) that can be interacted with peaceful and persuasively (should ally with me) that have their own opinions informed by the setting that can be changed (the undead need to be destroyed). Primary Unit of Gameplay: Politics and Diplomacy
- A combat system that can be initiated freely and will decisively defeat players, probably through character death (launch a surprise attack against the Graveborn). Primary Unity of Gameplay: PvP Combat
Certainly if you've done your job well as a game organiser, engaging with your primary unit of gameplay will be innately fun even when not done as part of an overarching scheme. (It’s cool to meet a god, even when we have nothing to ask for. It’s cool to get in a fight, even when you’re not battling your hated enemy to the death. It’s cool to chat with other interesting characters, even when you’re not campaigning for them to join your cause.) Often a new player, a new game, or a new character will happily ‘tourist’ before finding a motive and a goal to pursue. Plenty of LRPers engage with their whole games like this.
I think it often easy for both game designers and players alike to confuse engaging in primary units of gameplay as ‘goals’, assuming that things you do in the game are ends in and of themselves. But having a thing to do isn’t alone a reason to do it — it’s you/your character’s motivation that makes a goal and a plan.
It’s not about achieving godlike power. It’s about how you want to change the world once you’ve got it.
