This one’s what I call a shower article. Mainly because people complain when I call articles like this, “articles I s$&% out while I’m s$&%ing.” The idea’s the same though. The article’s the result of an idea that came to me while I was dealing with some biological need or another. I wasn’t specifically working anything out in my head. I was mostly just focused on poo… ing my hair. Shampooing my hair. Then, suddenly, some tentacled mass dragged itself from the dark recesses of my unconscious and said, “yah ai kadishtu.” Which I think is R’lyehian for “hello.” I hope it’s R’lyehian for “hello.”

Now, I don’t usually share my shower thoughts. Everyone has shower thoughts. They’re simple, cheap, and unoriginal. In fact, they’re usually stolen. See, there’s this thing called source amnesia that happens because your brain doesn’t know the difference between a new thought you just had and one that was lodged in an old, filed-away memory you forgot you had. Your brain doesn’t waste space remembering where ideas came from. That’s useless information. And that’s why so many comedians steal jokes without even knowing it. And why it’s a waste of f$%&ing energy to worry about how original your ideas are.

So, shower thoughts are crap and everyone’s got way more of them than they’ll ever need. Hell, that’s true of all ideas. Ideas are cheap. Ideas only become worth something after you take them down to your lab and beat the motherloving f$&% out of them. And then sew them up to other ideas. And then implement them and iterate them and implement them again and polish them. Until you do all that stuff, an idea’s just a brain turd. Probably a stolen brain turd.

Designing stuff has nothing to do with good ideas. That’s something anyone can do. Designing stuff has everything to do with all the actual, hard, not-just-thinking work you do to make any old idea great.

But I don’t have time for that s$&% right now. This shower thought’s topical. You’ll understand why soon enough. If not today, then at least in a couple of weeks. For now, just know that what you’re about to read is basically a random thought I only just started beating the hell out of. Eventually, I’ll do all the implementing and iterating and polishing I usually do. When I get the chance. Whenever that is. Of course, there’s even odds that this idea will end up being nothing more than a really nicely polished brain turd. So, use it at your own risk.

What if You Let Your Players Decide What’s Worth XP?

Today, I’m sharing an idea. I normally don’t do that. I normally share things I’m either currently working really hard on or have finished working really hard on. But this one? I haven’t even started working on it. All I’ve done is write down the thought and then think more about it and then write down those thoughts. Which isn’t work. That’s not design. But I explained that in more detail in the Long, Rambling Introduction™. And I made some poo jokes. So go read that if you care and if you skipped it.

Oh, I also acknowledged the possibility that the seed of this particular idea is probably stolen from somewhere. Just like most ideas. So please don’t feel the need to point that out, thanks.

See, I’ve been thinking about this motivation thing. A lot. I’ve been thinking about it from a narrative perspective where motivation is the single, most important, and most humanizing aspect of every narrative ever. I’ve been thinking about it from a character creation standpoint, where most players have zero f$&%ing clue about it and most GMs have zero f$&%ing clue how to help them with it. And I’ve been thinking about it from a game design standpoint, where open-world, player-driven games literally do not function without properly implemented character motivations.

When you’ve got something vitally important to the gameplay experience, there’s three approaches you can take as a designer. You can ignore the vitally important thing and just let the game flounder. I call that the WotC Approach. Or you can explain how important it is for every GM to understand the vitally important thing and how important it is for them to add it to their game and then just trust them to work out how the hell to actually do that. I call that the Online Content Creator approach. Or you can build the vitally important thing directly into the game’s mechanics so that players and GMs literally can’t ignore it but also don’t actually have to understand it or even acknowledge it. That’s what I call the Actual, Good F$&%ing Game Design approach.

And because I prefer that last approach, I’m always looking for ways to use the rules to make the important s$&% happen.

Confused by all that s$&% I’ve been saying about how mechanics don’t make the game for the last two or three weeks? Well, let’s play a fun game called “Actually Think This Through for Once.” That’s where, instead of commenting about the contradiction, you actually assume I know something you don’t and that everything actually is consistent and you try to figure out the difference between s$&% like mass combat and social interaction rules and the s$&% I’m hinting at above. There is a difference. A big one.

But I digress…

Let’s pretend I’m actually right and that whole character motivation thing is so f$%&ing central to both an RPG’s narrative structure and its gameplay that you can’t really have a good, long-term, satisfying RPG experience without it. Given that, is there a simple, elegant, approachable way to get the players to just, you know, do motivations? And note that I said “players.” Not GM. I’m sick of being told it’s my problem as a GM to keep fixing all the super-important, broken parts that come standard with every RPG.

