I think starting a bakery is just a great example of bad goal: it doesn't fit into any category because it's not specific enough. Ask yourself what you should do to start a bakery and here you'll find a plethora of goals: maybe, you need to "defeat" a competitor? Then it's "defeat an enemy". Maybe you need to acquire some tools and resources? "Find a person or item". Learn how to bake yourself? "Learn how to do something". The goal of "starting a bakery" is akin to a goal of "becoming an adventurer"-it's fine to determine the direction your going towards, but it doesn't contain any metric by which you can measure your success.
Weirdly enough my character started with goal 1, transitioned into goal 4, and has recently transitioned into goal 2. For context, my character was originally looking for their childhood friend who they had heard rumors that led them to believe that friend was kidnapped by a cult. The character finds out, after some infiltration, that no, the friend seemed to have some leadership role actually. This is how they transitioned into wanting to figure out the truth. Still looking for the friend but now needing to hear directly from that friend on the circumstances that led to this. Briefly did have to do goal 6 to convince said friend to make their security back off so we could talk but that didn’t take too long. Had that conversation and learned a lot. In particular my character learned that their friend had been very hurt by someone else in the cult, a mentor they were placed in the care of. Hearing this, my character then transitioned into goal 2, as they took up the mission from their childhood friend to off that person in the cult. And now we are sorta transitioning into goal 7 as we figure out how to deal with the factions, the cult, and all the loyalties we have acquired along the journey. Oh! And number 3 is in play for my character too since my character accidentally killed their childhood friend’s current lover before they realized who that person was (to be fair, she was also trying to kill my character and party members). So now my character is trying to make sure their childhood friend doesn’t find out before they acquire the needed components for a true resurrection spell (yes it was that bad a death) and gain the assistance of a powerful enough cleric/druid to cast said spell. So yeah, a ton of these things in play. I dare say that even 5 is in play to some degree. I like adding layers of reasons and goals for a character to follow. That way there is always something to lean on and frankly motivate them to keep moving along the adventure.
Looking at this and thinking how my character has multiple of those combined (3, 4, 5, 7) He is Haregon artificer cursed with lycanthropy bullyed by everyone except by his family on his isolated hometown proceeds to leave die shadder is soul comes back to life proceeds to get remove curse it finally works but instead of removing curse he gets more curses and memory back and apparently he as ties to Shadowfel. Took a while to get to the needy greedy but from a simple "get away from home bc he wasnt welcome for being different" came all of this i m so hooked to this character now i count the seconds for the next session
This was great! I'm working on a character for a new upcoming campaign, and multiple of my character's motivations fit these descriptions. Quite helpful to think about!
if you dont consider "find a cure" as "find an item" there would be 8 char goals. Finding a cure for smth is my favourite char motivation. But it needs to be done right for example it should not be an illness that will kill the PC within a week. But an illness that will burst out in a couple of years and thats why the PC went travelling and exploring in the first place. It also adds some really nice roleplay potential because your char could become desperate, do with that whatever you want
Aw man this is wonderful! I don't even play D&D, I do my RP on WoW and my character is just about to go through some serious transformation which I wasn't sure what to have their goal be afterwards (the transformation has nothing to do with previous goal, previous goal was a great thing to have to incentivize doing more stuff and push towards more RP!) but now I have ideas! Thank you for this great video! ^^
The first character I ever played that wasn't just a stat block had two very simple goals. 1) Get richer and more magically powerful than his father 2) go back home and prove it to him. He totally aced that first one, becoming a "king" (it was just one city, and they had a senate) and demigod of chaos, darkness and fire (good lawd, the shenanigans). By that time, though, he didn't much care to rub it in, so number 2 never happened. Character growth and all that. I still do wish I could've made it back to kill his half brother, though, while he was still a mortal
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"Start a bakery", I was thinking about that for my next character as I was watching the video, he is reading my mind 😂
Starting bakery is probably a series of "Learn how to do something new." Then RUNNING the bakery is "Navigating a new situation."
