Character Flaws: Crunch vs. Fluff

[Talakeal]

In my homebrew system (link in sig), I used to have numerous flaws which provided bonus points with which to build your character. Some of these had mechanical effects, others were RP aids like the character has a phobia, or lives by a code of honor, or is on the run from the authorities, or is an alcoholic.

Recently though, I changed how it works is that only flaws which provide a numerical penalty give extra character points, typically enough to buy an equivalent bonus in some other area, thus allowing for more customizable characters.

RP traits instead provide circumstantial bonuses when acting in accordance with it, and circumstantial penalties when acting against it; so like if you have a code of honor to never see harm come to children, you might get a -2 penalty when attacking children but also a +2 bonus when defending a child. These neither provide nor cost character points.

I personally thought it was a massive improvement.

So, when I showed this to one of my players, he was extremely disappointed. Basically, he said that the only people who take flaws in an RPG are min-maxxers who are trying to game the system and get something for nothing, and that balanced flaws like this are completely uninteresting and unappealing, and that by making this change I have effectively removed all flaws from the game as no player would ever actually select one.

Is he right? Thought?

[Vahnavoi]

Your critic isn't exactly right, but they do have a point.

Look at this way: character flaws in a game make most sense as self-imposed challenges. F.ex., you choose to play without certain type of weapon to up the difficulty of a game or to force yourself to use different tactics. Flaws are supposed to change how you play the game.

Giving a nice, "balanced" amount of character points for any flaw allows them to be used for the opposite: making your character better at what you wanted to do anyway.

So pick: which is more important? Flaws changing the way characters are actually played, or players being able to use flaws as customization trade-offs?

If the former, do not give any character points for flaws. Don't try to enforce picking of flaws. Just provide the list of flaws and let players pick according to their own conscience. If you want to reward taking of flaws, figure out a reward other than character points.

If the latter, your system is fine as-is - you're adhering to what's essentially industry standard. Functional, if boring and derivative at this point.

[Composer99]

Your revised flaws are very similar to what D&D 5e does, in which flaws have no character build implications but instead are roleplaying hooks, with the reward of Inspiration for making use of them.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with your flaws on a conceptual level. Suffice to say I am not familiar enough with your system to have an informed opinion about the implementation.

[Berenger]

He is just plain old-fashioned wrong in his belief that only min-maxxers ever take flaws.

Sadly, he is also wrong to call the presented flaw balanced - unless you play in a very, uhm, 'special' campaign there will be very few reasons to attack children. If you want to attack a child anyway, the -2 penalty will typically not really matter because, come on, it's not going to be enough to give the child a fighting chance against a trained warrior. On the other hand, the +2 advantage will be triggered every time you defend a town from marauding goblins or save the world from a demon invasion since both can be reasonably be portrayed as protecting the children which are threatened by these events.

[MoiMagnus]

The Mutant and Mastermind SRD has a very good paragraph about Character flaws (called "complications"), which while not exactly answering your question, is I believe somewhat related to the issue:

Some roleplaying game systems include complications, disadvantages, or similar problematic character traits which offer “bonus points” for creating the character; essentially, you get more points for your character’s good traits when you take on some bad ones.

The problem with such “up-front” rewards for giving a character flaws is that the player gets all of the reward (the bonus design points) immediately, but the disadvantage only occasionally limits or affects the character, sometimes even randomly. Since there is only so much “screen time” in a game session, there is virtually no way for the GM to spotlight every one of every character’s disadvantages, so some end up being worth “more” in the sense of reward in exchange for drawbacks. Plus, after they have “paid out” their initial benefit, front-loaded negative traits are nothing but a burden to the character from that point forward, leading players to try and avoid or mitigate them as much as possible.

Complications address this issue by having a “pay-as-you-go” approach: if the GM uses a complication in the game, and the player responds by going along with it, the player gets a reward in the form of a [point which can be used to edit a later scene]. This means that although the hero has to deal with some “bad stuff” from time to time, there is an upside, and a reason for players to want their characters’ complications to come into play! Why do powerful heroes lead such complicated lived? They need the points!

