Every character has something they’re devoted to, even if it’s just themselves. In our All for One campaign, Martin is devoted to his God… and revenge. In our Lamentations in Prussia campaign, Juergen was also devoted to his God, albeit in a much stranger way.

Although it’s not explicitly stated and we never made it a prerequisite of play, in our Circle of Hands campaign, the Circle Knights seem to be devoted to putting things right, or at least right as they defined it in any given moment. They couldn’t just ride away and leave things alone. In our alien campaign, the marines were certainly devoted to each other.

Sometimes a character starts out with a fairly obvious devotion, and sometimes it just shows up. Sometimes we find them questioning those devotions when circumstances force them to. That can be really interesting. Terrence McSweeney started out being quite devoted to exposing the truth, and as his world fell apart, nothing made sense any longer. He struggled to figure out what to be devoted to without much success.

It’s been my experience that once a character’s devotions become obvious, it’s very instinctive to determine how they would act in any given situation, even if it turns out they aren’t really sure what to be devoted to. It’s not that different than how we act. When you take a good look at yourself, you can usually figure out why you do what you do.

The same thing holds true with our characters. Just like in real life, sometimes we know what the devotions are and act accordingly. Sometimes we only figure out what we or our characters are devoted to by examining their actions.

Pretty cool, eh?