Temp Flaws overview

From Sagataflwiki

Revision as of 06:29, 30 December 2012

This article is a temporary repository for Flaws, consisting of the stats for the Flaw (FP for each level it can have) and perhaps a brief writeup, and short notes about other Flaws that potentially overlap.

To start with, this is just about moving the old material from the (small) MS Excel spreadsheet on Flaws, and to here. (and this Temp page has, by now, progressed far beyond that starting point...)

Reference links

Flaws
Simple Flaws

Simple Flaws

Tags
C Cliche Flaw (max 1 per PC, and high-RS FP values are reduced. Example: Phobia)
F Favoured Flaw (players encouraged to take these, by increased low-RS FP values)
G Driving Goal Flaw
S version to use in Soap Operatic campaigns (higher FP values for Flaws pertaining to emotional interpersonal relationship-type Flaws).

Favouring / DisFavouring
D Divine
P Pagan
S Satanic

Overlaps Flaw? overlaps infrequently.
Flaw overlaps frequently.
Flaw! overlaps very frequently.

A

Your mind tends to wander when you are bored, when there is nothing that immediately interests you or forces you to pay attention (such as obvious danger). Your thoughts often turn inwards, abandoning the here and now.

whenever you are living a normal, boring everday life with work, school or childhood, you are easily tempted to abandon this to go in pursuit of exciting adventures. Note that if you are already adventuring, then this Flaw is pretty unlikely to trigger, except if the new adventure is much more epic and adventurous (or just a better fit for what you perceive to be your strengths and aptitudes) in which case a Trigger roll at RD 11 or so might still be warranted.

This Flaw is designated Cliche in part because in many Sagatafl campaigns, the player characters will already be adventuring, and so Adventurer mostly just takes up space on the character sheet.

You hold yourself aloof from most other people, emotionally and socially, but are not quite a loner.

B

You often get angry, losing your self-control, get carried away. Do not overdo this, however, but always look at the Trigger Strength of your roll. 1S is a minor sneer or other sign of aggression, while 3S or 4S can mean continued shouting or physically lashing out at whatever made you upset.

Note that people suffering from clinical depression (who are sometimes prescribed anti-depressants, in an attempt to re-balance their neuro-chemistry towards being healthier or nor normal) often exhibit signs of Bad Temper, over-reacting to slights, insults and irritations. Being depressed doesn't always just mean lots of crying and having difficulty getting out of bed in the morning and getting things done.

You often make boasts about difficult (admirable or otherwise) things that you intend to do. Unless you can consistently fulfil your boasts, people who know you (or have heard about you) will start to take you less and less seriously as the Years pass, and you may develop an undesirable Reputation as a Boaster - or you might already have such a Reputation at game start; if so, buy it as per the normal rules for undesirable Reputations.

You're not the least bit shy about telling the world about your accomplishments - the things you have done. This gets you attention, which is not always desirable, and it also annoys more modest or soft-spoken people. If you're more inclined to boast about future plans, things you will do, take the Boaster Flaw above.

You habitually harassing those who are weaker than yourself or are otherwise vulnerable. Bullying pretty much works depending on what your actual strengths are. If you're physically strong, you physically bully people. If you're smart and fast-talking, you verbally bully people. Note that this is a somewhat unpleasant Flaw, at least at Roll Strength 3d and more, and as such it may be better suited for NPCs than for PCs.

C

You are strongly inclined to help those you perceive as being in need, or those who ask you for help. This help can be material (money, food) or can be active involvement. People who are rude or uncouth, or towards whom you are prejudiced, have a higher RD to trigger (e.g. 10), and people whom you percieve to be your enemies may have a higher RD still (11, even 12).