In D&D 5e, that would correspond to "flaws give an inspiration each time they trigger in a significant way, which can be used to get an advantage to a later check". (A reroll could also be a potential reward for the flaws)

[Mastikator]

I think flaws that can have game mechanical implications should, and then let you get some other benefit in some other area. But a flaw should be meaningful both mechanically and in terms of roleplay to do that. "-2 to attack children" is precisely not that. They should be bad enough to discourage min-maxers from taking them while flavorful enough for roleplayers to want them. In my opinion good flaws would be something like Claustrophobia (fear/panic from being constrained or imprisoned), reckless (you damage your own equipment), cowardly (always disadvantage vs fear).

In the hero's journey stories the flaw is always the hero's downfall, and they don't become a true hero until they overcome it. In a tragedy their flaw defeats them. In horror the flaw kills them.

[Talakeal]

The child example was just something I came up with on the spot as an example, don't try and draw to many specifics with it. In the actual game the player and the GM would work out the details when it was selected and try to ensure that the negative and the positives both came up (roughly) equally often.

[Anonymouswizard]

The system I'm writing takes a very different approach, it refuses to stat flaws for pretty much the exact reason your player says (they're a favourite of min-maxers). Players will still take such flaws if they want to play a character with them, and will sign stat and skill points appropriately, but encouraging players to take them tends to end with them taking ones they impact then the least.

Yes, I know, not all players do it. I've been noted as occasionally taking very problematic flaws (extreme honesty, a reluctance to break the law, a fear of knives, nyctophobia*, a bad reputation with the very organisation we're working for...). But it's still a very common trend.

* That one never actually came up, bit of a shame.

[icefractal]

Sounds like he was just taking flaws for the free points, and no longer will. But is that really even a loss? With flaws having less mechanical benefit, people will only take those that fit what they wanted to play anyway, which sounds fine.

I think that giving points for flaws can serve a purpose, in the case where the players have a very competitive/efficiency attitude and would never take unnecessary hindrances, and in fact would complain if the other players did so. It's effectively a bribe to promote having flaws, and provides an excuse for players who would like to take them but fear being whined at for "letting the team down".

Fortunately the latter seems to not be a common attitude any more, but I recall seeing it in the Living Greyhawk days - some people could get quite aggro about their party members not taking the most efficient actions possible.

[Beleriphon]

The Mutant and Mastermind SRD has a very good paragraph about Character flaws (called "complications"), which while not exactly answering your question, is I believe somewhat related to the issue:

I was going to mention Mutatants and Masterminds. Spider-Man shouldn't get more build points because Aunt May is liability, Batman shouldn't get more points because Bruce Wayne has to find a way to sneak away from his own birthday party. That's the problem with flaws that provide points, they either don't come up that often or they end up being pretty much a non-issue. Take a Star Wars game where the Jedi Knight's flaw is "Only uses a lightsaber" and then uses the points to make lightsabering stuff better. How often is not being able to use the lightsaber going come up versus the points spending on making lightsabering better? Unless its literally ever time the Jedi busts out the lightsaber those were points well worth a minor inconvenience.

[Time Troll]

Flaws in RPGs really don't work well as written in most games.

If it's just pure fluff RP it can sometimes be nice to have for a player to follow. Once or twice a game the player might remember the character's flaw and maybe even RP it for a couple seconds.

The vast majority of mechanical flaws are a bit pointless, as they only give a slight negative effect. When a character has a "10 to hit, a -2 to does not matter too much. And a lot of the time it's very specific too.

And most mechanical players optimize, and just work flaws into the build. They make a melee power house, as sure take the 'ranged attack' flaw or give up something they won't use anyway.

And then too many games give a bonus for taking a flaw too. Take 'poor ranged attack' flaw and get two points of strength to make your melee monster build even more powerful.

But if flaws had real big effects, few players would want them. Few players want any type of real negative effect.


