I'm struggling to find a motivation for a Lizardfolk character to join an adventuring party or to go out and discover the world.
Reading the description from Volo's Guide to Monsters, I'm getting that they mostly stay in one place with their tribe and are focused on survival.
Lizardfolk focus on survival above all, without sentiment.
They are also not driven by emotion, so desire, curiosity or revenge are also off the table.
Lacking any internal emotional reactions, Lizardfolk behave in a distant manner. They don’t mourn fallen comrades or rage against their enemies. They simply observe and react as a situation warrants.
Lizardfolk lack meaningful emotional ties to the past. They assess
situations based on their current and future utility and importance.
Volo's Guide states:
Some Lizardfolk make an effort to
understand and, in their own manner, befriend people of other races,
However, why would you adventure with others if you can survive on your own?
Is there something I'm not getting or is it really hard to make a Lizardfolk a good party member without ignoring all the facts about the race?
TLDR: What would motivate a Lizardfolk to join an adventuring party and to stay with them?
Edit/Update for more clarification:
I'm looking for examples from the rulesbooks or adventures (preferably citations) of Lizardfolk who joined adventuring parties and about their motives.
I myself couldn't find anything more with the material I have and was curious why any Lizardfolk would abandon their tirbe/home to expore the world with other races.
Best Answer
1. Sometimes, adventure is necessary for survival.
It depends on the adventure, of course, but a lot of adventures are to prevent some calamity—something that will get the lizardfolk killed, too. If they care about survival, they care about that.
And even more banal adventures—seeking loot and glory—can become matters of survival if, for example, the lizardfolk’s native environment is suffering from some affliction, and can no longer support the population and they need outside resources. A lizardfolk who can’t find anything to eat in the swamps might be forced to leave them, and having left them, might find money the most efficacious route to survival—and maybe no one’s hiring lizardfolk, so they’re forced into adventuring as the only route to money available.
We can zoom in even more—perhaps this lizardfolk was captured and is now being forced to adventure, under magical threats to enforce compliance. Maybe this is a criminal sentence, maybe this is just a wizard playing games, but whatever it is, their survival now hinges on adventuring—so they’ll have to adventure.
This all works even for a typical lizardfolk concerned only with survival—but a lizardfolk adventurer might not be your typical lizardfolk...
2. Volo’s Guide to Monsters describes the typical; adventurers are exceptional.
Just broadly speaking, the vast majority of people don’t become adventurers. It’s an exceptionally dangerous vocation, and while the rewards can be immense, they only exist if you survive the adventure—and that all-but-requires that you be “special” in some fashion, because most people won’t.
This often becomes doubly-true when discussing player characters, because they are the protagonists and focus of the story—and stories focus on things that are interesting and unusual.
So while most lizardfolk care only about personal survival, lizardfolk adventurers can often be expected to, as a population, be very different from the overall population. And player-character lizardfolk are all-but-guaranteed to be.