"I'm Lookin' For"

This post and all the art in it is inspired by or borrowed from Alexandre Diboine.

Conviction is a mechanic in pure GLOG that I do not see a lot of people using. Arnold recently mentioned in the OSR chat that this is how convictions as he envisioned them working:

"Convictions are basically the answer to the question of "what separates you from the average murderhobo?" and can include high ideals as well as petty ones.  You can ignore them if you want.  The only mechanical function of a Conviction is: if you follow your conviction and it generates some complication for your party, you all get a small amount of XP. It's meant to incentivize players getting away from a purely murderhobo lifestyle."

I like the idea of giving people a mild mechanical reason to go beyond mere murderhoboing, giving them a little depth and perhaps encouraging players to seek out other curiosities beyond mere gold coins. I've been thinking, perhaps I could combine Convictions and Skills into something handy, interesting, and more importantly, can be put on a d20 table.

So here are my thoughts. When creating your character, roll or choose from the " I'm Lookin' " list. This will provide a basic goal, item, or mentality that is associated with that character. Any checks directly related to the acquisition of that goal that do not provide direct combat advantage receive a bonus equal to your character level. Furthermore any time one is acting to achieve that goal and suffers consequences, a certain amount of bonus XP can be gained. You can, of course, come up with your own "I'm Lookin' " items subject to DM approval as usual

Roll	I’m Lookin’
1	For Strange Ingredients
2	For Exotic Animals
3	For A Worthy Challenge
4	For Unique Geography
5	For Home
6	For Peace and Quiet
7	For Drugs
8	For Revenge
9	To Make a Deal
10	For Rare Books
11	To Get Laid
12	To Obtain Followers
13	To Spread my Religion
14	To Protect my Ward
15	To Hone a Craft
16	For Fine Art
17	For Real Estate
18	For Advanced Technology
19	For Liberty
20	To Test my Endurance

I went with fairly broad strokes with this table, however one could potentially narrow down the "I'm Lookin' " into very minuscule categories like Insects or Your Lost Brother or Cheddar Bay Biscuits. The less likely it is to be broadly useful or the more likely it is to have consequences, the more I personally would reward for good dedication to concept. One could also apply something like this to Factions and player interaction with those factions. Broad-stroke goals accomplished for said faction are easier and less rewarding, while niche or highly specific goals are more difficult but much more rewarding. Many in the OSR scene are better with factions than I am, but I immediately think of Planescape's 15 factions in Sigil. A broad-stroke goal for, say, The Mercykillers would be to bring individual criminals to justice. A niche goal would be to topple a criminal empire or exposing a corrupt bureaucrat that is preventing the efficient carrying out of justice or discovering a potent truth-serum. One could apply these goals to individuals, nations, and so forth as well of course.