You find new situations and enviroments to be confusing and bewildering, and you often respond to those with inactivity, a paralysis of your decision-making capacity. Note that in cases of obvious danger (or obvious opportunities for satisfaction of normal desires such as sex or material wealth) the trigger RD should be quite high (11 or so), if your only problem is that you are a Confused character in a new and unfamiliar situation or enviroment. Most of the time, inactivity is the correct way to roleplay a triggering, but if the character is stupid (low Intelligence, or a low pertinent sub-Attribute) or if there is a twisted logic to it, a humorously wrong course of action can be very appropriate.

You are afflicted by a childish curiosity of the shallow and immediate, especially as pertains to the physical world. You push strange buttons and pull levers with unknown functions, whenever this Flaw triggers, and you find it difficult not to touch, pick up or examine new and strange items.

Other flaws that are somewhat similar, but rarely overlap, are Enigmaphilia, Thirst for Knowledge and Voyeur, where in particular Enigmaphilia is a deeper and much more mature kind of curiosity that is highly likely to get the character involved in interesting events. To put it another way, Curious acts on the tactical level, while Enigmaphilia acts on the strategic level.

D

Deferential means that the character is always respectful and obedient of his betters (in terms of status and age). It is a very common attitude in people of pre-modern mind, but note that anything more than 2d can be very problematic for adventurer characters. See also Respectful.

Deferential means that the character is always respectful and obedient of his betters (in terms of status and age). It is a very common attitude in people of pre-modern mind (and this is the reason the Flaw is tagged F for Favoured), but note that anything more than 2d can be very problematic for adventurer characters. See also the Respectful Flaw, of the Element Flaw type, which designates deference and respect based on criteria other than status and age.

You exhibit the behavioural tendencies that people associate with clincal depression, you're moody and often fall into a melancholic mood or sulking, or find it difficult to get your ass in gear and get things done. This actually fits the genuine behavioural pattern of depressed people, eexcept for one thing: They also often have self-control issues, so for correct and proper simulation of a clinically depressed person, also take the Bad Temper Flaw.

You take yourself very seriously, especially in terms of what's done to you physically, what clothes you wear (they have to be nice, and clean), and how you're treated. The Pride Flaw, on the other hand (which overlaps dangerously often with Dignity) has more to do with how other people see you, treat you, speak to you and about you.

You find it difficult to trust that others do not mean you harm and are not looking for opportunities to exploit you or otherwise take advantage of you. This may be a form of paranoia, that you imagine such things without cause, or it may be due to a consistent personal experience of other people treating you badly but which has left a lasting mark on your mentality.

E and F

G

I

K

L

M

O

Omen-Seeker means that the character is constantly on the lookout for signs and portents, random events that can be interpreted as meaningful indicators that good or (especially!) bad luck lies ahead, or which tells him what strategic course to follow. It is essentially a specific kind of superstition which was very common in pre-scientific times.

P

S

T

V and W

Special Flaws

Number of Flaws

Sexual Orientation

This subsection deals with the Mandatory Flaw of Sexual Orientation, its strength (or its complete absence), and how the surrounding world views the directionality of the sexual orientation and how seriously non-standard orientations are taken (note that in many past societies, women's sexual orientation was ignored as a phenomenon). The normal, default, Sexual Orientation has a Roll Strength of 2d12.

Strength of Orientation

Characters of pre-fertile age should still have a sexual orientation chosen during character creation, since that comes into existence when they reach fertile age, but until that point the orientation is latent and does not manifest as anything more than playful flirtation (e.g. in imitation of observed adult behaviour) or curiosity ("playing doctor" and so forth).

Options for choosing latent Lechery for a pre-fertile character will come at a later point. Until then such characters cannot be created, unless the GM is willing to create the necessary Latent Flaws.

Direction of Orientation

This is the direction as universally valued, without regard to social milieu. This mainly determines who the character can be seduced by, and what might trigger Sexual Orientation Flaw Rolls. A character who is not oriented towards office furniture is completley immune from Seduction even by sentient and talking office furniture. A character who is not oriented towards men is completely immune from seduction by men, and his Sexual Orientation Flaw is never rolled for for men, no matter how handsome, charming and skilled they might be.

