This post was originally titled ‘Hopes of a Patron’, but that really doesn’t go far enough. Patrons don’t just have a preference for certain events or outcomes. Patrons are driven to achieve their goals, to the point of being defined in part by their objectives.
Each patron has three goals, objectives it is driven to achieve and in part, exists to complete. If a patron manages to actually complete a goal, it takes on a new goal — often an extension of the one just completed.
Just as patron missions can be reduced to a small number of general forms, patron goals can be boiled down… to even fewer. Where missions can be pretty specific, goals tend to be much more abstract, consisting of an action taken for or against a focus.
- Support person or group, work in the best interests (not necessarily in an appreciated way) of a specific person, nation or other group.
- Promote condition, bring about a particular condition such as war, renaissance, Golden Age, or the like.
- Promote ideal, increase the effect or presence of (a probably abstract) ideal such as good, evil, law, chaos.
- Oppose person or group, deny the desires of the target, or destroy the target altogether.
- Oppose condition, prevent the condition from coming about, or reduce it if it exists.
- Oppose ideal, diminish the effect or presence of an idea.
Some of these look like they’re opposites, and perhaps should be merged. ‘Oppose evil’ and ‘promote good’ look like they could be the same thing, but there are differences. A demonslayer is certainly trying to remove an evil, but is not necessarily trying to improve the lot of others. Similarly, supporting one kingdom and opposing another kingdom leaves all sorts of situations around the edges that might or might not apply… and can shift over time. If Kingdom A is fighting Kingdom B, ‘support A’ and ‘oppose B’ can have similar outcomes… but if the war ends and A goes to war against C, supporting A can mean fighting C now and ignoring B, but opposing B means abandoning A to continue the fight.
In all cases, the specifics should be anchored to existing entities in the campaign, so they are not considered here… but I will note that ‘Support Self’ is a legitimate goal.