Take Rastilan from Dragonlance, he had the Constitution and Strength of like 6, was extremely weak and sickly.And using his magic drained him. Quite often he was quite helpless. Few players would even consider playing use a character.

If a flaw does not have a major impact on the play of the character, why even have them?

[Anonymouswizard]

What can also work is the 'everybody must take a flaw, here's the list' approach. So the repayment for taking a flaw is already built into character creation and you just have to decide which one it is. It's the equivalent to including an 8 on the standard array.

But there's a reason games have been moving towards metagame currency for flaws over over bonus character points (or even bonus XP). It makes flaws much more self balancing, if your flaw never comes up you never get the renumeration, while if it does the advantage is temporary. So if you take one armed and it never hinders you that's okay, because it's also not given you a bonus.

Burning Wheel actually goes one step further and actually asks you to pay for flaws. Because they get you bonus Artha. That's a good thing, and you pay points for good things (although BW also rejects chatty building balance, so that's not a concern for it).

Although bonus XP for flaws is also alright if you're not a group who cares about balance between PCs. I just personally don't like it as much (in games with no metagame currency I'll give out rerolls instead).

[Vahnavoi]

Let's backtrack a bit and talk about where the idea of flaws even comes from: non-game fiction.

The major idea behind having flaws built in a game system to begin with, is the idea that flawless characters in fiction are boring. If roleplaying games are supposed to model fiction, then characters should have flaws.

The issue with this train of thought, when applied to any traditional roleplaying game, is that flawless characters in non-game fiction are only so through authorial fiat. Players in a game have no such fiat: their ability to play flawless characters depends on their ability to actually play flawlessly, which is typically hard. In a very real and practical sense, flaws of the player are flaws of their character; a player can't entirely escape their own lack of skill or poor decision-making, regardless of what reads on their character sheet.

So the idea that you need to explicitly stack prosaic flaws on characters, let alone enforce taking them or mechanically enforce their effects (poor play decisions already enforce themselves), in order to create interesting flawed characters, is dubious from the get go. Lists of such flaws are, at best, suggestions of what the game designer(s) would find interesting flaws in a literary character. The joke is that even the game designers can't figure out how anyone would find such flaws interesting to play in a game, so they try to sell those flaws by giving a trade-off in form of character points, or whatever. This is the second dubious thing, and the real reason why flaws are often used for min-maxing: the players have no real motivation to play a flawed character, the game designers failed in selling the thing they tried to sell, and so the only take-away for those players is the extra points they can use to something unrelated that they want to do.

[Telok]

So, when I showed this to one of my players, he was extremely disappointed. Basically, he said that the only people who take flaws in an RPG are min-maxxers who are trying to game the system and get something for nothing...

Nsh, you're cool. Anything that has no mechanical effect will be completely ignored by those only interested in the mechanics of the characters. That's not a problem. Stuff that gives any form of bonuses for no real drawback has always been the optimizers fetish. That never changes between systems. You disappointed one min-maxer by removing some free build points is all.

Stuff that gives a meta-currency only matters if the system relies heavily on that meta-currency in some way. That's where M&M and others get it right while D&D 5e failed. The players & DMs have to want the rp and comlications to come up, and it has to be the entire party being willing to have your flaw/whatever matter. M&M has the conceit that the characters are heroes who will all want to save somebody's relative from the evil villian, or they're at least on board with punching the bad guy, and the return is actually relevant enough that everyone cares. D&D has the problem that the game is 100% fine if everyone forgets that inspiration even exists, plus the bonus it gives is both not very interesting and can be gotten lots of other ways.

[Talakeal]

He was undoubtedly upset that he was no longer able to game the system for free points. But he also said that most players would feel the same way, so I was effectively removing flaws from the game as they are now just wasted space that will never get used.


Also, vahnovoi, for me flaws are more about verisimilitude and reality than trying to create good drama or recreate literary characters. One of the goals of my system is to be able to create “real” people, and most everyone I know has at-least some traits that would be considered flaws in RPGs. Heck, look at the recent push for the ability to play disabled people in D&D.