Obviously, there is a way to get the players to do motivations. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be another 3500 words following this paragraph. And it is simple. Otherwise, this article would just be the first of a sixteen-part series or whatever.

First, ask each player to state their character’s motivation when they make the damned thing. Then, whenever the player actually takes that motivation into account, applaud their good work and give them a treat.

I realize that idea lacks my usual bite. But look, sometimes you need to whack the players with sticks and sometimes you need to cram carrots down their throats and call them “good boys” and scratch behind their ears. Is that right? Are dogs the things you hit with sticks and feed carrots to? Whatever.

The obvious things to cram down your players’ throats for doing a good job are experience points. Because, not only are they the best damned carrot in the game all around, but also my particular way of handling experience point awards perfectly meshes with the more detailed version of this whole motivational XP system thing.

So, before I explain the latter, let me explain the former.

Experience Awards à la Angry

So, what’s my particular way of handing experience point awards? Well, you probably already know bits and pieces. You probably know that I actually use XP and not milestones or other stupid GM fiat leveling. Because I’m not lazy and stupid and I don’t hate my game. But I’ve already explained that so many times that any further disagreement could only be the result of stubborn, willful ignorance or actual brain damage. Don’t forget to post a comment before you go!

You also probably know that, even though I do use XP, I don’t actually do a whole lot of math. Basically, whenever the PCs overcome an encounter, I give them a nice, pre-packaged, pre-calculated, fixed amount of XP.

And I’m hoping you know that, in the Lexicon of the Angrican Church, the words “encounter” and “combat” are not synonyms. Neither are “kill” and “overcome.” But, because hope is a stupid thing that only leads to a broken heart, I’ll explain that again. An encounter does not have to be a combat and you don’t have to kill something dead to overcome it. An encounter occurs whenever the players come into conflict with an outside force over whether they get what they want or not. Further, conflicts only count as encounters if the players have to make an effort or pay a cost or take a risk to resolve it.

The rest of what you know is probably kind of fuzzy. In the past, I think I’ve explained some s$&% about Objective XP and Half Awards and Discoveries. Honestly, I don’t remember all the lies I’ve told you about how I handle XP. But all that s$&%’s irrelevant anyway. Because, once you get past the stuff about
“overcoming encounters” and “fixed, easy-to-math XP awards,” everything else varies from game to game. I have done all of those things in the past. But they’re not really part of the Core Rules of Angry’s Approach to XP.

Apart from the stuff I said above, it’s also Core that I give out XP at the end of each session. When I remember to. And while I’m usually mumbling and half-asleep when I do it, I try to explain precisely why I’m awarding the XP that I am. Basically, I tally up all the encounters the PCs encountered and give them XP for each.

Well, you killed the defenseless orcish orphans… so that’s 100 XP. And you humiliated the high priestess of comfort, mercy, and niceness… so that’s another 50 XP. Oh, and you splattered the jelly doughnut golem… etc.

Once I pile up all the XP, I divide it amongst the player-characters evenly without a whole lot of worry over who did what and who missed which encounter. And that’s that.

As a side note, the PCs cannot gain levels while in the middle of an adventure. Even if we’re between sessions. They can only gain levels by stopping the adventure. Usually, that means they have to spend some downtime in a civilized locale practicing, praying, researching, and whatnot. I only mention this to give my detractors something new to scream about. Because that idea sure pisses people off for some reason. Someday, maybe I’ll explain to you all the important, structural reasons for that, but I can’t be a$&ed right now and it’s not like you’ll listen anyway.

Now, even though I don’t like to do a whole lot of math, I also don’t give out the same XP for every encounter. I mean, every encounter is worth the same, baseline amount of XP. Usually, whatever the rules say I should give out for a balanced encounter of average difficulty and the appropriate level. All that s$&% about easy encounters and hard encounters? F$&% that. That granularity gets you nothing. And encounter difficulty is a load of horses$&% anyway. Just build encounters and let the players figure out how to deal with them. And then give them the same, mass-manufactured cupie-doll prize for every encounter they actually do deal with.

But, before I hand them their little stuffed animal prize, I will trim it down sometimes. I’ll cut a few arms and legs and ears off. And I do that based on four criteria.

