Ideal Number of Quirks

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Kromm

You can find my opinion in Is Five Enough? (GURPS Power-Ups 6: Quirks, p. 6).

Indeed that is what made me think of alternate quirk limits.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

5 does seem an arbitrary limit. I would say that it should be the minimum.

You'd compel a player to come up with five quirks, even if they don't think of that many? I have some players who don't even take one. I'm not generally in favor of forced roleplaying choices; horse, water, you know.

Bill Stoddard

[mehrkat]

I give out 5 points for quirks but require that the player fill in at least 3 at game beginning. The rest to be filled in as the game continues.

Though I openly admit to using and preferring the 3rd Ed version of quirks. Its 5 points to assist with character definition and can have no real negative.

If you find a quirk didn't work we switch it out as part of a gm player conversation.

I have found 5 to be the perfect sweet spot.

[simply Nathan]

I can usually only think of two, maybe three, at character creation unless I intentionally load a character down with multiple Likes/Dislikes for the extra points.

I like the idea of being able to come up with more Quirks after a few sessions and get the points from them then, but I know some GMs are against doing that.

I remember an article about ignoring Disadvantage and Quirk limits entirely and simply giving PCs extra points at the beginning while allowing them to take whatever of those respective traits they want and how the experience was generally that players would take 30 in Disadvantages and 7 Quirks once the incentives to take more and the limits to take more were removed, respectively. (Wait, did I really write that whole paragraph as a single sentence? I must be tired.)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Five seems to be a fairly good number, but I doubt that a limit of 4 or 6 would make much difference. Some characters of mine have had more due to failed Fright Checks, but never so many that I forgot them regularly.

5 to start with, or 4 or 6, yes.

Starting the campaign with 7+ Quirks seems to me it'd involve a real risk of forgetting some or even most of them, relative to if you start with a small number and then occasionally more are added from Fright Checks or other similarly rare sources.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

In the usa we remember 7 digit numbers easily enough.. And most of us get to refer to our character sheets constantly. Ill say 7 quirks allowed for rural players, 10 for those in cities with multiple area codes.

The rule of thumb is 7 +/-2. Going for the low end of that span means there's very little risk of players forgetting any of their character's Quirks.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

You'd compel a player to come up with five quirks, even if they don't think of that many? I have some players who don't even take one. I'm not generally in favor of forced roleplaying choices; horse, water, you know.

I believe it's a somewhat common practice for GURPS to accept a few of the five Quirks being "to be defined later", meaning that the player gets all five CP up front, but he may postpone the definition of a subset of those Quirks, two or perhaps as many as three, by a few sessions, either because he finds it hard to come up with good ones, or because he needs to get a feel for the character first through actual play.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

The rule of thumb is 7 +/-2. Going for the low end of that span means there's very little risk of players forgetting any of their character's Quirks.

Keep in mind everybody also needs to keep track of their disadvantages, the distinction between them and quirks is really arbitrary, and the GM needs to keep up with them for several players. And one of the problems with limits based purely on counting the number of them is that not all combinations are as hard to remember. If you are using three or four disadvantages and quirks to describe the same underlying problem (e.g. since the Trees incident I dislike elves, and druids, and refuse to accept jobs that involve going into a forest, and laugh maniacally and babble a little about you bastards deserve this whenever I start a wood fire...) the conceptual load is really one thing, not three or four.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Keep in mind everybody also needs to keep track of their disadvantages, the distinction between them and quirks is really arbitrary

Quite. When making a character with a disadvantage limit of merely 50, it's easy to make a lot of disadvantages with control rolls of 15 and have the same "problem" of remembering all the 2-cp disadvantages.
I've often toyed with the idea of having a 2-pt mandatory leveled social disadvantage (Quirky,very quirky, extremely quirky) for PCs who take (or are assigned) extra quirks. It would give a -1 per 5 extra quirks to social situations where someone is aware of the number of quirks you have (-1 for 10, -2 for 15, etc). Thus, it really only effects people who have interacted with the PC for extended periods (an innate accessibility limitation on the social disad, accounting for the price of 2). Quirky people seem more "normal" to me than those with lots of outright disadvantages.

[Phantasm]

I tend to look at the "five quirks rule" as a guideline, not a hard and fast Rule. I've had characters with only a single quirk, and some where they needed 7 or 8 to get the personality right.