A question about character motivation.
When i play my character; what drives me to get involved with what is going on in the game? There is all that faction politics thing going on, there might be threats to the city etc. But nothing of that might matter to my character right?
In Apocalypse World i need to deal with the people in power because otherwise i don’t get to eat. Scarcity is driving me to get involved. There are less people and so there are less jobs. I need to get my jingle from somewhere so i do weird jobs.
That is not true in a modern city. I can work a normal job in a callcenter and get my food at the Walmart. I can have normal friends that don’t deal with the supernatural politics that are going on.
How do you deal with such a character? It is perfectly reasonable to do so. The only thing I am seeing right now is the beginning of session move; when i fail it. Otherwise i can just live a really normal live, especially as a mortal.
How does the system handle that?
Well, right from chargen, you start out with Debts to the other players, which allows them to drag you into it.
Also, just because you pass your Session Intro roll and decide to ignore the rumor/opportunity doesn’t prevent the MC from dropping things in your lap.
Remember, the MC gets to make a move whenever you stop and ask what happens, or whenever you present a golden opportunity. You completely ignoring whatever the rest of the players are dealing with is a Golden Opportunity for me to make it hit home for you.
Also, if you have a player who doesn’t want to play…well, uh, why are they? If a player wants to go out of their way to not interact with the game, they’re not someone you should really be playing with anyway, imho.
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I don’t think that Tim Franzke is talking about a player that doesn’t want to play, he is referring to a character that may be trying to leave the community or at least keep his head down and not get dead. The reluctant supernatural so to speak.
Scott Arnone has given a couple of ways, I think most reluctant protagonists are often getting things dropped in their lap that they HAVE to deal with. A Werewolf showing up at your door and saying that you better get your act together is pretty motivating. And then there is the “bad things happen to good people” motivation to make even the reluctant character get fed up and want to end it or escape it all
As above. If you have no reason to leave your 9-5, it’s my job to fridge your boyfriend and turn your boss into a vampire thrall and maybe literally have you hijacked by some leech hunters who thought you looked like someone who wants to pull out some pointy teeth. And after they leave you in front of your dead boss because you said you just wanted to back to your normal life, that’s when the lion city sirens roar and you look at the blood all over you and see the pliers that you know your fingerprints are all over and you know no cop is going believe you.
Anyway, if you wanted to keep your pretty love you shouldn’t have dangled it in front of me like a feather on a string. You know what kind of attention span I have.
“If your enemy goes to ground, leave no ground to go to”
If a player told me about their wizard’s unaware mortal friends and ordinary non-investigative day-job, my first question to them would be: “Why can’t this ever end well?” ^^