Do note the next table further down, which deals with the world-specific societal response to the character's Sexual Orientation.

Sexual orientation automatically includes species that look similar to the character's own, e.g. Humans and Elves are oriented towards each other without needing the Xenophilic trait, but Humans and Felinoids, or Humans and Dwarves, are not. Note that some species may look much like Humans but be uglier on average (lower Appearance), in which case the attraction may be mostly one-sided (e.g. the female Orc thinks the male Human is hot, but while the male Human does recognize the female orc as being biologically a woman and thus in theory eligible, his response is very faint, because by Human standards she's rather on the "fugly" side).

Note also that while it is important that the lowest common denominator in any campaign group does not unduly dictate limitations on the creative freedom of character creation of the other players, with it being the GM's duty to step in to thwart such attempts-at-dictating, campaign groups differ in the ability of individual members to remain objective observers and not get emotionally and irrationally carried away about in-character Player Character behaviour, in particular when it comes to the Other-Sexual option for Sexual Orientation.

Most Sagatafl campaign groups will be sufficiently relaxed and open-minded that they can chuckle at the pedophilic PC who visits the kindergarten as often as he can, compelled by his urge, and getting systematically pumped for gifts of candy and brand-name MP3 players by the savvy children, who know full well what he's after and have no intention of giving it to him, but a minority of campaign groups may find discomfort in, e.g., a necromancer PC who is constantly on the lookout for dead sheep to animate, especially one at just the right state of intestinal bloating ("when they feel really good").

All of the above traits can be combined with Reduced Sexual Orientation or with any degree of Lecherous, but of course not with Asexual.

Expected Social Response

Many societies have strong (and often reflexive and ill-considered) responses to sexual orientations or activities that deviate from whatever is (or is belived to be) the local norm, or the local ideal. Note that many societies have one kind of response towards the orientation or sex life of men and a completely different respone towards women (often assuming that women have no sexual orientation, or that all women are heterosexual).

Characters with socially nonstandard preferences may want or need to keep their urges secret from the surrounding society, being somewhat or completely "closeted".

Finally, note that many societies discern heavily, when it comes to male-male interaction, between the active or penetrating man, and the passive or "recieving" man (sometimes referred to as a "catamite"), often stigmatizing the later heavily while having little or no opinion about the former.

Oddity is the main factor, but percieved degree-of-harm should also be taken into account. A woman who can only achieve orgasm (or claims that to be the case, anyway) while being tickled by fresh duck feathers, by three or four young men all of mixed African-Asian race, as the opening tones of Beethoven's 5th Symphony is played, and she lies on a large air mattress, is indeed extremely odd in statistical terms, but in Flaw terms it would be much more reasonable to classify her tragic case (or her silly delusion) as being merely "Odd" (3 FP). Unless she talks about it constantly.

Tweak Balance

This is by necessity subjective, depending upon the GM's evaluation of whether the sum of the player's RD Tweaks to his Flaws have the predicted net effect of making triggering significantly less likely, overall, or significnatly more likely, overall, or if they are roughly balanced.

To define their characters more precisely, players can and should define Flaw Tweaks. Any Flaw may have multiple Tweaks, and all are either up-Tweaks (negative RD modifiers, -1, -2 and so forth, that makes the Flaw more likely to trigger) or down-Tweaks (positive RD modifiers, +1, +2, and so forth, that makes the Flaw less likely to trigger), and defined for specific subsets of the overall stimuli of the Flaw.

As one example, a player may give his character Fond of Drink 3d, and then specify that the RD modifiers are -1 RD wine, +2 RD beer. This makes his character more likely to trigger on wine than the 3d would suggest, but rather a lot less likely to trigger on beer, and does not affect his likelyhood of triggering on mead or cider, or on various fruit wines (nor on kumiss).

