[pup67vargr]

Eccentric?? THIS crew?? You're JOKING, right? :-)

Seriously, both backgrounds sound good to me. I'm just afraid that if you play the 'normal' version and stay well-under the disad limit then you won't be able to buy enough goodies for him to bring him up to the competency/power level of the rest of the crew. And I think we all know that RPing 'normal' people is only somewhat fun for a little while, at best. ;-)

But, if you're just looking for a 'warm body' to fill the crew position while you concentrate like 90% of your roleplaying efforts on your other character, then, yeah, this may be the way to go. You could put this dude on 'autopilot' for extended periods without having to worry about him getting into trouble over his head or anything. (He might be sort of an NPC PC almost?) (Or, then again, maybe I'm missing your point altogether. My apologies, if that is so.)