More Quirks

[whswhs]

Looking over my last couple of campaigns, I spot the following:

Overcautious Habit (Frequent backups) — this is backups of computer files, not of the character!
Pretense (Faithful husband)
Daily Ritual (Rosary)
Not maternal
Disadvantage Embellishment (Overconfidence about combat skills)
Habit (Drunken skinnydipper)
Habit (Scribbling notes)
Collects fingerbones of slain enemies
Ritual tobacco use
Forgets her manners
Daily Ritual (Inventorying his and his sister's possessions)
Uncomfortable sleeping in a solid building, chance of bad night's sleep if required to be in a place that feels like a trap

[Astromancer]

I proposed several for bioroids and parahumans on the Transhuman Space board. To rehash.

Juvenile Hair Pattern As a side effect of your genetic modifications you didn't get an adult hair pattern when you went through puberty. If male you lack a beard or mustache. Your body hair is like that of a prepubescent child. You won't go bald naturally.

This can be a Quirk or a Perk.

Nonstandard Color Vision You see color, and your sight is either in the same range as other humans or to close to the normal range to be an advantage. But you don't register the same colors as other people. Maybe one or more colors cover a far wider band of the spectrum. Maybe the colors are reversed, red is violet, and vice versa. Whatever, when it comes to picking out clothing or decorations you might as well be color blind.

Variant Genitals Your genitals aren't quite what might be expected. This isn't sterile or eunuch, you might be able to function sexually. However, your genetic modifications have given you genitalia with nonhuman qualities. This can cause odd reactions.

This can be a Quirk or a Perk.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Nonstandard Color Vision You see color, and your sight is either in the same range as other humans or to close to the normal range to be an advantage. But you don't register the same colors as other people. Maybe one or more colors cover a far wider band of the spectrum. Maybe the colors are reversed, red is violet, and vice versa. Whatever, when it comes to picking out clothing or decorations you might as well be color blind.

Would the reversed colors even work? It's an old philosophical fancy that I might have a reversed color spectrum from you, so that tomatoes looked violet to me, and blueberries looked sort of orangish. But as long as I could tell the color of tomators from that of oranges from that of lemons or bananas from that of limes and so on (not color blind) and as long as I thought that, for example, tomatoes and ripe apples and the flesh of watermelons and stop signs and so on were all more or less the same color, how would we ever discover that our subjective sensations weren't the same? It seems to me that the person with reversed colors would still be perfectly able to match all the violet fabric (which looked red to them) with all the other violet fabric (which also looked red to them).

[PTTG]

If it's not so much reversed as the peak responsiveness wavelengths are shifted, then a lot of dyes would look subtly different and monochromatic light sources would generally be harder to see (such as LCD screens and LEDs in general). On the other hand, artificial camouflage would probably not work well on you.

I like the kind of work that went into the OP, though I would generally prefer to keep them simpler. Part of the attraction of quirks is that they are generally self-explanatory. I might write them as something more like, "Prude: You are uncomfortable when confronted with anything lewd." Or, "Dislikes: clothing: You prefer less clothing over more, and none at all if the situation allows." Compare: "Dislikes: exposure: You don't like exposing any more skin than necessary."

The idea that a quirk is neither shocking nor terribly bizarre for your culture is built-in.

That said, here's a bit more:

Devotee: You are mildly obsessed with an artist, celebrity, culture hero, character, or politician, and rarely miss a chance to quote them.

Fandom: You have a trivial Reputation as a celebrity, online or otherwise. Appropriate for an influence or just the best fiddle player in the village.

Extremely narrow expertise: No matter your general skill level, you will never fail in one very specific way. For instance, you might be a standard electrician, but you have perfect fuse handling and will never drop or lose one. This does not give you skill bonuses, but specifically prevents the GM from ruling that a failure occurred in some common, specific way -- and people who work with you will notice.

One-Entry Encyclopedia: Pick a trivial subtopic of some informational skill -- a specific minor building, a day in history, a non-noteworthy historical individual, a specific and mundane species of bird or insect, a particular type of rock, a particular notable object or model of some product. You are the foremost expert on that thing, and automatically know anything that is public knowledge about that thing. Appropriate for someone who has memorized the entire history of the local haunted house, or the obsessed biologist who knows every meaningful fact about Ptilinopus melanospilus. Note that without Biology skill, most of that information is just memorized trivia. "Did you know that the Andean Swamp Goat has an AMR of 4352 kCal/day? Isn't that amazing? I just wonder what an AMR is, and a kCal..."

Wannabe Brachiator:You never let an opportunity to hang from your arms pass you by.

Better How It Used To Be: You can't stand new-fangled stuff. You use time-tested and nearly obsolete equipment out of habit.

