Character Motivation

[Vernonator]

So one of the things our group of players have struggled with even WAY back in High School when CT first arrived on the scene, is Character Motivation in a campaign. It seems that our games always petered out after a couple of months when the PC's had accumulated enough Cr to buy a small moon (a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point). In other RPG's one of the main reasons to keep "adventuring" is character advancement, level, HP, spells, etc. That is all missing in most versions of Traveller so how do you keep a long term sandbox campaign going or do you even run pure sandboxes? Is Traveller more targeted towards more "limited life" campaigns like The Spinward Marches Campaign, The Pirates of Drinax, The Traveller Adventure, etc. Campaigns with a definite start, end and goal, that once done you would roll up new characters and start again.

No right or wrong answers just trying to udnerstand how others are/have ran their groups.

 

[bookwyrm]

One thing I thought of back in the day, was that Adventurers don't stop gaining 'experience' when they muster out. I know, CT doesn't have XP, but how about, every 2 or 4 years of adventuring, the characters get a few skill points to improve skills they have or to learn new skills. When you think about it, Adventurers are using their skills all the time, and might learn a new trick or two.

Me and my friends played D&D, Traveller, Star Wars, and James Bond rpg's, and Traveller stood out as the game that characters didn't advance with experience. Having played D&D before Traveller, I felt that was kind of weird. I'm back into Traveller with T20, which is based on the D20 system, and I like how it feels for campaigning. But that's my take on it.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Shadowrunner]

I agree with Bookwyrm. If you think about Star Trek Voyager, they weren't the same people when they made it back.

A Voyager or Lost In Space "misjump" type campaign can keep both players and GM busy, the galaxy is big.

I also created a campaign where a convoy of J5 or J6 ships acted on rumours of a civilization far beyond the Tsadra region and had to travel years to the edge of our arm of the galaxy and discover a society dispersed by the Ancients (and return back perhaps).

Voyage Length/Event
365 Days Fighting among crew
720 Days Crime
1440 Days Desertion
2160 Days Mutiny
2880 Days Break-up of the convoy

Of course the further into the journey, the greater the risk of disease, equipment failure, software failures, human error, low supplies etc.

Players forced to choose which ships in the convoy to cannibalize etc. And of course, some NPCs might want to throw the towel in and colonize a planet along the way. The challenges and rewards can be great.

Putting the game aside, I think the only reason I've ever given up a campaign is real life demands and especially unexpected ones. A campaign needs to be fun, educational and rewarding. With those three ingredients, it should be absorbing.

 

[infojunky]

The short answer is in the 25+ years with my group and related Traveller games character motivation has been largely based their own internal drives.

With things like training for skill acquisition and Attribute modification have been core for a lot of the characters in the aforementioned games. Every edition has had at least cursory rules for these activities.

Heck I had a character whose sole obsession was for Soylent Yellow for the "perfect" Banana Daiquiri.

 

[kilemall]

Ya character driven obsession is the ticket.

 

[Dragoner]

I run campaigns lasting 4-5 years, usually a few months game time though. I let the character motivations be internal, whatever they want, as long as it is fun.

 

[Timerover51]

Basically, what you are talking about is Player Motivation, not Character Motivation.

 

[Enoki]

The best character driven motivation I've seen in the game is a player, years ago, who had a character that was a retired Imperial Marine Colonel. The other players--for the most part--agreed to do something patently criminal to make potentially big bucks. The player with the colonel went to the authorities and turned them in.
That is playing the character!

 

[Grav_Moped]

Basically, what you are talking about is Player Motivation, not Character Motivation.

That's basically it. Traveller characters are motivated by the things that motivate people. Respect, avarice, altruism, love, hate, fear, pride, loyalty, betrayal, revenge... that sort of thing. The LBBs didn't have rules for that, outside of material possessions and the slow potential for some skill development. There's still not much in newer versions of the rules.

There isn't an out-of-universe points system that feeds back into abilities, self-esteem, and external validation. For the characters, it's probably not necessary -- in the real world, people are motivated by a lot of things. Players might want something external for bragging rights, but that's limited by different referee/universe conceptions of value (in archaic terms, "monty haul" vs "killer DM" campaigns). The archetypal campaign puts a few PCs in a Free Trader to start with, with the hope of upgrading to a Subsidized Merchant or Far Trader at some point perhaps. I started my Play-by-Post with the PCs in possession of a (well, the) 600Td Collector-Drive starship and before they really get going here they're now flying a Type T Patrol Cruiser. Does this make the characters "higher level" than the archetypical party because they get points for having a valuable starship? Not really -- it just changes the situations they face and what resources they have available.

Characters roll into play having already completed their level-grinding. They continue on based on whatever the players see as the character's motives, and if their goal turns out to not be all that in the end (owning your own moon can be boring!) they can retire so their respective players can seek new challenges with new characters.

This puts a lot of additional work onto the referee and the players. The players have to develop their characters' motivation (simple avarice works, but doesn't provide a lot of depth), and the referee has to create a setting with allies who the players can develop attachments to, adversaries worthy of enimity, and a society that the PCs can either find a place within, rebel against, or simply escape.

Experience points and levels are a cop-out.

 

[Grav_Moped]

And as a side note, to the OP:
Initially (late 1970s), player characters might well have been intended as very-detailed individual wargame units with expanded capabilities, since the early RPGs were developed by wargame designers. Roll 'em up, throw 'em at the scenario, repeat as needed. Character development optional...