First, if the party didn’t actually overcome the encounter or they didn’t really overcome it well, I’ll lop off a little bit of that XP prize. If they came out on top after spending the normal sorts of resources and suffering the normal sorts of long-term consequences most reasonable parties would, they overcame the encounter. But if they barely scraped by? If the victory cost them a lot? If they had a major setback? If they had to retreat or limp away or surrender? If they lost? I don’t give them the full XP prize. I call that the Win, Lose, or Draw rule.

Second, if the party only bypassed the encounter — if they didn’t really resolve it permanently — I withhold some of the XP award. Basically, if the said encounter can never and will never come up again, they permanently overcame it. But if the players could potentially run into it again? If the conflict’s still sitting there? Technically still in the way? Even if they never do run into it again? I don’t give them the whole prize. When they come back and finish the job, they can have the rest of the XP. And until they do, they can’t get any more XP for dealing with the same encounter. That’s my Half Up Front, Half When You Actually Finish the Job rule.

Third, if the encounter was what I call a “fixed encounter,” they get the whole XP pot. But if what they overcame was a “random” encounter, the players walk away with a consolation prize. In my head, I actually call them “planned encounters,” not “fixed encounters,” but I just know some of you jackholes will give me a hard time about that. Because I don’t always plan my planned encounters. Sometimes, I pull them out of my a$&.

A fixed encounter is one the party has to deal with because I put it there to deal with. If any party that took the same path through the adventure would run into a given encounter, that’s a fixed encounter. Even if I have to improvise the encounter because I didn’t expect the players to go shake down the guard captain for information, it’s still a fixed encounter because any group of players that shook down that guard campaign would have to deal with that same encounter.

Random encounters are encounters that I didn’t specifically put in the players’ ways. They include random, wandering monsters but also complications that arose because of stupid s$&% the players did, setbacks, consequences, and anything some idiot player wrote into their backstory. Basically, random encounters are the players’ fault. And yes, random, wandering monsters are the players’ faults even though I’m the one that wrote the encounter table and designed the encounters. Random encounters are the result of the players wandering, dawdling, or exploring. They’re either a punishment for inefficient play or a price for exploring off the beaten path.

Fixed encounters are worth however much XP they’re worth. But random encounters are worth a really small amount of XP. A pittance. You can’t efficiently level up your party by wandering the woods killing boars or pissing off NPCs that have a lot of minions to send after you or by writing a criminal gang you once betrayed into your backstory so you’re always dealing with random thugs. Which is why I call this my No Grinding rule.

Finally, if the party handled the encounter on their own, that’s great. But if they had a substantial number of useful NPC allies along, they don’t get the grand prize. I shave off some of the XP award on the assumption that they have to share it with their buddies. I don’t actually track non-players characters’ levels and experience points. F$&% no. Who the hell needs that work? But I do pretend the NPCs are earning XP by subtracting their share from the XP the players earn. This one’s called the If I Hurt My Back Carrying You Guys, You Can Pay My Chiropractor rule.

Now, you might have noticed that these rules are all kind of vague and subjective. That I’m basically grading my players on how well they’re playing. And you’re right. Congratulations you f$&%ing genius you. They are subjective and I am grading my players. I’m the GM. That’s my job. If the job didn’t require subjectivity, D&D could be run by a computer powered by math instead of by an amazingly brilliant, infinitely imaginative brain powered by irrationality.

You might also have noticed that this seems pretty complicated. But it’s not. It’s really pretty simple. Especially compared to the math the game system usually expects you to do. Most of the time, I don’t have to do anything. Most of the time, the party overcomes perfectly normal encounters by themselves. And thus, they mostly earn fixed XP awards for each. No math needed. But sometimes, there’s something that adds a little asterisk to the victory. Sometimes it’s only a marginal victory. Sometimes a defeat. Sometimes the party circumvented the problem instead of dealing with it. Sometimes the party lets the NPCs deal with the problem. Sometimes the party solved a problem they, themselves created. That’s why I collectively refer to these as my Tainted Victory rules. And all I have to do to keep track of this s$&% is put a little tick mark on a piece of paper for every encounter and then add some asterisks whenever I feel like the party maybe doesn’t really deserve a blue ribbon for it.

Who Cares How to XP the Angry Way?

