Friday, April 15, 2011

Super Motivations

Motivation is a core concept for supers. It's what makes them do the crazy stuff they do. I'm thinking about motivations in Look! Up In The Sky! - right now, in the admittedly unfinished state it's in, the characters are without Motivation. They have the HOW, but not the WHY.

When working in a way and for a cause aligned with their Motivation, characters should be *better*, They are motivated - propelled by their own convictions and innermost feelings. I'm going to suggest that whenever a character is motivated, the character should have a bonus - another die, for instance. Conversely, whenever they are working in a manner and for a cause opposed to their Motivation, they should have a penalty, maybe one less die.

So Motivations should come in opposed pairs. Some examples might be:

Justice <-> Privilege

Forgiveness <-> Vengeance

Order <-> Chaos

Liberation <-> Oppression

Protection <-> Exploitation

Duty <-> Power

It's obvious that the Motivations on the left would make great Motivations for heroes, and those on the right for villains, but I can see interesting ways these could all be switched.

-clash

2 comments:

  1. Great Idea. I've been looking for ways to model these things; Way of Life, Motivations, Convictions. I wonder if it is possible to distill them down to a core list, as that would be useful for my own pet project (see blog).

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  2. Very cool, Kdansky! Looks like a sweet project! I don't know if it is possible to distill them down into a complete list, but a core list should be possible. I like the technique of giving lots of examples, but allowing anything the group is happy with.

    -clash

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