Role-playing - Character Goals

Although I have several more characters that are theoretically still ongoing (most notably the ones from an occasional Rolemaster campaign that has been going for decades) I currently have two player characters that I would consider 'active'.

The older of the two is a character from my weekly local LARP system. He was created in response to a change of working hours that reduced the amount of time I could commit. After both of my previous PCs ended their arcs by assuming the throne of a country, I needed a character less prone to machinations and pre-planning.

Isadil is an elven warrior who worships of the goddess of honour. After centuries of training, he left the safety of the elven homeland to battle the forces of evil and defend the innocent. He has gained a degree of prominence over the years solely due to the relentless rise of his martial prowess and his conspicuously upright and noble behaviour (to the point that a Pit-tainted priestess of the god of murder once sent him a written apology after stabbing him).

Isadil in action

My other current PC is is from a Pathfinder static campaign. Due to the joys of being in my 30s, she was also designed with an eye on limited availability because of work. Trill Tannika is actually the dissociated alter of my wife's character Riell. The idea was that whichever of us was able to make the session could take charge of our shared character, without any discrepancies in characterisation and knowledge detracting from the game. Trill was the only one of the pair that began play with an IC awareness of the reason for their 'memory lapses'.

Terrified that Riell would attempt to find a 'cure' if she was exposed, Trill engaged in a desperate campaign of deception and secrecy whilst ruthlessly protecting them both from anything she considered a threat. Her ambition was to settle in a city large enough to form a different social circle. Trill was outed when Riell began to receive training in magic (which Trill has no talent for) forcing the pair to try and become good head-mates. Riell's mentor is currently working on a ritual to Reincarnate them into separate bodies, since we've both been able to attend more sessions than expected.

Trill (via Skyrim)

I enjoy playing both of these characters, but I definitely enjoy Trill more and spend far more time thinking ahead to my next session as her. The reason is pretty obvious on reflection – Trill has a far more dynamic character arc with a wider variety of objectives. This prompted me to start thinking about the different kinds of motivations and goals I've built into my characters and I decided to share what I came up with here.

Aggressive Goals

Aggressive goals are specific objectives that your character wants to go out and achieve. They are milestones that can be definitely completed in one fashion or another. Most games are built around a particular aggressive goal supplied to the party by the GM – if the PCs don't stop the villain from doing a particular bad thing, both they and the world will suffer the consequences. Adding additional aggressive goals to your PC provides a sense of what they wanted out of life before they got caught on the plot hook. They also exert additional influences upon the PC's decision-making, producing a more distinctive character.

It is important to share these goals with your GM. They can then weave opportunities to complete them into the narrative, greatly enriching it and making your character feel less interchangeable with other possible PCs. In role-playing terms the 'main quest' of The Princess Bride is to stop the evil Prince Humperdinck starting a war via murder. The fact that his sidekick/lover is the object of Inigo's 20 year revenge quest is pure coincidence – but imagine how much less fun the story would be if Rugen was in another castle. Imagine if Westley was just a wandering rogue who decided to save a pair of perfect breasts, rather than a doggedly returning true love.

The downside of aggressive goals is that they can only pay off if they compliment the GM's main plot rather than conflicting with it. Players work with the GM to create appropriate characters for their campaign, but the GM won't necessarily wish to reveal surprise details ahead of time. The meet premise for our Pathfinder party was that we were all on a ship bound for a large city – so I created Trill to have urban ambitions. After almost 2 Acts of rural and wilderness adventures aimed at thwarting the plans of an evil Druid, she has gained an exasperated loathing of the outdoors that almost rivals her enmity for the villain.

Defensive Goals

In contrast to aggressive goals, defensive goals are specific things that your character wants to protect from change. The nature of early D&D has given rise to the concept of the 'murder hobo' – a person without family, employment or home and with no assets save the military-grade arms and armour that they carry. Such a person fears nothing except mutilation and death and has nothing else to do but follow the call to adventure. Although such characters are very convenient for play purposes, they don't have any roots within the game world they inhabit.

Most real people have someone or something they would care about losing. They possess some form of role or status that they would like to maintain. By adding these things to your character you create additional motivations that add depth to your play. You also contribute directly to the setting by adding NPCs, locations and groups via your backstory.