Fond of Drink 3d
-1 RD Wine
+2 RD Beer

Sometimes Tweaks are can come in multiple degrees. When it is intended that the RD modifier be multiplied for a very strong stimuli, an "E" or "e" should be appended (E for "escalate"). A male character may have Sexual Orientation 2d with the down-Tweak of +2e RD short hair. This means that he's at +2 RD when exposed to a short-haired woman, +4 RD when exposed to a woman with very short hair, and +6 RD when exposed to a bald woman.

Sexual Orientation: Hetero 2d
+2E RD Short Hair

At other times, the "E" or "e" designator is not warranted. Another male character may like Thin women (i.e. those with an Adiposity of 2), but his preference does not escalate with more extreme stimuli so that he's positively drooling over women who are Lethally Anorexic (i.e. Adiposity -1). Thin is this character's "sweet spot".

Sexual Orientation: Hetero 2d
-2 RD Thin

In most cases it is logical that Tweaks that are a matter of degree are reversed. For non-E Tweaks, just apply the opposite modifier if the stimuli is opposed, e.g. the guy who likes Thin women is at +2 RD towards women who are overweight regardless of how much (+2 RD for Chubby, Adiposity 4, but also +2 RD for Overweight, Fat and even Very Fat. For Tweaks marked with E, apply escalating modifiers. That guy who dislikes women with Short Hair? He's at -2 RD for a woman with unusually long hair, but he's at -4 RD if she has very long hair, and -6 if she has extremely long hair.

It isn't at all reasonable just to add up all RD Tweaks and see if they sum to zero or not. Some Tweaks are for rare stimuli, even obscure ones. This one, for instance, is roughly balances with itself:

Sexual Orientation: Hetero 2d -1 RD Dark Hair +5 RD Bald

... The +5 RD modifier is of stark magnitude, but bald women are very rare, so it's not at all likely to affect many trigger rolls, whereas the vast majority of the Human species has dark hair.

Therefore, the GM has to perform a subjective evaluation of the totality of the tweaks applied by the player. This subjective evaluation results in a Tweak Evaluation classification that counts as a Special Flaw with a positive or negative FP value (or an FP value of zero if, in the GM's prognosis, the Tweaks balance out completely or nearly so).

It is important not the sweat this evaluation procedure. In almost all cases, the player will be able to predict what the GM's evaluation will be, and therefore should have no problems accepting it. Disagreements will in almost all cases be an issue of one degree-step, i.e. the player thinking he has done a Minor down-Tweak but where the GM's evaluation is either "Rough Balance" or "Major down-Tweak".

In the end, Tweaks add flavour and individuality and colour to the character, and the GM must take steps that they do not become a source of anxiety or conflict.

Driving Goal

Driving Goal works differently from other Flaws, in that the Severity is deliberately set very low relative to the predicted degree of inconvenience that the Driving Goal causes for the character. This is in order to strongly encourage the player to also select a few other Flaws, so as to at least give the character the semblance of an individual personality. To compensate for this, a few compensatory DPs are also given directly.

The XP multiplier is applied to all Goal XP gained from achivements in direct pursuit of the Driving Goal, but XP from other Goals are divided by this value instead, serving to encourage monomaniacal behaviour.

A Mythic Goal is just that, something extreme that is almost certainly impossible, such as slaying Jesus of Nazareth (this will obviously become the goal of the Árth character Asbrand the Stuttering, if he succeeds in his first Driving Goal which is to restore a proper pagan to be King over the Danes - itself an Epic Goal, given the formidable opposition) or eradicating all sale of illegal drugs from an entire nation, while taking on a powerful, ruthless and psychopathic gangster, Elliott Ness-style, is an Epic Goal. Toppling Prince John from the throne of England, and paying the ransom of Richard the Lion-Hearted and restoring him to the throne, is a Grand Goal.