So what, though? If this article’s about how to encourage the players to do motivations with some bonus XP, why am I padding it out by explaining my entire approach to experience point awards? Well, it’s mainly so you understand why I’m proposing the approach to motivational XP that I am. Why it looks the way it does.

Every one of my sessions, first of all, ends with this little wrap-up where I review the players’ victories and defeats and score them and give them a prize. Which, structurally, is a great f$&%ing way to end a session. It provides the players with both a recap and a denouement even if the adventure is still ongoing. And that makes every session feel like a satisfying, self-contained chunk of game. For that reason, the XP’s not the important part. It’s just an excuse. It’s just a mechanical system that tricks GMs into structuring their game right. That means the end-of-session wrap-up is the perfect place to add some other system for tricking people into playing right.

I hand out XP, second of all, based — at least partly — on arbitrary, subjective whims. At least, that’s what most of you will call it. In truth, my subjectivity is anything but arbitrary and I’m sure as hell not whimsical about it. There are rules. They’re just not quantifiable, math rules. They’re criteria. The basis for judgment calls. Considering motivation is a narrative thing and narrative things are highly subjective and not quantifiable, it’s appropriate to add them to a system that’s already based on judgment calls.

There’s two kinds of XP advancement in my game, third of all, though it’s probably not immediately obvious from my Core XP rules above. There’s a steady, predictable instream of experience points that come from just playing the game as it is. Confront each encounter, overcome it properly, and move on to the next. It provides a nice, reliable sense of incremental advancement. Any deviation from that comes from what the players actually do during the game. The Tainted Victory rules ensure the players are taking risks, paying costs, and pushing themselves to actually win the game. As long as they put in the effort, they’ll get the XP. But if they somehow don’t, they’ll slow their own advancement.

In past games, I’ve given out additional XP awards for all sorts of different s$&%. Accomplishing objectives, making discoveries, undertaking side quests, s$%& like that. But that stuff’s not just there to give the players extra advancement. Instead, it’s there to change the way I design the game and to change the way the players play the game. And if the stuff doesn’t change the game, it’s not worth bonus XP.

For example, if I’m running an adventure in which the PCs are hired to kill a dragon and then they kill the dragon, I wouldn’t give them extra XP for completing the quest. They got XP for killing the dragon already. I’m not going to give them a prize for winning the same fight twice. Yes, it’s more challenging to kill a dragon at the end of an adventure than it is to kill a dragon first thing in the morning and take the rest of the day off, but that’s literally true of every encounter in every adventure. Contrast that with an adventure in which the PCs have to rescue a princess before the cult sacrifices her to their dark god. It’s not enough to beat the cultists now. Even if they win all the encounters, they can still lose the adventure. Maybe they took too long. Or maybe they raised such a ruckus that the cultists moved up their timetable and sent the princess to Shub Niggurath ahead of schedule.

See, if I’m running a game in which I hand out bonus XP for completing objectives, it reminds me to design my adventures differently. To design them so that the players can lose the adventure even if they win all the encounters. Or win the adventure even if they lose a bunch of encounters. The bonus XP system changes the way I run the game.

It’s the same with the bonus XP I sometimes hand out for making discoveries. If the players aren’t making some deliberate effort to explore or undertaking some additional risk, if they’re just stumbling over discoveries, it’s not worth XP. If the bonus XP drives the players to dawdle, linger, research, investigate, poke, and prod, then it’s doing something useful.

So a system that’s designed to change the way the players play their characters fits perfectly into my existing Angry XP Framework.

And now let’s talk about how that system might actually work.

Motivational Experience Awards à la Angry

The whole point of this system’s just to get the players to actually f$&%ing think about their characters’ motivations. To decide what motivates their characters and then to make gameplay choices based on those decisions. Ideally, to make gameplay choices that only a player who’d picked that specific motivation would make.

This means, first and foremost, you’ve got to get the players to decide what motivates their characters. Which may be the hardest part.

What Motivates You?

To use this system, the first thing you’ve got to do is get each player to assign their character a primary motivation. And you’re going to have to help them. Because players seriously overcomplicate this motivation s$&%. They load it down with a bunch of rationalization and explanation and backstory and psychobabble bulls$&%. And that’s when they don’t mistake goals for motivations.

Now, I’ve got a whole article to write about motivation as a narrative and gameplay tool. I’ll explain what motivations really are and what separates good motivations from bad. For now, though, I’m going to give you the short, short version and leave you to muddle through.