Cutting edge: You take pains to use the latest and greatest.

Cat's Courage: You have no fear of heights. Maybe you should learn it.

Bendy: You tend to lounge over even the roughest terrain, and make it look comfortable while you do it.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by PTTG;2434171

Fandom: You have a trivial Reputation as a celebrity, online or otherwise. Appropriate for an influence or just the best fiddle player in the village.

Extremely narrow expertise: No matter your general skill level, you will never fail in one very specific way. For instance, you might be a standard electrician, but you have perfect fuse handling and will never drop or lose one. This does not give you skill bonuses, but specifically prevents the GM from ruling that a failure occurred in some common, specific way -- and people who work with you will notice.

One-Entry Encyclopedia: Pick a trivial subtopic of some informational skill -- a specific minor building, a day in history, a non-noteworthy historical individual, a specific and mundane species of bird or insect, a particular type of rock, a particular notable object or model of some product. You are the foremost expert on that thing, and automatically know anything that is public knowledge about that thing. Appropriate for someone who has memorized the entire history of the local haunted house, or the obsessed biologist who knows every meaningful fact about [I

Ptilinopus melanospilus[/I]. Note that without Biology skill, most of that information is just memorized trivia. "Did you know that the Andean Swamp Goat has an AMR of 4352 kCal/day? Isn't that amazing? I just wonder what an AMR is, and a kCal..."

.

The first one is a Quirk only if the trivial Reputation is trivially negative. A postive trivial Reputation is a Perk.

The second two are both Perks rather than Quirks.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I like the kind of work that went into the OP, though I would generally prefer to keep them simpler. Part of the attraction of quirks is that they are generally self-explanatory.

I'd certainly keep them simple on the character sheet, and my original post could stand editing, but I wanted a bit more detail to make the Quirks distinct from disadvantages like Code of Honor, Disciplines of Faith, or Phobias.

For example, a Victorian adventuress might not have the Code of Honor that respectable women of the era followed, but she might still react badly if she was forced to publicly wear a costume that showed skin below the neck.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Nonstandard Color Vision You see color, and your sight is either in the same range as other humans or to close to the normal range to be an advantage. But you don't register the same colors as other people. Maybe one or more colors cover a far wider band of the spectrum. Maybe the colors are reversed, red is violet, and vice versa. Whatever, when it comes to picking out clothing or decorations you might as well be color blind.

This might also be a realistic quirk for people with normal vision but without the cultural ability to describe fine color variations. For example, ancient Celts and Norse sometimes conflated blue and gray, and people from other cultures sometimes conflated red and orange.

It's very common for animals with partial color vision or less sensitivity to colors in certain parts of the color spectrum.

Slightly shifted vision spectrum, where you lose the ability to see the top/bottom end of the color spectrum but gain a limited ability to see into the ultraviolet/infrared spectrum might be a quirk or just a feature.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

This might also be a realistic quirk for people with normal vision but without the cultural ability to describe fine color variations. For example, ancient Celts and Norse sometimes conflated blue and gray, and people from other cultures sometimes conflated red and orange.

It's very common for animals with partial color vision or less sensitivity to colors in certain parts of the color spectrum.

Slightly shifted vision spectrum, where you lose the ability to see the top/bottom end of the color spectrum but gain a limited ability to see into the ultraviolet/infrared spectrum might be a quirk or just a feature.

I think you've done a better job explaining the Quirk than I did. Thank you, I mean that.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

This might also be a realistic quirk for people with normal vision but without the cultural ability to describe fine color variations. For example, ancient Celts and Norse sometimes conflated blue and gray, and people from other cultures sometimes conflated red and orange.

What's all this past-tense nonsense? Blue and gray still get conflated, as do red and orange. Just watch an old western, where they used blue filters for "night" scenes to emulate the graying-out of low-light conditions without losing the ability for the viewer to see what was going on, or look at the hair of a natural redhead - or the fur of a red fox - where the "red" in question is quite clearly some flavor of orange. I'm fairly confident there are also some animals that are called "blue" when they have gray fur/feathers - the bluetick coonhound comes to mind.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Varyon

What's all this past-tense nonsense? Blue and gray still get conflated, as do red and orange.

The difference is that people in some cultures might lack the intellectual or linguistic ability to describe fine color variations. If you grew up thinking blue = gray + any shade of blue and red = any shade of red or orange, then it would take some mental readjustment if you're suddenly thrust into a culture where fine color distinctions matter. ("No, I said to follow the man in the powder blue coat, not the one in the slate gray coat. Blue and gray are different!")

Since we live in a world where it's easy to get any color on the spectrum, we forget how rare bright colors are in nature and how rare and expensive brightly colored objects were in pre-modern times.