More Quirks

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

* Gets drunk easily; effectively, -2 to HT to resist the effects of alcohol

Isn't alchohol intolerance an official one? I have a player who sticks it on most of her PC's. Including one game where it saw more play than a full blown disadvantage (lots of diplomatic first contact in a low-tech setting. Also, another PC owned a vinyard).

[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.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

* "If it hasn't been burned, it isn't seasoned."

I personally have the opposite, at least with regards to beef (and some fish, such as salmon) - "If the center isn't raw, it's been overcooked."

Originally Posted by whswhs

That one sounds like it could be an out and out Trademark. And depending on the nature of the trophies, it might get you points for Sadism.

It looks similar to your "Collects fingerbones of slain enemies," so as long as the relevant actions (killing a person then desecrating their corpse) is legal - or you're in a setting where there's no real Law to worry about, like many AtE settings - a Quirk seems about right (although if you insist on wearing a necklace made of your trophies, OPH may be more appropriate). Of course, it's possible the "Slaver Trophies" variant doesn't kill the subject, although if I'm interpreting the subtext right, I think there's sufficient blood flow in the affected region that the subject is likely to bleed out without prompt effective medical attention.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I personally have the opposite, at least with regards to beef (and some fish, such as salmon) - "If the center isn't raw, it's been overcooked."

I want the meat to twitch when the fork goes in, but I don't want it to jump off the plate.

[Astromancer]

Nonstandard Coloration Another Transhuman Space one. Basically, your skin, eyes, or hair has a color or color pattern not associated with human beings. The Orange eyes of an owl. Tiger stripes (remember tigers have stripes on their skin as well as their hair. Primary colors on the skin of your face or genitals like a baboon. All could be examples. Think of it as Unnatural Feature cantered over to a biotechnology explanation.

[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 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 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.