The GM can threaten your defensive goals to provide you with personal plot and focused play. Giving your character something they care about beyond their own skin opens up a wealth of dramatic opportunities that most GMs will be eager to capitalise on. Conversely, an unmolested defensive goal feels like a success for your character because they got through the whole plot without losing what they cared about – whereas an untouched aggressive goal is just a set up that went nowhere.

The problem with defensive goals is that the best way to fulfil them is often to avoid action. If the stakes of the main quest do not directly threaten their defensive goals, a PC built around them may be disinclined to take the risk of getting involved. A heavily defensive PC requires more work from the GM and may be left behind if there isn't time for it. I typically find such characters a good fit for horror games where the peril reliably comes to you. The place you really don't want them is in a sandbox game with player led plot – such a character will spend most of the campaign simply digging a deeper moat around their own sandcastle.

Permanent Goals

Permanent goals are objectives that cannot be definitively resolved over the course of the campaign due to their scope or vagueness. As such they will always guide your actions. Trill can definitively achieve an aggressive goal by getting her own body – or fail a defensive one by seeing her separated sister die. Conversely, saving the world last year by killing the Pit Emperor had no effect on Isadil's commitment to fighting evil and protecting the innocent. Win or lose there is always another fight around the corner.

Permanent goals are the vital core of PCs in one shots or short campaigns. Your character needs to hit the ground running and there will be little time to explore personal side quests. Many games require all members of the player party to be part of the same organisation so that they all have an ongoing commitment to the same agenda. Unless the campaign goes beyond the battle of Endor, helping the Alliance defeat the Empire is a permanent goal in a typical Star Wars game.

The problem with permanent goals is that they don't allow for much of an actual character arc. If your character has already made the commitment to them before play begins and can never complete them during play, the only possible development is to revise or abandon the goal. Since the original goal is often the reason your character is involved in the story in the first place, this might cause their identity to collapse and their logical next action to be leaving. This means that a character ruled by permanent goals will eventually start to feel stale as you are basically repeating the same story beats over and over again.

It is worth noting that your PC's flaws are often a great source of permanent goals. A character who wants to become rich may eventually fulfil this goal by all reasonable estimates, but one who is greedy will always be up for chasing another bag of loot. A PC who wants to win the war may see their dreams realised, but for a character motivated by hatred of the enemy the war may never be over. Even a serial killer's compulsions or a vampire's hunger can be seen as permanent goals of a sort.

The power fantasy element of RPGs means that players often find flaws to be an unwelcome intrusion. Once you learn to lean into them, however, flaws can provide you with a great deal of play. I've got a lot mileage out of Trill's Paranoia Drawback, such as the time I accused a Paladin of being secretly in league with the Lich we'd just killed (it actually made sense in context). If you do ever manage to 'abandon' a flaw-based permanent goal, it will be a victory rather than a collapse.

The Perils of Secrets

It is worth giving special mention to the use of secret character goals. It is often tempting to put some some secret agenda into your character's backstory, in order to lay the ground-work for some dramatic reveals later on.

Some secrets take the form of aggressive goals – a hidden agenda or secret mission that your PC keeps from the rest of the party. Although these can be fun, designing your personal plot to exclude the other characters won't help it to see play. At best, you will be repeatedly splitting the party as you slip off to advance your scheme.

A more serious problem is that a secret of this kind is usually withheld because it does not suit the common interests of the other PCs. Although the risk of character death if you are revealed can be a thrill, the destruction you wreak if you succeed will only please you. Suddenly orchestrating a party wipe after months of patient treachery will be the perfect ending for your game, but will only satisfy the other players if they were racing to do the same thing. Save these kind of secrets for games involving vampires, Sith or Westerosi nobility.

The majority of secrets are simply defensive goals. You begin play with the information hidden and your PC wants it to remain so. The issue here is that the secret can only produce real play if it is revealed – placing your IC and OOC aims in direct conflict. Not only must you 'play to lose' for this to work, but ultimately it is up to the other people at the table to advance your plot for you.

This is especially problematic if the reveal is vital to the overall continuation of your character's story. It can be very frustrating waiting for players and GM alike to act upon your carefully placed clues. Due to the unplanned departure of several starting characters and the late introduction of new ones, I had been playing Trill for over a year by the time she introduced herself to the rest of the party. Although this makes for an interesting anecdote in hindsight it was a very long road at the time.

