Exploration for Gold

 

Started playing Traveller now, and realized that the way my campaign is set up creates a PC motivation mechanic I haven't thought about before: Exploration for Gold (or Credits, in the case of Traveller).

By "PC motivation mechanic" I mean a mechanic that uses a general motivation of the players and/or their characters, to shape the course of the campaign. XP for Gold is probably the most famous one: The players' motivation is to gain XP for their characters, and each gold piece awards one XP. The campaign then revolves around the PCs trying to gain gold, which is a broad goal that encourages creative play.

There are other PC motivation mechanics, such as XP for Exploration (where each explored dungeon room, map hex, etc awards an amount of XP), and Debt (used in eg. Electric Bastionland and Between the Skies: The characters' motivation is to pay off their debt, and they must gain money to do so).

In my Traveller campaign, PCs start with a small amount of credits (500 - 3,000), and no starship of their own. To travel between systems, they must buy passage on a starship. There are two options: the luxurious High Passage, for 10,000 credits; or frozen in Low Passage, for 1,000 credits, which carries a 17% risk of dying in transit. The characters' motivations are to travel to new systems, and not die, so they have to gain credits - which can be accomplished in many ways.

You could use Exploration for Gold in any context where the PCs want to explore, but must pay a large amount of money to do so. Travelling between countries by ship? A portal network that charges exorbitant fees? Maybe a planeshifting spell that requires expensive components to cast?