Optional-Character Motivation
Why Does Your Character Do What He Does?
By its very nature, the player’s character is an adventurer, willing or not, out to make his mark on the world. But why did he or she choose to try his chances in the larger world? What made him or her leave the surety of their home base and take to the road?The potential reasons are multitude, and the player is free to make up their back story to explain their action and motivations. Alternatively, roll D20 on the following chart. Details are left purposely vague so the player and the GM may flesh them out (or not) as much as they wish.
1—A local conflict, or duty to your lord, swept you into military service. Before you ever reached the conflict, your unit was devastated by some illness (probably camp fever or the bloody flux), and you were among the few survivors. Now you are far from home, but you are not sure you even want to return there.
2—Bandits or a robber baron kidnapped one of your family members. The missing person could be a parent, sibling spouse, best friend, whatever, but you have decided that it’s up to you to rescue them and bring them home.
3—Bandits or pirates kidnapped you with the intention of selling you into slavery. Somewhere along the trail, you managed to escape. Now free, you are unsure if you want to go home, or perhaps start a new life elsewhere.
4—Collecting ancient knowledge is your passion, and you are set to find every lost library, forbidden book, cave full of ancient scrolls locked in sealed jars, and all the clay tablets inscribed with secrets quite literally baked into them. You love obscure knowledge like others love a spouse.
5—Every since you were young, you were struck with wanderlust. You left home early, and you never stay in one place long. If you do, you get “itchy heals” and decide that it’s best to travel to somewhere new.
6—Like any good, pious believer, you set out on a long pilgrimage to visit the great basilicas and see the saints’ holy relics for yourself. Once you got out and saw the wider world, it suddenly occurred to you that you have no great desire to go home. Maybe it’s the freedom of the road, or a chance love affair in a new place, that changed your mind. Maybe you will travel home at some future point, but you are not convinced of that.
7—Opportunities were limited in your homeland, and you began your peregrinations to go out into the world and “make your fortune.” You are searching for any great opportunity that will set you up for life!
8—Pirates kidnapped you and sold you into service on board a ship. Life was very tough, but eventually you escaped when the vessel was destroyed and you washed up on a distant shore. You are not that sure what to do now, but the world is an open book for you.
9—Someone direly wounded you—you might forgive the injury, but never the insult! You will track down the perpetrator to the ends of Aarthus, and your vengeance will me memorable.
10—The clan, tribe, family, faction or the lord that you served was embroiled in a bitter blood feud and lost. You had no choice but to flee or face execution. In your heart, you earn to go home and put affairs back to rights.
11—Town air is free air, as they say, and staying in town for a year and a day frees you from being tied to the soil. You must remain vigilant, because your old lord could capture you and drag you back to your old servitude. If this doesn’t apply to your circumstance, re-roll the result.
12—Whatever you had in your homeland, it was unfairly stripped from you and given to another. This could be the result of rising and falling alliances, favor or disfavor, or political intrigue, but you’re out and someone else is in. If you can, you will make the right alliances and win back your heritage.
13—You are a guildsman, and you have taken up the “grand tour” to visit your trade’s great masterworks from the past, learn different trade traditions as they exist in faraway places, and network with guildsmen like you. After a year or two, you plan to go home and put your expanded knowledge to use. Maybe.
14—You are obsessed with exploring distant lands and discovering new resources that just are waiting to be tapped. You believe that you will be greatly rewarded for this by your lord or monarch, and might even make yourself fabulously wealthy in the bargain.
15—You entered the larger world by fleeing religious persecution in your homeland.
16—You fell in love, but the other party only is interested if you prove your passion by accomplishing a series of heroic feats. These requirements are vague and seemingly impossible, but here you are, out to win the heart of your beloved.
17—You fell madly in love with someone well beyond your station, and now they have married. The pain is too great to stay, and you’ve decided that it simply is better to move on. You carry the unrequited pain with you always.
18—You have wrongly been labeled an outlaw in your home country, and your only choices were to accept unfair punishment and probably execution, or run from society and become a bandit, or flee to another country. You may have adopted a new name to keep yourself safe.
19—Your family, clan, tribe, faction, or whatever, has been thoroughly disgraced or vilified, and you are not having it. You have set out to restore your grouping’s good name, although you aren’t all that sure how you will accomplish that.
20—Roll twice, resulting in a hybrid origin.
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