The best secrets are probably ones that your PC will choose to reveal for themselves once the party has earned their full trust. My wife's character in a Dragon Age campaign I ran was an escaped slave who had slit the throat of a Magister. She eventually told the others why they kept getting attacked by blood mages, but not until after they had evolved from a gang of adventurers into a tight-knit squad of Grey Wardens.

Happily Ever After?

If all goes well your PC will gradually complete their starting aggressive goals during the campaign. In some cases these goals don't require any further attention afterwards – the guy you killed is dead and unless you have reason to fear discovery of your deed you can simply leave it behind. This can leave your character lacking direction both IC and OOC. Fortunately all you have to do is find new goals to strive for, such as learning piracy in the case of Inigo.

In other cases your achievement will afterwards require guarding. Having secured wealth, love or power your PC will normally want to keep on enjoying these things for the rest of their life. This effectively transforms your aggressive goals into defensive goals. If you don't consciously recognise that fact you might find that your character seems to have grown stale.

It is sometimes possible to use your accomplishments as springboards for grander goals. Games like Adventurer Conqueror King are deliberately designed to chart the party's ascension to larger-scale objectives over time. Other games are fixed at a particular scale – neither of my old LARP characters have been suitable for regular play since they ascended to their thrones because nation ruling isn't really supported by that game. One makes a cameo every so often because I enjoy the persona too much, but the other has long been officially retired.

Even if it possible to reach further, you might simply not want to. Most players want happy endings for their characters because they identify with them and it feels like a gameplay victory. If all of their dreams have come true, you may find yourself fighting to preserve them in that perfect frozen moment. In these cases, the best way to accomplish that end is usually to step back from the relentless flow of events that surround active characters by retiring them.

Of course, not all characters need to be built for a happy ending. Some can be reckless or over-ambitious enough to be almost certainly doomed, or evil enough that you frankly want them to end badly. If your Star Wars character has the aggressive goal of 'kill Darth Vader' your true OOC goal is probably to 'get a cool death scene fighting Darth Vader'.

It can be very liberating to play a character like this. You are freed from the normal long-term considerations to run with decisions you'd never normally take. The important thing is to make someone you have fun playing as long as they last. Like the reveal of a secret, the death of your PC is largely in the hands of the other people at the table. If you spend every session wishing for your villain to get their Karma you will rapidly get frustrated as their wretched life drags on.

Keep It Simple!

From what I've said so far, it would be possible to get the impression that more goals are always better. They add play opportunities to your character and depth to both the PC and their world. However, that world is at heart the creation of the GM. Your side quests are just that - they should not overwhelm the main quest even if you personally get more fun out of them. Flooding the GM with too much content will result in much of it going unused – or cause less prolific players to get neglected if the GM is too indulgent.

There is a writing trick where you ask yourself if the events of the text are the most interesting part of your protagonist's story. If they are not, you ask yourself why you aren't telling the more interesting parts instead. Your PC is the protagonist of the game from your point of view – as such, you should normally build them so that the upcoming campaign is the most interesting part of their life so far. Since you don't know in advance how exciting or large-scale the plot will be it is worth erring on the side of caution. You don't normally want to be playing a character who is too jaded to be engaged by the key events of the story.

The Fate of Firefly

Once you have established your character's goals and begun to play, the pace of an RPG campaign means that it will be months or even years before your preparations fully pay off. As I have said before in my article for GMs, many campaigns come to an unplanned demise long before their plots are fully resolved.

It is normally impossible to truly continue your character's adventure in a future game. If the campaign folded almost immediately you can simply wait for someone else to run the same system and setting – which might itself be a long wait. In other cases your PC will have an essentially random amount of advancement that will be unsuitable for starting characters in the next campaign. More importantly, they will have far too much background as a result of prior play – few GMs are able or willing to import the entire canon of another GM into their new game, especially if you would be the only source of information regarding it.

Every experienced player has unfinished campaigns that they mourn. Investing in your characters this way will increase those frustrations which is worth being aware of. Yet the rewards when things go well are more than worth it. The best campaigns don't just have great plots and skilled GMs, they have memorable and complex characters too. Providing those is the job of the player group – and the most memorable one for you will be the one that you bring to the table.