[Anonymouswizard]

Stuff that gives a meta-currency only matters if the system relies heavily on that meta-currency in some way. That's where M&M and others get it right while D&D 5e failed. The players & DMs have to want the rp and comlications to come up, and it has to be the entire party being willing to have your flaw/whatever matter. M&M has the conceit that the characters are heroes who will all want to save somebody's relative from the evil villian, or they're at least on board with punching the bad guy, and the return is actually relevant enough that everyone cares. D&D has the problem that the game is 100% fine if everyone forgets that inspiration even exists, plus the bonus it gives is both not very interesting and can be gotten lots of other ways.

To be fair, D&D5e puts a lot of effort into sidelining it's metacurrency. Like, you're literally only allowed one point at a time, when even WFRP allows a starting character to hold several (and assumes that burned points will eventually be replaced). It feels like Inspiration was stuck in the game because the cool indie games are playing with metacurrency, but the designers didn't want to integrate it so no character abilities really interact with it and yes the bonus is tiny.

Meanwhile in Fate getting points for setbacks is an easy sell because it's part of the intent of the game. But even then there's many groups who don't really use Compels.

[Vahnavoi]

Also, vahnovoi, for me flaws are more about verisimilitude and reality than trying to create good drama or recreate literary characters. One of the goals of my system is to be able to create “real” people, and most everyone I know has at-least some traits that would be considered flaws in RPGs.

"Real people have flaws so your characters should too" is not appreciably better than "good literary characters have flaws so your character should too" and has largely the same pitfalls. Namely, by virtue of their players being flawed, majority of characters already end up flawed in actual play - there is no actual need to tack on prosaic flaws just to satisfy that condition. At best, a list of such flaws can act as suggestions for what would be interesting to play. (As far as character points go, giving points for flaws does not serve verisimilitude in any shape whatsoever, so shouldn't be considered for that reason.)

Heck, look at the recent push for the ability to play disabled people in D&D.

That push largely doesn't come from people who'd actually want to play disabled people as disabled people nor from people concerned with realistically modelling disabilities. Ignore them.

[Cluedrew]

I also think that flaws are taken for other reasons than min-maxing. Even when implemented as granting build points in exchange for a purely negative effect. Other ways to implement them can encourage those reasons on top of that. The meta-currency use is pretty good but I think - if you don't have a meta-currency in your system - that pairing the good and bad together works quite well.

I also disagree that this system cannot be "min/maxed". The fact that the negative and positive aspects are linked makes it harder but you cannot make it so the two come up exactly as often and with the same importance so there will be some that come up positive more often for some character/campaign combination. I suppose you could make the negative side overwhelmingly more stronger to avoid that but I recommend you don't do that.

[Quertus]

What is the purpose of flaws? There's many answers to this question, but I think I prefer this one:

It's effectively a bribe to promote having flaws, and provides an excuse for players who would like to take them but fear being whined at for "letting the team down".

Granted, I prefer to play with people who don't get uppity when I decide to play a tactically-inept academia mage, or a Sentient Potted Plant, with 0 mechanical advantage for me doing so, but at least having flaws in the system puts people in the mindset that they may have to deal with beings who aren't all identical Determinator Spike optimizers.

The child example was just something I came up with on the spot as an example, don't try and draw to many specifics with it. In the actual game the player and the GM would work out the details when it was selected and try to ensure that the negative and the positives both came up (roughly) equally often.

I'm kinda opposed to this mindset, actually. If I go through all the effort to ensure that my "verbose" trait is never disadvantageous, I don't want to be punished for that work by it never being advantageous, either

I want the GM to play the world honest, and the PCs to be Incentivized to (or, at least not deincentivized from) play smart.

Look at it this way: all the dumb mistakes your players make - do you want to *encourage* them to keep making them (and to make more) by *rewarding* them for attacking the Avatar of Hate? Do you want to discourage them from handing the encounter well by giving them less reward for doing so?

