RPG Flaws
Posted by Rob Herman at August 22nd, 2006
Thursday’s discussion of decision paralysis in RPGs left me thinking about something else that sometimes bugs me in character generation: Flaws. For the uninitiated, most modern RPG systems let you build a character using a system of points to buy skills, abilities, powers, and so on. To encourage players to play characters with interesting weaknesses, they often award extra points for accepting character flaws. That’s the idea, anyway. However, the flaws almost always have flaws of their own…
Shy. Biggest mistake ever. No amount of points are ever worth this flaw, because it prevents you from entering the most interesting part of the game: interacting with other characters. If you are naturally shy it will exacerbate the problem. The only time I can see this being acceptable is for a very loud, forceful, experienced player who’s trying to restrain him/herself and give less experienced players a time to shine.
Bad eyesight, correctible with glasses. Quick. Tell me the last time a character’s glasses got knocked off, resulting in penalties to Perception? I thought you couldn’t. I joke that among all my friends, I alone forgot to take this flaw for the cheap points.
Enemies. What, like your character wasn’t going to make enemies? Did we end up in Peace and Harmony: the RPG? Besides, your problems are your party’s problems. Everyone shares the pain, you get the points.
Dark Secret. Character hook, plot time, and extra points too? Probably a lot of them? Sign me up, baby!
Berserk. Or any Flaw that your party is going to pay for as much or more than you yourself. If anything your friends should get points for the Flaw “Forced To Hang Around With Lunatic.”
Any Flaw worth the same as an equivalent Merit. Ooh. I can take Inept (Driving Trucks) and use it to pay for Born Natural (Driving Cars)? I’ll take 15 of those, please, because it’s easy, in an RPG as in real life, to make sure you’re in the situation that’s advantageous. 99% of the time you’ll be at an advantage, and when for whatever bizarre reason there’s nothing else but a truck to drive, someone else can do it. When balanced Merit/Flaw pairs like this exist, the Flaw should be worth much less than the Merit. The exception is that if this kind of specialization is an integral part of the skill system, as it is in, say, Paranoia.
Quirks. These I don’t actually mind. Many games provide you the chance to take little quirks, like “hates beer, only drinks whiskey,” “always wears red shoes that match her eyes,” and so on. The idea is to reward you with a small number of points for thinking about your character enough to come up with these little touches, and I approve.
These are good reasons to dislike flaws in games where you get chargen points for taking them (old World of Darkness, Ars Magica, Mutants & Masterminds). But the more recent trends are to reward the player only when they come up and actually hinder them in play (the new WoD, Nobilis, Weapons of the Gods), or tie them directly to useful capabilities, so if you want the power, you have to suck up the disadvantage (Burning Wheel, couple of others I can’t remember offhand).
And there are some really interesting tricks in Weapons of the Gods and Dogs in the Vineyard (and possibly a few others), where you actually pay points to have some disadvantage, because it makes things interesting from a story perspective, and gives you the chance to prove what a badass you are. Now, you’re not going to see people doing that if they have a very gamist agenda, but it’s not beyond the pale in a narrativist game.
I have mixed feelings about flaws. I am only very familiar with three systems: Dungeons and Dragons, Deadlands, and 7th Sea.
In DnD Flaws are a variant rule where you take up to two flaws to get the same number of extra feats at first level. From what I understand, the flaws are almost purely mechanical. this seems to me to miss the point entirely. First, it does not really encourage you to roleplay your character better. Second, it is easy to take flaws that do not really hurt your character. You could easily play a strong melee fighter and take a flaw that makes your ranged attacks hit less often, ranged attacks you are unlikely to ever make.
In Deadlands, flaws are practically required. To get any of the edges (including magical powers, the ability to shoot with both hands), a character must take hinderances to balance them out. Some of the hinderances are mechanical, some are purely roleplaying and some are a bit of each. Some I think are good and some free points. However you are rewarded by the GM if you play them when they would get you into trouble (of course the reward rarely seems to offset the cost of the trouble) and it encourages your to make sub-optimal decisions because that is what the charcter would do.
In 7th Sea, you can take exactly one flaw or one virtue. The flaw increases your character creation points by 10 (100 base) and a virtue costs ten points. The first cool thing is that you have to choose between the two (or neither). Flaws are something you can roleplay, but no reward and you are not required to. However your flaw is the one tragic failing about your character that is most likely to bring about his downfall and the GM can activate at anytime to make you give into it. Nothing like being about to escape the castle with the evil guys top secret Magguffin (sp?) when you have to stop to woo the lady in the bath for long enough for the guards to catch up with you.
Sometimes flaws are just another tool to optimize your character. I suppose thats fine. Sometimes they encourage roleplaying which I think is good. Sometimes a system comes up with something really neat for them that can change the whole session or the direction of the campaign which is really cool.
Oh man, Deadlands. Deadlands flaws are a particular sore spot with me because for a whole lot of them, it’s your party that ends up paying the cost, not you.
No flaws should be allowed without the DM’s approval, but any of them can work. My favorite RPG experience was the one where my character was extremely shy AND disliked by the other characters, but I was also the most powerful and knowledgeable of them, and the other characters didn’t have a hope of surviving without me. It made for some very interesting dynamics, and it ensured that my shyness was an obstacle instead of a game-destroying flaw.