Motivations represent the values, desires, drives, and needs that explain why a character does what they do. A motivation is not a goal. It’s not a specific thing a character wants to accomplish. Instead, it explains why that goal — and every goal the character undertakes — is important to the character. A character might want to kill the person what murdered their father. That’s a goal. But the motivation might be a desire for revenge, a desire for justice, a sense of duty to the family, or a need to quench an inner rage. A character might want to buy an expensive mansion and fill it with all sorts of luxury appointments. Again, that’s a goal. But the motivation might be a desire for comfort and security, a desire for status, or a desire for wealth. It might even be driven by jealousy or resentment.

Motivations explain why a character does the things they do. Lots of people have murdered fathers and everyone needs a house. But not everyone spends their whole life pursuing the murderer. Or amassing wealth to buy the most unnecessarily huge and opulent house ever. And while a goal sets the character on one path with one finish line, a motivation opens up lots of paths and lots of finish lines. If all your character wants to do is kill their father’s murderer, that’s all you’ll ever do. But if you recognize the burning anger your character feels at the injustice the murder represents or the deprivation or whatever, then your character is also likely to take on side adventures on the way to help other people whose father’s got murder and to right other injustices. And even after your character kills his father’s murderer, he’ll probably find himself unsatisfied and have to avenge himself on something else. Because the intrinsic need doesn’t go away.

Batman wasn’t just avenging his parents’ deaths, remember, he hated crime and criminals and wanted to punish them all. He didn’t have a goal; he had a motivation.

Your goal, meanwhile, is to get each player to assign their character a good primary motivation. And apart from being a statement of what intrinsic value, desire, need, or ideal pushes the character toward their goals, a good primary motivation is also short. Really, extremely, succinctly short. Two words short. A verb and a noun. A good motivation takes the form of “get thing” or “chase idea.”

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of good RPG motivations in no particular order:

• Amass wealth
• Earn glory
• Gain respect
• Accrue power
• Achieve status
• Earn recognition
• Obey duty
• Discover truth
• Do good
• Help others
• Perfect self
• Gain knowledge
• Indulge pleasure
• Fulfill destiny
• Stave off boredom
• Satisfy wanderlust
• Instill chaos
• Slake anger
• Mete out justice
• Spread the faith
• Take revenge
• Climb the ranks
• Build a following
• Prove mettle
• Master skill

Feel free to just fling that list at your players and say, “each of you just pick one, okay?”

I know there’s a lot more to say about motivations. For some reason, whenever I talk about goals and motivations, people get really f$&%ing weird and ask really stupid questions. Questions, for example, like why a character would ever do anything other than pursue their primary motivation. And those questions make me wonder if the people asking them are even human f$&%ing beings. Seriously. Do you even human? I promise I’ll answer all the stupid questions all you computers and aliens have in some other article, okay? Just be satisfied with this synopsis for now, please.

Help Me Help You… Earn Motivational XP

Once everyone’s got a nice, solid, primary motivation you approve — don’t allow any motivation that doesn’t fit or will utterly f$&% up your game — once the PCs are properly motivated, the hard part’s done. Because now, it’s entirely on the players to pursue those motivations. And to let you know whenever they do. You don’t have to give this motivation s$&% another thought.

I mean, you can give it a little thought. Those motivations are great adventure-building tools. They tell you what intrinsic and extrinsic rewards will get the characters going. And they also hint at what kind of game the players want to play. But aside from that crap, you don’t have to care about the PCs’ motivations.

Instead, at the end of each session — during your end-of-session XP roundup — invite each player to remind you what their character’s motivation is and to then cite a specific example from the session’s action of how they pursued their motivation. What specific action did they undertake in pursuit of their motivation? What specific choice did they make? What specific event did they participate in or bypass? In short, what did they do to prove they gave a f$&% about their character’s motivation?

Each player gets one chance per session to cite a single, specific example of how their character’s motivation changed the way they played the game. In, like, one sentence tops.

Grading their Efforts

Once a player’s provided you a single, specific instance that proves they give a s$&% about their character’s motivation, it’s on you — the GM — to determine just how much of a s$&% they really gave. And you do so by rating the example on a four-point scale. Either they did Nothing Special, they Pursued their Motivation, they Indulged their Motivation, or they Quenched their Motivation.

Look, the ratings aren’t important. I’m still working on the names. Call them, Barley, A Litte, A Lot, and Holy S$&% for all I care.

