The Drives System

There’s a lot of advice on the internet and on paper for creating compelling characters in Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop RPGs. Give your character a memorable feature or core gimmick. Give them a guiding aesthetic. Give them a backstory with dramatic potential. A lot of this advice is good. But most of it isn’t necessary for creating a character that’s fun for you to play or compelling for the rest of the table.

But there is one piece of advice that is nearly always helpful—even vital—to follow for good roleplay: give your character motivations. Motivations make your job as a player easier because knowing what you want allows you to engage with situations proactively. (Some games tell you what you’re supposed to pursue—like gold or XP; the rest of the time, it’s up to you to choose.) Likewise, motivations make the GM's job easier by clarifying what sorts of situations they can create that your character will naturally engage with.

Crafting a good motivation involves answering two questions:

• What does my character want?
• And why do they want it?

Here's a simple method for creating motivations of this sort. I call it the Drives System.