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Author Topic: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters  (Read 4045 times)

Hamish Grayson

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It is important to me that my characters be both believable and exciting. I want them to feel human, to be real – but I want other players to sympathize with them and be interested in their stories.  With this goal in mind I have been researching character development techniques and I would like to share with you my findings. 

The three primary elements for developing a character are goals, motivations and conflicts.  Though not covered as much in this guide, but also very important are the critical events from your character’s past, and their significant relationships with other characters.

Goals: These are the things your characters must have or do.

Motivation: Why these things are so important.

Conflict: Internal and external obstacles preventing the character from reaching his or her goals.

Critical events: events that have changed the character's life.  The details probably don't matter, only the event and how it affected the character.

Significant Relationships: Family, friends, colleagues, associates, and minions; people who can be kidnapped or betray them, because these are the things that make for interesting plots.

GOALS

Goals give you character something to fight for – they give your character momentum.  Without goals your characters will wander aimlessly, not really knowing what they want or how to get it. Goals establish personality, sympathy, and appeal in a character.  Your character needs something to strive for, which he must prove himself worthy of. This goal should not be easily attained, but rather earned through choices made under pressure or possibly through change on the part of the character. The goal your character starts out with may change as your character grows.

Both long-term and short-term goals are important. Long-term goals focus on dreams, aspirations, and ultimate purpose in life. They are the carrot dangling on the end of the stick that the character is always pursuing. They are omnipresent, regardless of what else happens in the story.

Short-term goals are the immediate needs that must be met on the way to accomplishing the long-term goal.  Short-term goals can be used to create inner conflict or frustration and may also be used to cause changes in long term goals.

MOTIVATION

What are motivations?

Motivation is the reason achieving his or her goals are so important to your character.  For example some of your character’s goals might be: the desire to regain control of the family business, or a need earn find a cure for a disease.  Motivations for that could be: Your character wants to regain control of the family business because he made a deathbed promise to her father or he needs to discover a cure for because brother is dying from the disease. 

Why are motivations important?

Motivation drives action and creates a conflict that moves the story.  For example if your character is motivated by greed, then pulling him into a story by offering him money is an easy option.

The best motivations are both internal and external and create strong emotional responses.  They generate conflict within the character, and also generate conflict with other characters.

Every action, every decision, every choice made by characters should be motivated and those motivations should be consistent with the character's personality and goals. 
   
Strong motivating factors:

1.   Guilt: his/her carelessness/neglect/absence/ presence/mistake/etc. caused something bad to happen that the character carries around with them (emotional baggage)
2.   Need: his/her survival, or the survival of someone they love or are responsible for depends on character acting in certain ways
3.   Protection: someone else will be affected by their actions
4.   Defense: they must hide behind an exterior persona, act in certain ways, to keep from being hurt
5.   Danger: consequences of action may be disastrous if the character makes the slightest mistake
6.   Revenge: character must get even for wrongs done in the past (revenge is good against either primary or secondary characters)
7.   Any other emotionally strong factor that can be used dramatically

Another key thing here is that motivations that have only recently come to the fore can be a real advantage in an arc because they can provide an ideal way of drawing a disparate group together.
It should also be noted that motivations can be broken down further to the values behind them which can make for interesting internal conflict when two of your character’s values are in opposition.

CONFLICT :

Conflict is a seemingly insurmountable "something", which will hinder your character from attaining his or her goal; "something" which will force them to earn that goal; "something" which will force difficult choices.   You can develop your character’s background pretty well with just goals and motivations – but to get great role-play out of them you need to set them up against a conflict.

Conflict exists on two levels: internal and external.   Internal conflict is the battle between what the character wants to do and what the character must do or as mentioned above – his or her values.  Because it is human nature to avoid difficult or unpleasant situations characters should have a strong reason (motivation) to stay in a situation they would rather avoid.

External conflict is the external problem that is standing in the way of the character and his or her goals.  Goals must be so strong they cannot be abandoned in the face of this situation.  Some of the greatest role playing often happens when two characters or groups of characters goals are in direct confrontation with each other.

To be effective, external situations must affect the goals, motivations, and emotions of the characters. Otherwise, if the characters are merely inconvenienced by them, but go on about their business without the situations having a severe, emotional impact on their lives, they are events, not conflicts. And remember, if your characters aren't in a situation they want to avoid, there is no conflict, and no story.
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Hamish Grayson

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Re: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters
« Reply #1 on: 21 Apr 2010, 10:32 »

Below is a rough, and uncompleted character sheet, to help you get an Idea of how it works.

Character:  Hamish Grayson

Goals:
Long-term Goals:
• Promote institutions that reinforce the social contract, create interest in the Caldari heritage and decrease the influence of outside cultures.
• Ensure that the Caldari state can defend it’s self against any power in the cluster.