If in your opinion, the character’s motivation didn’t change the course of play — if it didn’t involve any risk or cost or effort, if the character didn’t accomplish anything, if nothing happened that wasn’t already going to happen anyway — the player did Nothing Special. Yes, taking an even split of the party’s treasure does fulfill a PC’s desire for wealth, but every PC takes their split and every party earns treasure. Destroying the cult leader serves the greater good, sure, but that’s what you were hired to do and you would have done it even if he wasn’t the fantasy equivalent of Joseph Stalin. That’s Nothing Special.

On the other hand, though, if the character did do something they wouldn’t have done but for the fact that they wrote down the specific motivation they did and if the character’s action required some amount of effort or involved some kind of cost or carried some level of risk, then you’ve got to assess what they actually accomplished. If the rogue spent some time and effort befriending the local fence so she could sell her ill-gotten gains later at a hefty markup, she didn’t actually satisfy her desire for wealth, but she did work toward it. Making contacts, acquiring resources, or otherwise setting up the pieces on the board? That’s Pursuing a Motivation.

If the character took a risk or paid or cost or expended an effort in the pursuit of their motivation and came away with something — some achievement, something more than they had before — well, then they actually Indulged their Motivation. If as a GM, you can say they have more of whatever it is they’re after than when they started the session, you’ve got to give them credit for it.

Now, this is all subjective and situational and game-specific. If the rogue sells their adventure loot to her friend the fence, that might not qualify as anything special at your table. But at my table, because there’s always a risk associated with criminal behavior and it might bring complications into the game, that counts as an indulgence. And because my game’s an open-world game wherein the players have lots of different goals they could pursue, when the cleric convinces the rest of the party to help the local temple pro bono — not counting whatever loot they find in whatever dungeon they delve — that’s indulging a pursuit of good. Convincing your fellow players to go along with anything sure as hell takes effort. And all those other potential adventures are missed opportunities and therefore constitute a cost. In your game, though, where the PCs just do whatever the quest-giver tells them, this s$&% wouldn’t count as anything special.

In the end, it comes down to whether you — as GM — think the motivation actually changed the course of the game, whether the PC actually had to work at it, whether there was anything at stake, and whether the PC actually accomplished anything.

Even though you’re using your own subjective judgment, it’s important that you only judge what the players give you. Remember, the whole point is to get the players worrying about their motivations. It’s not to give you something else to worry about. It’s up to the players to tell you when they think their motivations were in play. Don’t even suggest things to the players. Don’t help. Remember, you don’t know what’s in the players’ stupid heads. A player might do something in play that sure looks like they gave a f$&% about their motivation, but you don’t know if that’s actually why they did it. It might have been accidental. It might have been random. If the player can’t at least connect the action to their motivation after the fact, they’re not thinking about their motivations at all. They’re definitely not thinking about their motivations in play.

As for the actual experience awards? I figure that actually indulging a motivation is the equivalent of an encounter because of the whole risk, cost, and effort stipulation. Merely pursuing a motivation is the equivalent of circumventing an encounter or coming out at a draw because, in the end, the PC has nothing to show for it. And doing nothing special? Well, that’s the equivalent of resolving a random encounter. It’s worth a pittance. A nominal amount of XP. Why’s it worth anything at all? Because the act of stating your motivation at the end of each session and then struggling to think of a way it affected the game is still adding something to the game. And because, eventually, it’ll push the player in question to actually, you know, do something in play to earn more than a pittance.

Now, I currently use group experience. That is, I pile up all the XP at the end of the session and split it evenly amongst all the PCs regardless of who actually did what. And I see no reason to treat this motivational XP any differently. That way, it helps the players recognize that when the characters help each other pursue what’s important to them, they all benefit. Thus, when the cleric does ask the rest of the party to take on an adventure for the temple, even if the pay’s not great, there’s still the promise of bonus XP. Not only that, but it gives the players an excuse to talk to each other about what they want during gameplay.

And that’s it. Pretty simple, right? Make the players choose a motivation and then challenge them to prove the motivation matters. And then decide for yourself how much the motivation actually affected the game and reward the players accordingly.

That final stage, by the way? Quenching a Motivation? It’s there for the really big moments when a player risks almost everything or pays a huge cost and accomplishes something really amazing. And it’s rare. Really rare. Like once per player per campaign rare. If even that.

Honestly, you’ll probably never use it. Players suck.