Step 13: Motivations

Now that your character is mostly fleshed out, you must choose 3 motivations. Motivations are personal aspirations your character pursues. Most of these are long-term and rooted in the character’s ideological beliefs, personal drive, or backstory. Motivations will help your character earn extra Rez Points and cope with mental stress and trauma.

Motivations are listed on your character sheet as a single term or short phrase, along with a + or − symbol to denote whether they support the cause or oppose it. For example, “+Fame” would indicate that your character seeks to become a famous media personality, whereas “−Reclaim Earth” means that your character opposes the goal of reclaiming Earth.

Your first motivation is based on your faction choice, as determined in Step 4. Note this on your sheet as “+[Faction] Interests.” Your other two motivations are based on your character’s personal interests; see the Example Motivations sidebar for ideas.

If you did not choose a faction, simply choose a third personal motivation instead. If you’re not sure what motivations to pick just yet, you can always leave them blank for now and fill them in during gameplay.

Optional: Motivational Goals

Motivations are good for steering your character, but they are very open-ended. To fine-tune the concept, list out a specific short-term goal for each motivation. For example, if your motivation is +Discover Your Past, your goal might be to investigate the habitat where you were re-instantiated with lack a few months after the Fall. If your motivation is +Argonaut Interests, your goal might be to liberate a specific cache of proprietary scientific data for all of transhumanity to use.

If your GM has a detailed campaign idea worked out in advance, you may want to wait and decide on your goals until you have been fully introduced to the setting so you can integrate them within the context of the story arc. For example, if your GM establishes a campaign about the liberation of Mars from hypercorp control, and you have +Mercurial Interests, you first goal might be to connect a mercurial group you support with the Barsoomians and establish common ground.

If your group prefers a more cooperative style of campaign development, motivational goals provide ample material for the GM to construct scenarios around. With this style of play, you may want to pick one motivation as your primary and establish multiple goals in relation to it. These goals can then serve as stepping stones for your character’s personal story arc.

For more interactive motivations, have each player choose one of the goals of another character. When doing so, they should specifically try to construct it in a way that connects it back to their own character. This is a great opportunity to establish shared interests, histories, and backgrounds between player characters.

Motivation Examples

  • Acceptance
  • AGI Personhood
  • Alien Contact
  • Anarchism
  • Autonomy
  • Bioconservatism
  • Create Legacy
  • Creative Expression
  • Discover/Forget Past
  • Education
  • Escape
  • Expand Influence
  • Exploration
  • Fame/Recognition
  • Find a Purpose
  • Find a Tribe
  • Friendly ASI
  • Hedonism
  • Immortality
  • Independence
  • Leadership
  • Locate Lost [Friend/Item/Lover/Relative]
  • Make Art
  • Martian Liberation
  • Morphological Freedom
  • Neurodiversity
  • Open Source
  • Personal Career
  • Personal Improvement
  • Philanthropy
  • Prove Others Wrong
  • Reconnect with Transhumanity
  • Religion
  • Revenge
  • Scientific Discovery
  • Self-Reliance
  • Skill Mastery
  • Socialism
  • Stability
  • Survival
  • Technoprogressivism
  • Thrill-Seeking
  • Transparency
  • Uplift Rights
  • Venusian Sovereignty
  • Wealth