Short-term Goals:
• Learn the “forms” of capsule combat, until the proper techniques of pod-combat become second nature. Space warfare as it applies to the pod pilot must become second nature to Hamish before he can begin to understand how maneuver warfare can be applied. 
o Gain combat experience either through actual combat or via the simulator(singularity).
o Build up a variety of powerful ships which allow Hamish flexibility on the battle field and a chance to master the full range of Capsuleer combat.

•Write political essays and circulate them among the Caldari pod pilot community. (and probably avoiding IGS).

•Create a medium for traditional Caldari works of art to be published and sponsor art competitions.

•Build connections and influence through out the capsuleer community via business arrangements, tea ceremonies, political essays Etc.

•Find the full potential of the capsuleer warrior by applying maneuver warfare principals to that field – so that the State will have the best trained fighters, and the most competent military leaders, tacticians and strategists.

•Rejuvenate the State’s economy especially in low-security areas. Move state loyal capsuleer industrial corporations into low sec and help them prosper in order to stimulate the economy.

•Help state loyal research and development corporations prosper, so that State loyalist have access to the best weapons in the cluster. Non-military applications would also help stimulate the economy, and boost the standard of living within the state.

Motivations:
• Desire to protect the Caldari way of life from both foreign and domestic influences.

• Due to a combination of a population explosion and influence from outside cultures the social contract is weakening and the traditional Caldari norms and values are fading. For example: executives, influenced by outside cultures make choices based on greed rather than the needs of their constituents. As those very same individualist ideas spread to the working class they are less willing to make sacrifices for the good of the whole – especially when they see that their bosses don’t always have their best interest at heart anymore.




Critical Events:

• Gaining his pod license and becoming a trans/post human via skill books and implants.
o Affect it had on his goals and motivations :   Caused him to have realize how important a capsuleer and capsuleer related technology would be in defending the State > It’s the next stage of warfare, the old tactics and techniques are now moot and new ones based on maneuver warfare should be developed for the State.

• Being Educated mostly by tutors and raised on stories of honor.
-Affect it had on his goals and motivations: Belives in an idealized vision of the state and what a Caldari warrior should be and naively  holds himself to that standard.

•Trained in Sword technique under a Intaki blade master as a child/teenager.
-Affect it had on his goals and motivations: The was his first introduction to the concepts of maneuver warfare.  It also introduced him to ideas an concepts of the Intaki culture.

• In YC108 The Caldari State slides into a recession due to a collapse of the Amarrian market.  In order to deal with the dropping profit margins, former Kaalakiota CEO Haatakan Oiritsuu breaks with Kaalakiota core managment concepts by instituting mass layoffs and pay cuts.
- Affect it had on his goals and motivations: From this time and up until the the Rise of Heth Hamish, who is a venture capitalist outside of the pod, had been buying up failing corporations and restoring them using the traditional Kaalakiota management methods.   He had been targeting corporations that were known for mistreating employees.   His hope was that Kaalakiota executives will become curious about what makes his remodeled companies so profitable when others in that same sector are going bankrupt. His motivation in this is not to be altruistic per-se, but because he believes it is truly a superior way of doing business and better run megacorps mean a stronger State.

- Secondary affect: Hamish doesn't think the State should rely of foreign markets and is looking for way to keep the State's economy from becoming even more entangled with the Amarrians.  Heth and the CEP accepting the loan from the Empress made him want to pull his hair out.  This debt to the Amarrians must be re-payed ASAP.     This is why Black Rise is so important to him, the untapped resources in the region represent a way to strengthen the Caldari economy via minerals/bullion and of course more jobs without having to trade directly with a foreign empire.



Significant Relationships

Faimly:
Large extended family, wife, children and possibly grandchildren

Friends
•Buddy from his days in the Home Guard, now an instructor teaching the application of the strategic theories.
• Dex Nederland

Mentor
• Intaki Idama, also a certified blade master (of the Caldari heritage) and Retired Chaplin of the Mordu’s Legion and full fledge state citizen. Possibly his father in law.
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Misan

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Re: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters
« Reply #2 on: 21 Apr 2010, 11:01 »

Thanks for posting this up Hamish, I know it helped me a lot when I was starting out. I think I need to actually go and have a look over Misan's sheet, could use some updating...
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Laerise [PIE]

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Re: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters
« Reply #3 on: 21 Apr 2010, 12:12 »

Quote from: Laerise [PIE

Character:  Laerise

Goals:
Long-term Goals:
• Help reclaim what is rightfully the empires, and in extention her families, property in the republic.
• Destroy every last bit of minmatar culture except for the remnants of the Nefantar, which she considers to be mostly of entertainment value, much like a zoo.
• Ensure the prosperity and safety of her family.