In general, players and GMs should err on the side of causion when classifying the Driving Goals of PCs. Most are Major Goals or Grand Goals. Also note that any Grand Goal of any one character is quite likely to come to dominate the campaign, and the same can happen with a Major Goal, although it depends much on the style of the campaign, with regards to party cohesion, and even how party-based it is.

One possible "metric" is to try to predict the number of fictional depictions that the struggle for the Driving Goal (whether the character succeeds or fails) would result in, if the character was historical. Is one single obscure novel written about the character? Or are recurring films and TV shows made, such as with Elliott Ness? Or is the heroic last stand worthy of several Hollywood blockbuster movie, as in King Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermophylae? Or travelling many hundreds of miles, lightly armed and incompetent to the point of silliness, through hostile lands teeming with Orcs and other nasty creatures, to drop a ring into a volcano?

Note: The scale Major/Grand/Epic/Legendary/Mythic should probably be compressed to just 4 steps, starting with Severity 2 and ending with Severity 5, named Major Grand, Epic and Mythic. Maybe make Major Severity 1.5? This has been done, but the example text above still needs major surgery.

Multi-Flaws

Complex Flaws

Element Flaws

Religious

Elements of Religous Flaw

Note that one or more Elements may be doubled (e.g. AA or RR) or even tripled (e.g. PPP or UUU). DDDRRR thus counts as six elements, 3xD and 3xR.

Examples of Ärth setting Religious Flaws

Keep in mind, thes are only examples of the shape that various religions can take within the setting. All Catholic Christians are not religous in exactly the same way, and there is even wider variation in non-scriptural religions. Also, a Religious Flaw is, in the end, a defintion of the religious beliefs of the individial character, and not all characters know the Theology of their particular faith well.

Respectful

Deferential makes the character inclined to defer to those who are of higher social status than he, or who are older (based on the common pre-modern assumption that the elderly must be respected). Respectful instead makes the character defer to people, to a greater degree than what is reasonable, based on other criteria.

It is possible to have both Deferential and Respectful, but they often synergize. Like Deferential, Respectful is a Favoured Flaw.

A male character who is Respectful towards Men must eithe see himself as not-yet-mature, or see himself as not-quite-a-man in some other regard, e.g. being a eunuch, a homosexual, or a celibate (for religious reasons or other reasons) or otherwise non-reproducing. Same goes for a female character who is Respectful towards Females. It is possible for such a character to be Respectful towards both sexes.

Honesty

A character with Honesty (LSD) 3d or stronger is usually referred to, by GMs and players, as a "Paladin on LSD".

Note: Each Element, Lie and Steal and Deceive, must be carefully explained and defined.

Animosity

An Animosity is a serious dislike for a particular group or classification of people (or sometimes non-people, e.g. Dragons) that can be frequently or rarely encountered withint the setting, and with the dislike manifesting in one or several out of five ways, defined by the mnemonic CHIPS:

Animosity Elements

Huge Group

Large group

Medium group

Small group

Tiny group

Ärth example Animosities

This subsection shows some specific Animosities for use in the Ärth historical fantasy setting:

Anti-Semitism
Christian Chauvanism or Islamic Chauvanism (vs non-Christians/non-Moslems respectively)
Abrahamic Chauvanism (vs pagans, anyone who isn't Christian, Moslem or Jew)
Misogyny
Homophobia

Anti-Semitism is vs Jews which are ausually Small group, usually CHPS (there's no tendency to assume that Jews are intellectually inferior), but in pagan lands they're Tiny and in some Islamic lands (the Iberian Caliphate and Arabic Caliphate) they're a Medium-sized group.

Christian (or Islamic) Intolerance is vs a Large group and usually involves the Elements of I, P and S. (variant without P Element)

See also Abrahamic Intolerance, which is a common form of Intolerance among Moslems.

Islamic Intolerance is sometimes vs a Tiny group, if the character in question subscribes to the belief that any scriptured religion is acceptable, including Hinduism and Zoroastrism, rather than only those that are based on a quranic prophet (which limits it to Christianity and Judaism, and a few obscure memetic relatives such as Mandaeism).