Same idea with traits. If they have an upside and a downside, the players should be free to put in the work to only her the upside, and not be punished for doing so by losing out on the reward that you would have given them for being blindsided by their flaws.

[Time Troll]

"Real people have flaws so your characters should too" is not appreciably better than "good literary characters have flaws so your character should too" and has largely the same pitfalls. Namely, by virtue of their players being flawed, majority of characters already end up flawed in actual play - there is no actual need to tack on prosaic flaws just to satisfy that condition.

Real people, and even many well written fictional characters have major flaws that effect their lives. Ask how many players would want to go that far for a flaw. There are a handful that will, but not many.

To have a clumsy swashbuckler or a wizard that forgets spells is "too much". Players want the "-2 to fear saves vs spiders", as they know that will only come up maybe once a game and that it won't matter much anyway. The scary spider might have a fear DC of 12, but the character will likely make the roll anyway.

And should the character encounter even just two spiders, the player will complain that the GM is targeting them.

[Pex]

Min/maxers will use flaws to increase their optimization, but that doesn't mean they will ignore the flaws. It's the munchkins who ignore flaws or choose that which will have as little impact as possible. That Guy players will also exploit flaws to use them as an excuse to be disruptive to the game. For example, using "greedy" as an excuse to steal from the party and/or keep found party treasure for themselves. Your friend is likely used to playing with munchkins and That Guys.

Taking flaws to gain extra benefits is itself a viable game mechanic. How to balance it within the game system is up to the designer. In my opinion it couldn't work in Class System games like D&D because there's no objective measuring value. What flaw is worth gaining darkvision? It works in Point Buy games like GURPS because you only need to give a point value to the flaw and not worry about the specific benefit gained.

If this is only for your personal use decide for yourself if your players would embrace it or exploit it. If it's potentially to be used by anyone, if you prefer make it officially an optional thing and let the DM decide for his game whether to use them or not.

[Tanarii]

Take Rastilan from Dragonlance, he had the Constitution and Strength of like 6, was extremely weak and sickly.And using his magic drained him. Quite often he was quite helpless. Few players would even consider playing use a character.

If a flaw does not have a major impact on the play of the character, why even have them?

Point of order, Raistlin had Str 10 and Con 10. The first player just chose to play them as a sickly weak character with health issues.

[icefractal]

If a flaw does not have a major impact on the play of the character, why even have them?

Not every positive quality a character has is a Big Deal™, and not every negative quality needs to be one either. IMO, it makes a character feel more interesting to have some secondary areas of competence that aren't their "main shtick", and some flaws that are just being imperfect rather than a tragic flaw that will define their destiny.

Not that you can't have the latter, just that it's not the only kind of flaw worth having.

[Anonymouswizard]

That push largely doesn't come from people who'd actually want to play disabled people as disabled people nor from people concerned with realistically modelling disabilities. Ignore them.

I'm having trouble parsing that, but...

I'm not one of the people actively pushing for disability inclusivity, but it matters. I actively include a note in my game, and state that if a player wants an item to increase their character's ability to act such as a wheelchair or prosthetic hand they can start with it for free.

Serious question, can you name explicitly dyspraxic characters in a work of fiction? Does the average person even know what dyspraxia is? If I want to play a character with my condition how do I manage it? In most games I just drop Dexterity/Agility buy up some skills to 'average' to reflect the physical side and roleplay the mental side, but I can't do the first in D&D5e without eventually becoming too good at certain things.

[QUOTE=Time Troll;25091644]Real people, and even many well written fictional characters have major flaws that effect their lives. Ask how many players would want to go that far for a flaw. There are a handful that will, but not many.

To have a clumsy swashbuckler or a wizard that forgets spells is "too much". Players want the "-2 to fear saves vs spiders", as they know that will only come up maybe once a game and that it won't matter much anyway. The scary spider might have a fear DC of 12, but the character will likely make the roll anyway. /QUOTE]

Hi, real person with pretty significant disability here! Did you know that it's not uncommon to avoid things that your disability makes you bad at, and that disabilities can be things other than all encompassing.