Short-term Goals:
• Help form PIE's reaction forces, train the medium ranks and watch the wisdom spread from the top to the bottom.

• Keep a close eye on her propery to shield it from harm, especially Shern.

• Work to undermine the power of any pro-king factions to ensure that the current reunification efforts make progress.

• Consolidate her position in the loyalist capsuleer community.

• Help pacify the less secure regions of the empire, namely amarr lowsec and providence, by force of arms.

• Raise enough support to be finally able to spend more time at home with her young family than just the bare minimum time reccomended by her psychatrist.

• To support any corporations with a conservative code and true allegiance to the empire through use of her influence inside that faction, by offering training and advice and also by allocation of industrial efforts.

Motivations:
• A burning conviction that only the true faith of the amarrians can help make the world a better and peaceful place to live in.

• The cancerous spread of liberalist, gallentean thoughts and ideals must be stopped, lest the acchievements of countless generations might crumble and vanish in a lifetime. While the empress and her late successors may have softened the traditions to conform more easily to the modern times, tradition still remains one of the fundamental pillars of society and must be honoured.

• The all too recent and illegal attack of the minmatar republics lackeys has cost countless lives and ruined at least as many, be that through the liberation of slaves who have been struck from the path to enlightenment and into criminality, or by the destruction wrought by the attacks and the losses that too many amarrian families had to suffer.


Critical Events:

• Having been tested as capsule compatible.
- Her becoming a pod pilot cause her a major loss in prestige and perceived value in her family. On one hand many a holder would preferr to avoid the political and spiritual complications, and on the other the jealousy of her older brother who would have given anything to command such godlike power by the simplest spark of a thought.

• Military and theological education.
- Having been enrolled to academy in a time of relative peace and increasing liberalism made her into an idealistic, strong willed woman who would gladly lay down her life for a worthy cause, this case namely being peace and prosperity of her motherland.

• A journey to the republic to teath the faith and reclaim peacefully as per the teachings of the late emperor.
-If anything her early journeys to the republic instilled a massive resentment towards the minmatar people who did not quite welcome her with as open arms as she expected. Having to return home  after months of work without any real successes did not help this fact at all.

• The events of YC110
- The final nail in the coffin of her liberal dreams regarding a peaceful reclaiming and settlement of the rift between the minmatar and amarr people.
Where earlier conflicts had remained limited in scale and far from a real threat to her family the elders invasion shattered her last hopes for a time of peace through diplomacy and replaced it with a smouldering hatred and general cynicism towards those who still cling to the liberal school of thought.

• The education and training of Shern, her first pod pilot slave
- Very much a mirror of the events in the empire at large, Laerise' involvement with the verokhior pod pilot Shern has had a significant impact on her convictions.
Her efforts to teach Shern to fit better into the society she had chosen for herself, namely the amarr empire in general and the ammatar mandate in particular, were met with open contempt and rejection.
A last ditch attempt to force her into assimilation through an arranged marriage with a freed kameira ended in a total disaster. The following years saw Shern fleeing from her grasp multiple tiems, just to return to her new home, again and again. Finally, and only through combined efforts with her brother Laerise managed to construct a case (which involved a crate of sacred bricks) against Shern that was severe enough to force her into compensatory slavery.
Since then, and only through time and careful social engineering, the  slave has become less stubborn and more willing to obey whatever is asked of her.

Significant Relationships

Faimly:
A daughter of a very minor noble house she has regular contact to her remaining siblings, most notably her younger sister and various cousins planetside. She chose to marry a commoner out of love, much to the distaste of her family.

Friends
• amongst her colleagues: Mitara Newelle, Ruah Piskonit, Condor Amarr.


A very usefull template you made there, this is a shortened version of my personal scribblings, but it should provide enough to be of entertainment to the public.
« Last Edit: 21 Apr 2010, 12:14 by Laerise [PIE] »
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Silver Night

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Re: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters
« Reply #4 on: 21 Apr 2010, 12:15 »

Be a good thing for people to add to their [character] posts, if they are so inclined.  :D

Hamish Grayson

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Re: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters
« Reply #5 on: 21 Apr 2010, 12:32 »

Thanks for posting this up Hamish, I know it helped me a lot when I was starting out. I think I need to actually go and have a look over Misan's sheet, could use some updating...

I wanted to reply to your PM, but it requires you to do one of those "type the letters you see in the image" things only there wasn't an image  :(
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Silver Night

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Re: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters
« Reply #6 on: 21 Apr 2010, 12:34 »

Thanks for posting this up Hamish, I know it helped me a lot when I was starting out. I think I need to actually go and have a look over Misan's sheet, could use some updating...

I wanted to reply to your PM, but it requires you to do one of those "type the letters you see in the image" things only there wasn't an image  :(

IIRC once you have 5 posts, you don't need to do that for PMs anymore. You should be good to go now.