I think starting a bakery is just a great example of bad goal: it doesn't fit into any category because it's not specific enough. Ask yourself what you should do to start a bakery and here you'll find a plethora of goals: maybe, you need to "defeat" a competitor? Then it's "defeat an enemy". Maybe you need to acquire some tools and resources? "Find a person or item". Learn how to bake yourself? "Learn how to do something".
The goal of "starting a bakery" is akin to a goal of "becoming an adventurer"-it's fine to determine the direction your going towards, but it doesn't contain any metric by which you can measure your success.
I think you nailed it!
@@CooperAATE thanks!
My Wizard is working to update a bestiary of the creatures of the land. A DnD Pokedex, if you will.
Love these Videos!!! Definitely sending this to my players.
Weirdly enough my character started with goal 1, transitioned into goal 4, and has recently transitioned into goal 2. For context, my character was originally looking for their childhood friend who they had heard rumors that led them to believe that friend was kidnapped by a cult. The character finds out, after some infiltration, that no, the friend seemed to have some leadership role actually. This is how they transitioned into wanting to figure out the truth. Still looking for the friend but now needing to hear directly from that friend on the circumstances that led to this. Briefly did have to do goal 6 to convince said friend to make their security back off so we could talk but that didn’t take too long. Had that conversation and learned a lot. In particular my character learned that their friend had been very hurt by someone else in the cult, a mentor they were placed in the care of. Hearing this, my character then transitioned into goal 2, as they took up the mission from their childhood friend to off that person in the cult. And now we are sorta transitioning into goal 7 as we figure out how to deal with the factions, the cult, and all the loyalties we have acquired along the journey. Oh! And number 3 is in play for my character too since my character accidentally killed their childhood friend’s current lover before they realized who that person was (to be fair, she was also trying to kill my character and party members). So now my character is trying to make sure their childhood friend doesn’t find out before they acquire the needed components for a true resurrection spell (yes it was that bad a death) and gain the assistance of a powerful enough cleric/druid to cast said spell. So yeah, a ton of these things in play. I dare say that even 5 is in play to some degree. I like adding layers of reasons and goals for a character to follow. That way there is always something to lean on and frankly motivate them to keep moving along the adventure.
Looking at this and thinking how my character has multiple of those combined (3, 4, 5, 7)
He is Haregon artificer cursed with lycanthropy bullyed by everyone except by his family on his isolated hometown proceeds to leave die shadder is soul comes back to life proceeds to get remove curse it finally works but instead of removing curse he gets more curses and memory back and apparently he as ties to Shadowfel.
Took a while to get to the needy greedy but from a simple "get away from home bc he wasnt welcome for being different" came all of this i m so hooked to this character now i count the seconds for the next session
This was great! I'm working on a character for a new upcoming campaign, and multiple of my character's motivations fit these descriptions. Quite helpful to think about!
I’ve always had a bit of struggle with thinking of goals. Thanks for this video! 🙌
if you dont consider "find a cure" as "find an item" there would be 8 char goals. Finding a cure for smth is my favourite char motivation. But it needs to be done right for example it should not be an illness that will kill the PC within a week. But an illness that will burst out in a couple of years and thats why the PC went travelling and exploring in the first place. It also adds some really nice roleplay potential because your char could become desperate, do with that whatever you want
Aw man this is wonderful!
I don't even play D&D, I do my RP on WoW and my character is just about to go through some serious transformation which I wasn't sure what to have their goal be afterwards (the transformation has nothing to do with previous goal, previous goal was a great thing to have to incentivize doing more stuff and push towards more RP!) but now I have ideas!
Thank you for this great video! ^^
Awesome stuff, I think these goals can also apply to any character in any piece of fiction
The first character I ever played that wasn't just a stat block had two very simple goals. 1) Get richer and more magically powerful than his father 2) go back home and prove it to him. He totally aced that first one, becoming a "king" (it was just one city, and they had a senate) and demigod of chaos, darkness and fire (good lawd, the shenanigans). By that time, though, he didn't much care to rub it in, so number 2 never happened. Character growth and all that. I still do wish I could've made it back to kill his half brother, though, while he was still a mortal
PC Goal: Remove curse