And a clumsy swashbuckler sounds like a blast to play, maybe I should pick up that All For One. You're good with the rapier but rubbish at acrobatics, so you'd better fight a bit unusually for your archetype.

[Vahnavoi]

Real people, and even many well written fictional characters have major flaws that effect their lives. Ask how many players would want to go that far for a flaw. There are a handful that will, but not many.

To have a clumsy swashbuckler or a wizard that forgets spells is "too much". Players want the "-2 to fear saves vs spiders", as they know that will only come up maybe once a game and that it won't matter much anyway. The scary spider might have a fear DC of 12, but the character will likely make the roll anyway.

And should the character encounter even just two spiders, the player will complain that the GM is targeting them.

You clearly don't understand the argument I'm making. I'll give you a few examples from my real games to hopefully illustrate the point.

To wit: the system used for the examples was Lamentations of the Flame Princess - an OSR system with no prosaic flaws, that is, no entry on the character sheet for flaws, no list to pick those from, no reward for any kind of bad play. The only direction for roleplay I chiefly added for premade characters is a max five word synopsis of the nature of a character (f.ex. "man-hating elf barbarian") accompanied with three quotes from that character (f.ex. "The world belongs to elves. Mankind is cancer. It wasn't me and they made me do it!") Most characters don't even have that, their players decide moment-to-moment how to portray them.

So do or do they not have major, life-affecting flaws?

Yes.

The most common example is alcoholism. Mechanically, in the game, alchohol is just a poison. You pay money for it and get penalties for drinking it. Yet, quest for alcohol and drinking it has lead to situations such as:

1) First thing PCs do in a wizard's tower is raid the wine closet. Later, one of them pops open a bottle and gets poisoned from spoiled wine.

2) A dwarf gets so drunk, in the middle of a dungeon crawl, that they pass out. The other characters, tired of his drunken antics, leave him behind. He gets lost in the dark, falls into a pit and is never seen again.

3) A bunch of characters have achieved of their goal of being turned into vampires. They pop a bottle to celebrate the occasion, only to find out that alcohol no longer has an effect on their undying bodies. Mortified, they set out to find a cure, just so they can get drunk again.

4) Two characters get so drunk in a tavern, they go dancing pantless on the streets and one of them passes out and falls in a ditch. Both get arrested for public indecency. (Being violent lunatics, they later go to murder both the Sheriff and his deputy; one escapes, the other gets hanged. It's a different story, but it's good to remember they would've never ended up in that situation if they hadn't been drunken morons.)

The times where someone was below maximum efficiency due to being drunk or hangover are numerous enough that there'd be no point in counting.

See all those examples? It's because my players culturally associate drinking with partying and having fun, and understand that their characters would too. They see alcohol and getting drunk as its own reward. More modern games with lists of prosaic flaws add flaws like "drunkard" or "drug addict" (etc.) on their lists and come up with complex mechanics and incentive systems for them, just to mimic a fraction of the power that the cultural association has on the behavior of my players and their characters.

At no point of any of these events, did I as game master have to ask my players if they wanted to go that far for a flaw. I never had to utter the word "flaw". My players just did go that far because they wanted to go that far and any regrets they might have over the results only exist in retrospect. I never get blamed for "targeting players" because alcohol is such a mundane and common object, nobody thinks to question its existence. If anything, they'd be more confused if there wasn't any. More often than not, they're the ones asking for its presence to begin with.

This isn't a handful of players; the relevant cultural assumptions are so widespread that in a playgroup of five, you're likely to get at least one inclined towards such behavior. But the frequency of the specific example is somewhat besides the point: even if any specific flaw isn't common, if real people are flawed, the total amount and total frequency of flaws that'd influence how your players play a game is high enough that seeing truly flawless play is extremely rare.

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@Anonymouswizard: you posted while I was writing this; my post was delayed due to server problems. I'll write you a separate reply.

