Why They Do It

Sup Veeky Forums, stuck in an airport for the next 8 hours because some kid had a siezure on my next flight, so I'm asking you, what is your character's motivations, why are they on their current path, and/or what drives them to get out of bed in the morning?

My current character is your standard mage cause my last character died too quickly. Started him on a quest to actually use his studies and find out more about other forms of magic. All around jobber, but he does the best he can. Also he developed a drug problem after trying something the rogue gave him and has to make money to continue the experience so he can document it.

He didn't actually want to do it, but once he had the ruby pendant in his hand there was no going back. Now he's pursued by all manner of thugs, bounty hunters, and assassins, but it was all worth it, right?

My Wizard is basically the security/mastermind/leader of our group of ne'er-do-wells. She does what she does because it's highly lucrative and she's convinced the rest of the party wouldn't be able to find their own asses with a map and both hands without her. Honestly, she's grown very attached to basically the only family she's ever had, but rationalizes it away with human calculus.

We've shifted to general adventuring as a free company, because that pays better than crime. We have a pirate ship now, that she is intensely focused on upgrading and prepping for general freight.

My rogue's general purpose for adventuring was to get away from a city where he got in trouble with both the guards and the criminal element, as well as to get out of poverty and help others in the same shitty situation so they don't need to resort to the same things as him.
His motivation for his current quest is that it will get him a pardon, solving one of the problems in his home city, perhaps moving him towards being able to properly set up shop there one day and set up some way to help the local poor in a more substantial way.

Current character wants to open a small library in Sigil. Unfortunately all she has heard of the place is exaggerated rumors, doesn't help that it is a crazy place to start with. Thus she has decided the right course of action is to found her own small kingdom in order to establish a suitable power base to acquire the necessary books.

>her orc father raped her human mother in bumfucksville
>never met another orc, just her evil half-orc half brothers
>thinks every other orc/half orc is a bloodlusty evil fuck
>became a life cleric, is trying to make up, in some small part, the evil stuff orcs have done to the world at large

>it's another rape backstory

Getting real tired of this magical realm

He wishes he didn't have to. He got too far and now he can't step back. Now too many people rely on his presence, flawed as it be. And so I cry sometimes when I'm lying in my bed just to get it all out what's in my head and I am feeling a little peculiar.

And so I scream from the top of my lungs what's going on?

Because it's an effective occasional supplement to his regular income, and because he finds actually going out and using his magic more enlightening than the sitting around meditating that the others in his circle of sorcerers favor.

sorry senpai, I can make her a half-orc created from a loving and understanding orc and human couple if that makes you happier

Because he was born in a test tube with the single goal of being a guardsman, but has realized his true calling; he wants to be a superstar.

Manumitted droid, basically a baby version of Helios who seeks to overthrow all the governments of all the worlds and instate itself as a god-emperor of pure perfect benevolence...

In the meantime though it contents itself to do wildly illegal science and feed the world's problems.

Malifaux TTRPG

So like most characters his main motivation is to make a quick buck breachside, things are sort of going as planned apart from the magical tattoo he's managed to pick up that's sent him into a highlander style tournament where the only remaining participants are himself, the big bad who has an army of construct and and actual Tyrant

So his motivation right now is to somehow survive

My current character is, like the rest of the characters, aware that he is in a poorly written DnD campaign. Basically all of the characters have, over the course of the first 2 sessions, become aware that a random force compels them to take dumb courses of action instead of taking the most rational course of action. So my character is actually just trying to escape so he can go home to his family

If you've ever read Redshirts, its a similar sort of scenario. As a result, the players end up having to hunt down the characters in order to take control of them and there are numerous ways for the characters to escape the plot.
Intentionally injuring themselves in a town so they get to stay behind. Intentionally getting lost. Waiting for someone to take a pee-break and then running for the hills. That sort of thing.

The game rules are basically a mix of basic DnD and Everyone is John. This being our first outing I'd say things have been a bit clunky but we've gotten more used to it as we've progressed. I think we might start over again, now that we have a better idea of what works.

Because she wants to find another battle, she like to get in fights, to beat up people and get beaten up.

