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FOMO (fear of missing out) and Why characters never retire.



I read an analysis of Kafka’s Castle, I can't remember where. Either way, I'm pretty sure the author says that the characters never reach the castle, so they miss or idealize a place that they will never be, no matter which goals they achieve or things they do. 

What’s your character's objective? Why do they go on journeys? Some TTRPGs have this objective very clear, like in Electric Bastionland, they have a debt, and have to run from, or solve it (Yeah, I know that’s a really simplistic analysis of it). If the characters live in a post apocalyptic world, they have to survive, or to find a way to continue living. 

In vanilla games or games made for long campaigns, in the OSR vision, they are looters that search for gold and glory. Oh, gold and glory doesn't mean anything for the players, so my theory is that they continue adventuring because of FOMO. Either that, or the characters are puppets of the players' will, because characters' objectives do not mean anything for the players. 

Let's assume it is FOMO, things in the world continue happening, incredible, not always evil, things are happening. Players are  very curious about it, they have an exploration spirit that has been developed through years. The incredible power of these new events and the chance to learn about it, to manipulate or even master it, can, perhaps, instill the fear of missing this power, or to master it and its influence. 

Characters are players’ puppets, that's one of the things about TTRPGs. I think players should align with the characters’ objectives, so that it  does not become the character’s Kafka´s Castle. I am not saying that you have to write a huge background, all I am asking is for you to have some empathy with your characters, the paradox of real roleplay (that's another great topic for a blog post). 

In this blog I am trying to build a setting called Hollow Earth, you can check it in older posts. And with it, to build something like a procedural tool, to align objectives of characters and players. 

A simple one should be the XP reward attached to the characters’ objectives and some steps for it. Exploration, FOMO, and mastering elder (weird tech) powers, should be some of them. And, of course, a few words for the GM, advice for adventures and sessions with this bias. Adventure generation tables correlated with these choices, something like a flowchart of these tables. 

Stay tuned my friends, more yet to come, maybe these crazy charts and tables. 

And thanks C.A. Berlitz for editing this and Guax, for the incredible art! 

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