[Vahnavoi]

I'm having trouble parsing that, but...

The people making the push are not talking about how to implement flaws in games for the reasons Talakeal is; they have different motives and goals, and hence their arguments do not touch on the whys and why nots of what Talakeal is asking. Hence, ignore them.

I'm not one of the people actively pushing for disability inclusivity, but it matters. I actively include a note in my game, and state that if a player wants an item to increase their character's ability to act such as a wheelchair or prosthetic hand they can start with it for free.

I am severely nearsighted. I never assume nor require free sight correction for any of my characters as part of my inclusion a game, because my character isn't me, and I don't have to play one with my particular flaws. Whether I, as game master, would grant them for free depends on genre of game more than anything. If sight correction is trivial in the context of the game, I do things the same as you. If not, then the choice to play a near-sighted person has to be made with the understanding that sight correction is expensive and limited in availability; in short, the player has to be prepared to deal with all the BS I have to deal with in real life.

Serious question, can you name explicitly dyspraxic characters in a work of fiction? Does the average person even know what dyspraxia is? If I want to play a character with my condition how do I manage it? In most games I just drop Dexterity/Agility buy up some skills to 'average' to reflect the physical side and roleplay the mental side, but I can't do the first in D&D5e without eventually becoming too good at certain things.

I can't, but if you go back, you'll notice that my argument is built on the notion that games and non-game fiction aren't the same field. The inclusion or absence of dyspraxic characters in the field of wider fiction is hence irrelevant.

The practical way to model any given disability is to use expert knowledge of a player to alter game descriptions to suit. Trying to use the abstracted conflict resolution systems of most RPGs to model them is a fool's errand: those systems are not built with sufficient rigor nor degree of accuracy to do any particular problem justice. If you want real mechanical representation, you are always looking at making a game specifically centered around that disability. For example, there are simulation games made to model experience of autistic or ADHD individuals for a neurotypical person. (For my personal problems, I would skip game level implementation entirely and just hand my eyeglasses to whoever I need to understand how bad my sight is. Technically, they overcorrect to the wrong direction when a person with normal sight looks through them, but it still gets get the message across and triggers a predictable reaction: "Oh man, you really can't see anything without these, can you?")

For D&D, shortly, what you're already doing is close to the best option. At most, you can improve it by asking your DM to give you less points, so you don't end up unrealistically good in some other area. Anything more would be pointless.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

There's actually several games that implement Flaws in a significant way, and do so quite well, and I'm surprised nobody's mentioned them yet because three of them are pretty prominent.

In Blades in the Dark, every character has to pick a Vice that characterizes the way they relieve their stress. Then, you can earn up to 2 xp points per session by struggling with your vice and having it cause trouble. (This is out of IIRC 10 XP required to pick up a new character perk.) What I've found is that it's a pretty loosey-goosey take, because the intent is not to punish the player for having the flaw, or to make it a significant problem, but to make sure players are continuing to push it into the fiction of the game, adding color and interest to the character.

In Burning Wheel, you have Traits, which earn you Fate when they cause trouble for you. (Fate is a currency that gives you bonuses on rolls and can be invested in a skill or stat to upgrade it in the long run.) Interestingly, all traits bought at character creation cost you trait points; there's none that give you trait points. Even the negative ones, you have to invest in. Their idea is that traits have an impact on the narrative, so you have to pay for them because they impact the narrative. The more significant a trait is, the more trait points it costs.

In games built on the Cortex Plus and Cortex Prime frameworks (examples include Leverage, Firefly, and Marvel Heroic), flaws are a core part of the game: every character has three Distinctions, which can wielded at any time as an advantage or as a detriment. If you include a Distinction in your roll (you can always include exactly one Distinction), you can include it as a d8, or you can take a "Plot Point" and include it as a d4. Plot Points let you do fancy stuff on future rolls that help you increase your die total, or sometimes they're required to use character abilities. When you take a Distinction at a d4, it has a 1/4 chance of causing a complication (which earns you more Plot Points) that causes trouble in the scene. So it's a kind of opt-in flaw deal, but the people who are choosing to activate their flaws a lot will have a whole pile of Plot Points ready for the important fights/actions in the game.

