Hell, it's why my supplement 100 Character Goals and Motivations is an Electrum seller, after all.
However, while characters should always have personal motivations that come into play throughout a campaign, a lot of Game Masters overlook the expediency of a game that comes with assigned motivation... often to the point that a lot of people are completely unfamiliar with the idea, or they consider it a form of unacceptable railroading.
So let's talk about that this week, shall we?
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The Mission IS Your Motivation
The standard model of many RPGs is that player characters form some kind of party, and then go off on an adventure. Sometimes they're mercenaries, and sometimes they're brigands. They might be wandering around looking for a reward, or for good deeds they can do. In these kinds of games the characters' personal motivations are often what takes center stage for each of them. Maybe there's a holy warrior attempting to follow their god's will, they team up with a former soldier trying to find where their next meal is coming from, and they cross paths with a savage warrior seeking some trial grand enough to act as a rite of passage for their people. These motivations are all very personal to the characters in question, and wildly different from one another. Generally what a GM will do at this point is figure some way to weave together all the characters' independent goals and motivations into the unfolding plot, dangling hooks for each of them to get them to work together.
And that is a lot of work... both on the players' parts, but also on the GM's part.
Assigned motivation works differently. In this structure, every character is part of a unit, an organization, a group, a cause, and that cause has the ability to assign them to handle matters on its behalf. You and your fellow party members aren't necessarily going to handle the current issue du jour because it fits with your moral code, or because there's treasure to be gained, or a reputation to be won... you're doing it because your commanding officer assigned you to go and take care of it!
Now, this is the method I used for my own RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, precisely because it's a military-themed game. Because yes, your characters should be individuals with their own wants, their own goals, and so on, but you're in the squad to do a job. And sure, maybe your medic joined up because they couldn't afford to go to medical school, and a tour of service will help them do that. Maybe your grunt is fulfilling a family tradition, and he's a third-generation soldier. Maybe your ordnance specialist caught a charge for arson and weapons trafficking, and he'd rather join the army than do time. Whatever the reason, and whatever goals someone is shooting for, they're still going to go and deal with the missions that command sends them on. They don't have to like it, but that's the agreed-upon framework for the game and story.
And this isn't a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. You see this same setup in the Warhammer 40K RPG Dark Heresy, where the PCs are all part of an inquisitor's retinue, and expected to complete the tasts and assignments the inquisitor gives them. You'll also see something similar in Spycraft, which is a game that I personally took a lot of inspiration from when designing Army Men. However, this same setup can be used in any RPG if your GM sits everyone down and says, "Okay, I want you all to be part of a mercenary company, a squad of town guards, conscripts in a current war," or whatever other flavor they've come up with.
On the one hand, there are a lot of players out there who do really well with assigned motivation in a game. Being told by the GM that they need to make a member of a knightly order, or a soldier in an army, or someone who works for this fantasy world's secret service takes the pressure off of them when it comes to character motivation, and it allows them to color within the lines they've been given. However, there are also players (and even Game Masters) who really don't care for this approach to character building and game management. They often feel that it means they can't make their own, individual characters with their own, individual goals, and that they're expected to just fall in-line, and to go along with the motivation that's presented to them.
Now, just to reiterate, preferences in your game are perfectly fine. But if you've never tried using assigned motivation in your campaigns before, consider giving it a shot if it sounds interesting to you. Just remember that it's something you need to bring up with your players early on in discussing the game, and you need to make sure you have full buy-in from everyone.
Or, if you really want to, you could try any of the games I've mentioned here, and see if they agree with you!
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