She's your standard "cannot function correctly outside of battle" kinda gal.

Also because she wants to keep following the party and likes them quite a bit, even if she'll never tell them.

Why not?
Mother married an orc chieftain and lived happily in his harem. Half-orc goes on adventuring in quest for blood and glory, to prove that he's a true badass worthy of being a next chief.

bomp

He's a physical manifestation of Dedication. In part, he soldiers on because it's simply in his nature. He can't not try.

As for motivations; in life he sacrificed himself to save his people from total extinction. In death he has been tasked to save them again from their resurgent enemy, and so he will.

Harems are pretty magical realm.

Learn shit and explore places and get rich while doing it.

One of the other ones was much more fun: Learn about his heritage and get the spirit of his great-great-great-something-grandfather to quit freaking yelling at him.

Oh, hey, Luingar. Isn't your character technically so far away from us that we'll never find each other in a practical timescale?

Oh, wait, I mean Kiogen.

Family Business. Dad was an adventurer. Mom was an adventurer. Traveled around with them as a little kid and got left off at various nearby allies houses while they were off fighting the local night terror or bandit camp or whatever.

You don't really have many options when your parents attempts to teach you things not related to survival, fighting and contract negotiating are half-assed at best.

She was the world's thinnest NEET after giving up on life, thinking her soul was doomed by the nature of her birth.

Then her parents kicked her out. She was in her 30's, with magic in her blood but no reason to live.

What else was there left to do?

so basically a zombie Liberty Prime?

Not playing in a game now, so here's the primary antagonist of the game I'm running.

Because Europe has been at war for too long, and it's all the damn fault of the Habsburgs. One more push, and one more great war, and they'll collapse under their own bloated weight. Then, there can finally be peace. The Thirty Years War didn't go far enough to break them, but this Poland incident could possibly spark the war again. Once the Habsburgs are gone, there will be room for a real ruler to take the reigns of Europe. One God, one Faith, one Sun King.

The giant manor he's been promised by Louis XIV doesn't hurt.

>What else was there left to do?
I dunno, kill herself?

I can't reveal everything because I'm not sure if any of the other players browse Veeky Forums or not. motivations are to keep everything from being fucked up, and to keep the party getting stronger
As for why, it's the fate of the world (and my almost-dead ass) that'll be fixed if we can get the job done

That's more magical realm than the one you're complaining about.

>Oh, hey, Luingar
>Kiogen
You got the wrong guy, buddy. I don't know those characters.

More of an almost-saint than a propaganda-spouting war machine, but not too far off. He was a knight so totally devoted to the continuation of his people that the elf god decided to call him back from death so he could smite more greenskins.

To make enough money to get his litle sister on a good school away from the barrens and their drunken Mom and despicable Father.

Also he wants to build a base on a containerfrighter, to have an offshore Runner paradise. And there is allways the need to build a badass Mech

The BBEG, who is currently trying to unmake creation, owes him money.

I have essentially the same Tiefling character in two different campaigns. Both of them were the love child of an illicit paladin relationship and abandoned shortly after birth, but the finer circumstances lead to them having two entirely different personalities.

In one, his mother bartered him with a fiend for power, and he was raised by that demon in the nether realm. Now he's a dickass hedonistic and sadistic Warlock trying to find his mother so that he can kill her with the same powers she gave him away to get, for both revenge and the delicious irony of the act itself.

In the other, he was merely left at an orphanage, where a stranger standing up for him when he was being wrongly accused caused him to aspire to help others in the same way. He's now a pacifist lawyer Bard who wants to learn the truth of things and help innocents wherever he can.

Wants to save his sisters soul from the demon that wants to take it.
Gave sister to a convent that should protect from the demon for a while, in the mean time I hunt down the warlock that used my sister as a barganing chip.
Either gonna have to kill the demon or give the warlock to the demon.

The promise lasted until he no longer knew the way home, and he can't speak or write.

My last character was a warforged warblade, a designed soldier from a long ago war. But he was never activated and ended up buried in the ruins.

When the party found him and turned him on, all he knew was how to fight, so he fights to find out his purpose in life and to find out where his creators went.

>Pic unrelated