Finally, Fate has literally been built around this for years. Like in Cortex, you have traits which can be invoked in positive or negative ways. Unlike Cortex, every character trait works like this, ditto for scene traits. The Compel engine is what drives the drama of play, with players racking up Fate Points in exchange for leaning into their traits and causing trouble. (One trait, the Trouble, is explicitly written as a trait that's generally a disadvantage.)

So yeah, it absolutely works to mechanize flaws, and there are many acclaimed games which have successfully done so. It seems like there's even a variety of approaches here, but it seems like the common thread is that they all reward players on an ongoing basis. This makes sense--if you try to pack all the reward upfront, then as the designer you're trying to guess how impactful a trait will be to the players going forward. This is the problem that plagues a flaw system like GURPS: players will spot cases where this assumption is incorrect for their campaign or their build. By rewarding players when their flaw becomes relevant, you not only adapt the reward to the frequency of the relevance, but you encourage the players to make their flaw relevant during play.

So it gets optimizers to make their flaw more present, and for the players who enjoy playing flaws, it gives them a reward and ensures that they aren't harming the success of the group.

[Aerys]

I think the balancing is great, but you could add more flexibility by allowing a flaw to be balanced by a bonus in a unrelated area. In the World of Darkness they had Merits and Flaws, which could be used for character points, but also could be used to balance each other. And most GMs only allowed so many of each.

In that system you could choose minor or major flaws and merits, with I believe 1 major being equal to 2 minor. There were several categories, such as supernatural, physical, mental, etc. Some of these were not really workable as a character, but I'm sure you could come up with a list that works for you and your players. So if they want to be good at something they are lacking in another area.

As far as what the mechanical bonuses would be, I'm always wary of the min/maxing problem since once one person does it, it tends to ramp up the other players who want to be on a level playing field. So I think just doing it on a case by case basis like you were saying is best, rather than having a list, which would inevitably have the "optimal choice" combination somewhere in it.

Ideally merits and flaws would tell you what the player is looking for in the game, or more likely what they'd like to avoid, which is still valuable information.

[Anonymouswizard]

The people making the push are not talking about how to implement flaws in games for the reasons Talakeal is; they have different motives and goals, and hence their arguments do not touch on the whys and why nots of what Talakeal is asking. Hence, ignore them.

True, and because we're agree on three genetics rather than the specifics I'm not really to go much further.

On the subject on realism/representation, it doesn't require a list of started flaws in any way, just mention of out and somewhere to write it on the character sheet (if it even needs that). A list of examples can be good, but just make it clear that you can play a flawed character and some people will surprise you with what they take.


Also, I'm actually going to disagree with Talakeal's player, I think that just like intentionally breaking the game taking flaws just for the extra points is actually the minority. It's just that they're the kinds of people more likely to discuss the character building aspects of the game.

But ultimately I think you get more realistically flawed characters by not giving bonus points for them. Because when you give me bonus points for them my first instinct is to grab the local equivalent of Terminal Illness (sure I'll die in the next couple of in-game years, but if I've created a replacement character by then it's just free points). Instead you get it by adding a player how their character is flawed. Yes you'll get a lot more characters with one or two minor flaws, but combine that with the characters developing quirks during okay and it becomes a lot more realistic.

Also beats the overly encompassing flaw. Half the example characters in the Ubiquity version of Space 1889 have the 'Underprivileged' flaw, and due to the soft limit of one flaw per character the implications are interesting.

[Tanarii]

There's actually several games that implement Flaws in a significant way, and do so quite well, and I'm surprised nobody's mentioned them yet because three of them are pretty prominent.

They seem very abusable, just in game play as opposed at creation. Take a negative on less important rolls, in order to gain a bonus saved for later more important rolls or even buy character advances. Crane's Torchbearer for example has that kind of system.