Abrahamic Intolerance is similar to the above, but is vs a Small group. (again, add a variant without the P Element). This is the same as the less mild form of the Ahl al-Kitab principle of Islam.

Note that Abrahamic Intolerance is somewhat more common among Jews, in 10th century Ärth, than Jewish Intolerance.

Jewish Intolerance is vs a Huge group (almost nobody is Jewish!) and tends to be IS, although sometimes there's an added P Element. It's rare in general, but the Ärth character Solomon ben Melchior is one example (and he most definitely has the IPS version!). Most Jews instead exhibit Abrahamic Intolerance.

Misogyny is vs a Medium group in general, because in most places women have very little influence, (but add a variant for Large and for Huge group if the character is from a pagan background or has lived most of his life in a pagan area). Elements are CI, with a variant for +P (for a total of 5 variant permutations)

Homophobia tends to involve Elements of C (regarding gay men as being severely deficient in masculinity) and H (hatred - duh!) and P (creating an unpleasant verbal atmosphere), and is either vs a Small group if it is only against men who are openly homosexual (and usually only passive homosxuals - active penetrators are in this case not hated), or a Medium group if the Animosity is more wide-ranging and is against all men who fail to live up to heteronormative ideals of masculinity and manliness.

Tables to come late (until then, just reference the correct rows in the tables in the previous subsections).

Phobias

Religious magic items and Flaws

Some preliminary ideas for favour/disfavour:

B to D

Bad Temper and Bully
disfav Divine
fav Satanic

Braggart
disfav Divine
fav Pagan and Satanic

Charitable
fav Divine and Pagan
disfav Satanic

Curious
fav Satanic

Deferential
fav Divine
disfav Satanic

Distrustful
fav Satanic

E to G

Enigmaphilia
fav Satanic

Fond of Drink
fav Pagan and Satanic
disfav Divine

Gambler
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Glory-Seeker
fav Pagan and Satanic'
disfav Divine

Glutton and Greed
disfav Divine
fav Satanic

I to M

Impatient and Impulsive
disfav Divine
fav Satanic

Killer
disfav Divine
fav Pagan and satanic

Kleptomania and Liar and Loner
disfav Divine and Pagan
fav Satanic

Megalomania
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Merciless
fav Pagan and Satanic
disfav Divine

O to P

Oath-Keeper
fav Divine and Pagan
disfav Satanic

Omen-Seeker
fav Pagan and Satanic
disfav Divine

On the Edge
fav Pagan and Satanic
disfav Divine

Overconfidence
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Paranoid
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Polite
disfav Satanic

Pride
fav Pagan and Satanic
disfav Divine

Pyromania
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

R to S

Shyness
fav Satanic
disfav Pagan and Divine

Sociable
fav Pagan and Divine
disfav Satanic

Soft-hearted
fav Divine
disfav Satanic

T to V

Thirst for Knowledge
fav Satanic

Thrill-Seeker
fav Pagan and Satanic
disfav Divine

Trickster
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Vengeful
fav Satanic and Pagan
disfav Divine

Multi-Flaws

Comfort-Seeker
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Immature
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Phobia and Multi-Phobia
disfav Divine

Party Animal
fav Pagan and Satanic
disfav Divine

PTSD
fav Satanic
disfav Divine

Element Flaws

Honesty
fav Divine and Pagan
disfav Satanic

Animosity
disfav Divine
fav Satanic

Religion Flaw
fav Divine
disfav Satanic

Respectful
fav Divine
disfav Satanic

Mandatory Flaws

Sexual Orientation Flaw
fav Pagan and Satanic'
disfav Divine

New Flaw costs

Standard progression Flaws

Simple table with integer values only

Coarsegrained table with odd integer values only

Multi-Flaw Reference

New Single Entries to use

Flaws

Multi-Flaws