Call to Adventure

The Call to Adventure is what gets the PCs up in the morning and convinces them that they actually need to get involved. This is a critical point for GM, because players can be incredibly hard to motivate. Player like Experience Points, Treasure, and tend to be more amoral that the Characters that they are playing (and they often forget this). So choosing you Call to Adventure is an important step to setting the mood of the game and getting the players interested and on your side.

Weak
Weak calls have little consequences if ignored. In the video game “Quest For Glory” the poster advertsing a reward for finding the Healer's missing ring is a weak call. The 'quest' doesn't directly affect the main plot or advance the story and there is nothing lost and no consequences if the hero doesn't find the ring. Weak calls care useful as filler and red herrings.

Medium
Medium Calls have consequences, but mostly for other people. These call will mostly motivate good and noble PCs, but may not work on more selfish characters. They are still useful in story terms however. Presenting even nominally good PCs with a dilemma where they can respond to a medium call that affects NPCs or an overpowering call that affects only the PCs will make the players squirm- and when the ignored Medium Call results in nasty consequences for the NPCs and possibly generates a new villain or something equally bad, the players will feel responsible. Yes, this is cruel and unfair. You're Game Master, fair and just is for mortals, you have a universe to control and abuse.

Another form of Medium call is a call with no consequences, but reasonably significant money or loot as a potential reward. This is a good call to use for the first adventure. Stronger calls can be made in a general sort of way that doesn't directly impact the players until later.

Strong
Strong Calls have consequences for both the PCs and NPCs. The Consequences may not be immediate, but they should severe. These are the most useful calls for motivating the PCs mid-campaign. They can be used as intial Calls to Adventure, but if not used with good story back up and good build up, they will feel a little too big at that stage. Star Wars starts with Luke simply trying to return a pair of droids and ends with him destroying the Death Star. Do you think if Obi-won had told him “Come with me and try to destroy an unstoppable battle station the size a moon.”, Luke would have agreed?

Overpowering
Overpowering calls have immediate life threatening consquences to the PCs. It is also possible that this call will affect the world at large, but its power comes from the immediate consequences. This is probably the best way to start a campaign, but unless done carefully it will appear to be a railroad technique to the PCs, so plan it properly.

Employment
Probably the oldest form of Call to Adventure ever known in Role-playing. The PCs are sitting in a bar and a shadowy cloaked figure offers them gold if they will complete his quest. Now, this doesn't have to take place in a bar, the employer need not be a shadowy figure, and the job given may not actually have anything directly to do with the overall story save that it puts the PCs in the story's path. This is the most straight forward way to make a Call to Adventure, and if necessary it can be supplemented by other options on this list.

Accidental Involvement
How may times does the main character of a story stumble into a women in distress, or walk down the wrong alley to see a guy being mugged, or get mistaken for somebody else and involved in a clandestine spy ring, or something equally surprising? Often, very often, and as a GM we can use this one to great advantage. As long as we keep a loose hand on the reins during that initial stage where the players are still trying to figure out what they've stumbled onto (lest the players think we're railroading them)- this is a great Call method.

Official Orders
This is a useful, though slightly risky call method. In this one, the players are ordered to join the Call by somebody with authority over them. This is direct enough. If the players have already aligned with a group that works using hierarchical authority then this works very well. But most players are distinctly anti-authority and iconoclastic when they are in character- so unless this option is presented very well and with other convincers, many players will resist it. However, if you want the players to respond to this apparent call by resisting or fleeing, it can be a great call.

Swept up in the story
The Space station the players are staying on has lost all but emergency power, docked starships cannot unclamp because the emergency power is for life support only- and it only lasts for 5 hours. Something must be done. A battle between two sides of a long and bitter civil war sweep into the player's home town as the losing force attempts to flee, but is cut off and forced to make a last stand amidst the player's homes. The PCs own something important to the plot and it is stolen, and then the PCs are threatened with death by the other side if they don't get it back. Being swept up in the story is a great call to adventure, because it gives the players options while still forcing them to address the story itself.

Loved ones etc... endangered
This Call to Adventure can be hooked onto almost every other one or served up on its own. The Fighter's daughter (the one he had with the barmaid) has been kidnapped. The star pilot's long lost father returned working for the evil empire and kidnapped his remarried former wife. This sort of thing only works if the Game Master involves the PC's families in the story ahead of time and so it is not generally a good Call to Adventure to use the first time a group of PCs are teamed up together.

PCs endangered
This Call to Adventure, like the one above it, can be applied to any other Call, and generally should be applied to any other call. But if applied on its own, it works like this: the players are confronted by somebody who tries to kill them. Period. by giving no immediate threat, ultimatum or explanation, the players will generally feel compelled to find an answer, and by planting clues on the attacker, and having it happen again, the players will actually seek out the source of their troubles and go looking for the adventure

Temptation
This is when the PCs are offered soemthing of value that they want- anything from the Princess' hand in Marriage (or the Prince's), to fifteen bags of gold, to having the debt on your starship paid off. This is a good thing to add to most calls even if you are using another form more dominantly

Define Carrot
What is the reward for answering the call?

Define Stick
What is the price for refusing the call?