Musical Inspiration Challenge 2! Part 6. Why should the players care?

City of Lagoons by Hawkwind

Player investment or their ‘buy in’ is one of the most important things in designing an adventure. Prepared adventures, which we are kinda sorta emulating with our thought experiment, even more so.

In a normal campaign the DM can see what the drives and aims of his player group are, and can tailor them. In a way, there is too much tailoring in the modern DM meta.

Without a reasonable buy in, the players are disinterested. Disinterested players are not interested. This is a tautology, but it’s important. If they are not interested, they don’t care about NPCs, or plots, or who that guy speaking riddles in room 34 in the cage is.  It is important to realize however that most players want their characters to be invested and involved, for the most part they want in on the adventure, but can be kept out.

City of Lagoons, our song by the progressive rock mainstay Hawkwind, is an instrumental. I don’t have lyrics to work with on this one, but even without lyrics, the song has a title, and a feel that arises from listening to its music. I’ve not the skills to go into a specific exegesis on the way the notes are conveyed, or how the slow 2/4s time presents the sensation of moving through a calm and mellow environment.

How can something so mellow be a good buy in? By being mellow.

Very frequently, buy in’s feel like conscription orders. “You were sent by the pathfinder society,” or “you were obliged to come to..” loom heavily. In reality, the best buy ins, are low key ones that are spread wide, at least when there isn’t a larger master plot, or aims of players to generate them.

Now, enough of me beating around. The song is indeed very mellow, and has a slow low key sensation to it. It summons up images to me, at least, of walking through a high class area at night, surrounded by fountains and lakes, or alternatively, of slowly coursing down a canal like in Venice, while the world goes about its active but mundane activities around me.

We’ve already established our antagonist slightly as an individual who is doing terrible acts to ‘prove’ that no one is the final arbiter over him, or that he is alone. And we established with ‘Freaks of Nature” that we have a situation of people who are limited but still strong, and in fact gain strength through their infirmaries.. So to couple this with the concept of calmness.. We have several options for why players should care.

Namely, to keep things quiet, to retain the calm and serene niceness of the place. Heroes in many settings are expressly, or implicitly, the defenders of civilization. Keeping things orderly. Safe. Well maintained. Keeping the pathways clear and the world safe from the terrors outside, and inside.

So perhaps the clearest path for player motivation here is simply the idea of doing good to keep the ‘home’ or ‘city’ safe and sound. To watch out for those who might be harmed who have no way of defending themselves.

This helps a bit with something else. I think I’m going to abandon the concept of a freak show or circus and instead make it about an old folks home.  This is something that even the meaner cusses in the party might be motivated by, something preying on the old and infirm. Everyone gets old eventually, after all. Now we can also motivate them with money or with pity, but the primary aim of ‘don’t mess with old folks’ or better  old adventurers makes this much more involved for the players. Maybe we could work in a mentor, or an old inspiration to the players.

They should care, or be involved because one day they too will be old and might need someone to bail them out.

Seems to work for me.