For the past two years I’ve been GMing a bunch of Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu and Cthulhu Eternal. Cthulhu Eternal is a free OGL-based “clone” of DG and CoC. You can grab it for free here (1).
One of my favorite parts is how Motivations and Disorders work in this system. You can have up to five Motivations. They are gradually replaced by Disorders, which you gain when you hit a Breaking Point. Your character is ground away by Mythos corruption. Neato.
Motivations dictate how your character should act in given situations. Mechanically, however, they don’t do much. If you act on a Motivation, the GM may grant you a +1 WP for a night’s rest. Meh, tbh. I think Motivations should do more than that. There isn’t really an incentive to follow them. For example, in Blades in the Dark, you gain XP by giving in to your Trauma and Vice. It pushes the games into “interesting” stories.
Motivations Custom Rule
For my Romanian Mythos playtest mini-campaign I merged the Hit My Flag mechanic for Dungeon World (here) with the re-roll mechanic from CoC’s Pushed Rolls, and brought it into Cthulhu Eternal.
The rule was as follows:
At character creation:
- choose up to five Motivations
- one Motivation is your central Motivation, a Flag
- this should be an actionable, specific behavior or emotional trigger
- examples here
During the game
- if another Character pushes you to act based on that Flag, you both gain a re-roll
- the action should be dangerous, rash, or against your better judgment.
- This represents your character giving in to their flaw or emotions. We all know the moments in a movie or a book where we, as the readers or watcher, know very well the character is stupid for opening that door. Unfortunately, the character is simply compelled by their curiosity, naivety, or thirst for the truth. We wouldn’t have much of an interesting story without people sometimes acting stupidly
- you may keep the re-roll for later
- you may only have one re-roll (you cannot hoard them)
Why I like it
- it gives you a way to interact with the other characters/players
- it motivates you to listen to other’s character intros (Write down their Flags!)
- it pushes you into a specific direction when you don’t know what your character would do with that dangerous ritual they just discovered
- Player A: “Since you’re Vengeful, you should cast this ritual to get revenge at back-stabbing Tom at the office”
- Player B: “Oh yes! Perfect!”
- GM: You both gain a re-roll.
Here’s a PDF of the above, along with a list of Flags.
That’s all I have.
What are your favorite mechanics for Motivations or Goals?
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