Tabletop RPGs

A few years back I began running an Honor + Intrigue campaign set in France 1666 (with magic and monsters existing only in the dark corners of the world). This was the first historical low magic game for many of my players, as most had only played D&D or superhero rpgs by this point, so I really wanted to get the players invested in the campaign and the world that was going to be different from what they'd been used to up to this point.

To help with this, after they'd built their characters, I took each player aside and asked them three questions about their plans and ideas for their character:

1. What is something you want your character to get to see / experience in this campaign?

2. What is something you want your character to accomplish in this campaign (a long term goal)?

3. If your character dies, how/why do you want it to happen?

I used the first two responses for every PC to help construct the campaign. One player wanted to visit Venice during Carnival; so I had an adventure that took place there. Another PC was part of a monster-hunting society and wanted the chance to slay a vampire, so I built an adventure around that. Another player wanted to be the strongest person in the world, and kept investing character advancement towards raising his Might, but I also made sure to put plenty of times that his physical strength was put to the test to save the day from collapsing walls, bashing a door down, etc. Another wanted to be reunited with his family who'd been lost during the Thirty Years' War.

The third question, however, is the one I think that really augmented the game for the PCs because it really made them think about their character's ambitions, motives, and what they'd be willing to die for. This got especially dramatic when some of the scenarios seemed to be playing out. Like when a PC said they wanted to die "holding off a large group of enemies single-handedly in a hallway while her allies escaped" there was a point in the campaign where she did try to hold off an entire group of enemies while the other PCs were escaping (but she survived). Another said he'd die to save his betrothed. At the start, the character was single, so this led me to create a love interest that he eventually married.

Another player (who took the Tragic Fate Flaw) said he wanted his character to die needlessly for no good reason. This seems like a pretty weird request by the player, but it really fit this character who was designed to be a tragic figure destined to have a short life. That same player later made a bargain with a demon to "go into the ocean and do not surface for the rest of my life". The player made a new character, their first character became an NPC reassigned to a seemingly safe post away from the war that was going on, and the campaign continued after that (another PC used their influence to make sure he wasn't assigned to the front). Later on, the PCs were on a ship at sea and they had an encounter with that same demon. The group immediately knew something was wrong. When they arrived in port they got a letter that their friend (who was a guard) had been killed during a riot the day he'd found his long lost sister. This tragedy really created a dramatic end to this character that the player had intended from the beginning, but that drama also rocked all the PCs (especially the one who got him assigned to a seemingly safe post away from the war not knowing a riot would break out there).