 

[mike wightman]

Money, fame, status, hidden secrets
which of those motivate the player to stick with their character.

Take money for example - there are lots of things money can buy, clone insurance, skill improvement, augmentations, anagathics to name but a few.

 

[Vernonator]

Money, fame, status, hidden secrets
which of those motivate the player to stick with their character.

Take money for example - there are lots of things money can buy, clone insurance, skill improvement, augmentations, anagathics to name but a few.

Problem is in CT making money is REALLY easy, made even more so by the supplements (Merchant Prince specifically). You can do speculative trade without ever leaving the starport and make millions of Cr in a very short time. Sure you could make them RP the whole thing but that gets a bit of a pita.

 

[kilemall]

Problem is in CT making money is REALLY easy, made even more so by the supplements (Merchant Prince specifically). You can do speculative trade without ever leaving the starport and make millions of Cr in a very short time. Sure you could make them RP the whole thing but that gets a bit of a pita.

The millions make sense if you have the money sink that starship ops required- battle damage, ship/computer/weapons/vehicle upgrades, etc.

If that money sink isn’t there or isn’t a long term goal (funding a custom powered up ship), then the money sink needs to move planetside.

Competitors, bribes, smuggling across extrality borders, bureaucrats, taxation that ship captains never deal with but planet traders do, gangsters sniffing out your sweet business and figuring to muscle in, the odd terrorist/rebellion, disasters, alien motivations that don’t even make sense, troublesome cargo lots via hazmat/legality/tech/, etc.

Think DS9 totally focused on Quark as the hero- a guy trying to make a profit can get involved in all sorts of adventures.

Your goal as ref is to create an entertainment generating biome. So think in terms of the ecology of adventure.

 

[Vernonator]

So really what I am trying to understand is have your campaigns been 1) long running sandbox games or 2) Finite "campaigns" with a start, middle and end (Pirates of Drinax, Spinward Marches Campaign, etc). If 1 what was the driver from a PC/Player standpoint...exploration, Cr, bigger better ship, etc, etc.

 

[whartung]

The millions make sense if you have the money sink that starship ops required- battle damage, ship/computer/weapons/vehicle upgrades, etc.

But that's the problem. "Let's not do upgrades/get into battle/buy another ships vehicle this week" and now you're millions of Cr in the green and seriously thinking "WTH am I doing traipsing about the cosmos when I can be living on a beach somewhere with all the margaritas I can drink?".

"I have a 40MCr starship and 25% equity. Let's sell it!"

Basically, as soon as you "stop playing the game" (the game of business within the Traveller game), you have access to "FU Money" and it makes you question why you're playing at all.

 

[rlmercad069]

bigger better ship

Bigger is always better.

living on a beach somewhere with all the margaritas I can drink?

Margaritas and beach, always a good thing even on desert world. Sand, sand fleas and more sand.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Bigger is always better.

In a LBB5 universe, you can almost always build bigger... "That's no moon!" "Well it was one when we started..."

Margaritas and beach, always a good thing even on desert world. Sand, sand fleas and more sand.

I'm going to have to do a "Tiki-World" scenario at some point if someone doesn't beat me to it (or hasn't already). The main problem is that I'm far too unfamiliar with Polynesian culture to pull it off...

 

[mike wightman]

I think that just like dying during character creation, combat being lethal, and all groups are ethically challenged free traders the trope that you easily get rich using the trading table is something that is not born from actual play.

Take speculative trade - yes you can do this from any world.
How much money do you have at mustering out? Can you afford the speculative trade lot that you roll (once a week), remember you have to pay shipping costs and living expenses while your goods are in transit. It will be three weeks until you find out if you have made a profit (and don't forget the mail cost).
Or you could pay the passage and go with your trade goods to the market world...

I'm going to do this.

 

[Bartleby]

The importance of player and character motivation was taught to me by pure happenstance.

It was 40 years ago but I still remember it fondly.

I created a campaign where the the PCs were Solomani spies or something. They had some basic weapons and equipment, but flipping through Mercenary they decided they wanted FGMPs etc etc. But I misunderstood the rules as intended, and explained to them that in order to buy anything they had to meet both tech level and law level limits. Meaning the tech level had to be high enough and the law level had to be low enough.

Being a young teenager and still new to gaming I thought railroading the players into my carefully pre-planned campaign was the best course of action, rather than encouraging them to find a black market or a whole host of other gaming opportunities that would allow them to follow their player's hearts desires.

Fortunately my players had more imagination than I did. They began to flip through the Solomani Rim supplement until they came across exactly what they were looking for. A planet with TL of F and a Law Level of 0 (going from memory it may have been Athene). They spent gaming session after gaming session trying to get closer and closer to this magical place of lawlessness where they could buy anything they could afford. So many shenanigans and distractions along the way.

I am sure I abandoned the Solomani spi story arc at one point, and they did eventually get to Athene, where they gleefully flipped through all of the Traveller books to find whatever possible things they might purchase. I still today remember one player telling me how much fun the campaign was. It really wasn't the campaign I planned, but it was so much better.

Anyway - to help out the OP. As you said, it is not part of the game system with Traveller. It is true it is a burden on the referee and players, but if you make it work it can be much more fulfilling.

I have not gamed in a while, but if I started a new campaign (or when I start a new campaign) I will only want players who are willing to bring (or roll for if they prefer) a secondary motivation to their character that will always be in the backs of their minds as they go through their adventures ("my name is Indigo Montoya etc...)