RPGaDay 2025 #6 Motive

 What drives a character to adventure?

I think that we've sanitized the idea of "adventure" in gaming. Historically speaking, "adventurers" have been troublemakers. Mercenaries and pirates. Very often they left their homes to go to war and then never returned once the war was over. The biker culture that got its start in the US after WWII is another example.

The idea of "wandering adventurers" as a sort of "hero for hire" is a modern invention presumably to accommodate gaming. While early gamers were rather mercenary, as encouraged by the amounts of XP offered for treasure recovery, with the rightness of their actions perhaps a secondary concern.

It's also possibly a matter of destiny, though the character is certainly allowed to have an opinion of what they're destined to do.