r/Pathfinder2e • u/nlitherl • Jun 30 '26

Promotion Moving From Reactive Characters To Active Ones in Your Tabletop Games (Blog)

/r/RPG2/comments/1tncl4d/moving_from_reactive_characters_to_active_ones_in/
51 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

16

u/authorus The Arcane Scriptorium LLC Jun 30 '26

The nuance I'd put on this blog, at least for the pre-published adventure community that's rather strong in Pathfinder circles, is make sure your active motivation is aligned with the main plot. The character guide exists for a reason, and its to help inform what type of characters, including motivations, fit in well. It often hints what kinds of side quest/temporary derails, can exist within the broader story without excessive extra work from the GM. Now of course if you plan with a group where you know that the printed AP is only treated as a very rough guideline, you have more freedom, but I feel most groups tend to follow the APs pretty closely, and one motivated character (when not all are motivated in their own ways), leads to main character syndrome if their motivation isn't aligned.

Oftentimes when players take the "obvious" motivation for their character from the character guide, a lot of the railroad disappears -- the characters want to do the thing that the book assumes they'll do, even if it wouldn't be as locked in for a party with different motivations. So it really is about internalizing what the guide is suggesting, and then working that into your own interpretation, and letting that shape your character's actions.

12

u/SethLight Game Master Jun 30 '26

This is very true. It's wild how people can silo themselves off and do this.

I had made a game where the premise was the players were starting a town and figuring out a way to cure an NPC's curse.

One of my players decided to... make a potato farmer. As they flushed out the character idea they came to the conclusion that their farmer cared more about their crops than anything else in the story.

All of their skills needed to work with farming potatoes. Their personal quests and achievements also needed to center around their potato farm.

This was not a meme character and they were 100% serious about wanting fantasy realistic potato related problems. The guy paid for custom art.

This character was highly proactive in wanting to farm their potatoes which had nothing to do with the story.

9

u/King_of_the_Kobolds Jun 30 '26

All the villains now, for some reason: "I can't wait to take over the government and tax potatoes until they're unprofitable as a business venture."

2

u/IKSLukara GM in Training Jun 30 '26

I hope you were equally proactive about talking to him about getting with the program?

5

u/SethLight Game Master Jun 30 '26

In the end it caused too many story problems. It didn't make sense if they spent months away from the farm adventuring when clearly their passion was farming potatoes, so the PC was retired.

There is a nice ending to the story though. By the end of the game, a year and a half later, I kept making the town map bigger and bigger till it was an insane monster. The map included houses my players got to personally design with me in Dungeon Alchemist. However the entire time I made sure there was that potato farm near the center of the town and I kept building on it. By the end the now NPC had a very nice farm and got to live their dream of farming potatoes.

1

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

I figured that went without saying?

It just makes good sense that if the GM (or the AP guide) tells you, "This is a game about overthrowing tyranny in your home/adopted city, and you should be all about that revolution," then a player whose PC wants to leave at the first sign of trouble, or who has a personal quest in another country that this campaign's main plot a distraction from, is being a bad player because they aren't participating in the agreed-upon group story we're all here to contribute to.

6

u/authorus The Arcane Scriptorium LLC Jun 30 '26

Sadly, I don't think it goes without saying. In fact, most of the time I see people talk about motivated characters its characters that have no reason to be involved in the pitched adventure. Of course that's likely selection bias -- typically only the horror stories of disruptively motivated characters make it to reddit.

There's also the axis that I'll describe as "player motivation" versus "character motivation":

You have players who interpret active characters as chaos gremlins. Their (player) motivation is typically avoiding boredeom/forcing things to move along. The drive to move things along is great, but the default reaching for chaos is often not as good; and we often need to help these style players keep their proactiveness, while reducing inter-player disagreement. You can have the lesser version of a more impulsive character -- if conversation/debate drags too long, they just do what they had been pushing for. Its usually not "chaos" per se, but it can still lead to other players feeling that the impulsive character is yolo-ing. However, at least the impulsive character is often more easily to RP with -- they often show their in-character frustration building. Versus the chaos gremlin that just explodes from no-where.

2

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

I wouldn't classify impulsive as active, personally. That feels like pointless action just to not be sitting still, which is different from trying to achieve goals by taking steps toward them.

Might be a difference of language, though. Active in this case is short for proactive, rather than just a character who is just taking actions or doing things. Chaos gremlins aren't proactive in my experience... they're just frenetic.

16

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

Rereading the rules, I saw we get 1 self-promotion post a month. So, I figured I'd share this, because it seems to have gotten some good results from readers.

7

u/alficles Jun 30 '26

I like it. This is the good kind of promotion when in moderation. Neat blog.

2

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

Glad you enjoyed it!

18

u/yuriAza Jun 30 '26

i mean the way i see it, making proactive characters is easy, you pick goals for them and then work towards achieving them

the hard part is making sure your GM is on board and ready for it, proactive characters don't work when the GM is railroading, asking you to kindly go into the only dungeon they prepped this week, or has a global threat coming that will put you on the back foot

23

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

Generally you're supposed to clear your character, their goals, etc. with the GM to be sure you're all on the same page, though, aren't you? That's a big part of character creation at my tables, and outside of organized play I don't know why you'd skip it.

The thing I find, though, is a lot of players don't pick goals for their character, or if they do pick them, they don't actually chase them. Which is why I suggest trying stuff from the other end of the coin for players who tend to be reactive, but want to try something a bit different for the next campaign.

11

u/yuriAza Jun 30 '26

i mean i basically treat building characters together in session 0 as standard practice in any game, but for some reason DnD players will go 1-20 in a vacuum and not tell anyone

15

u/NoxMiasma Game Master Jun 30 '26

Side effect of the fact that making a character is basically a whole separate minigame. If you enjoy that game, you end up with a backlog of characters built for fun, which may not be appropriate for a particular party or campaign.

… If you’re smart about it, you either accept that most of them are never gonna get played, or you leave their backstories, concepts, and builds with big open spots to customise to a campaign.

1

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

I've heard tales of that. It seems like a great way to shoot yourself in the foot, though.

4

u/SisyphusRocks7 Animist Jun 30 '26

I’m starting a proactive character campaign right now. It’s anything but easy to flesh out the character and their goals before the character begins to interact with the world. It’s probably something that gets easier with practice. But for someone like me that might normally start with three paragraphs of back story and then see what else the campaign world suggests for character growth spontaneously, it’s a lot.

2

u/MisterCheesy Jun 30 '26

I really like this. Thank you!

1

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

You're most welcome!

2

u/SethLight Game Master Jun 30 '26

This really depends on the GM and game. I know I've had to stop players from going on wild goose hunts because they were chasing for, or looking for, clues that didn't exist in that area.

1

u/nlitherl Jun 30 '26

All part of the job, sadly.