Ok, so I did a little crowdsourcing via Twitter, Facebook, and G+ this morning. Now I’d like to take this crowd-sourcing to the next level with a little poll. I was looking for a term to use for Character Flaws for Signal Zero. In about two hours I received 4 on Facebook, 7 replies on Twitter, and 16 on G+.

And people wonder why I’m switching to G+.

For a  more detailed breakdown of what I got and my thoughts on the process, head past the break. If you just want to make your voice heard, the poll is to your right. Without giving away too much, here are a few bullet points to help you make your choice:

• Character Flaws always hurt you, the never help. You do not get to “spin” a flaw into something positive.
• Flaws are used against you, they don’t apply a penalty.
• Having Flaws grants you access to a benefit but in order to get more of that benefit you take more\stronger flaws.
• Flaws are both Human and Machine; they range from Alcoholism to Memory Leaks. From Reality Dissociation to Malware Infections. They can be anything wrong with you or your cyberwear.

If you have questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer without spoiling the surprise of the system.

I left the request SUPER broad because I wanted to see on a basic level what people would come up with. The post read: “Crowd-sourcing: I need a good cyberpunk term for character flaws…. Thoughts?” and while I got a ton of interesting suggestions (some of which I might use in other places) most of them were way more tech-focused than I wanted. My bad, should have specified I guess.

There was a question raised a couple of times about if I needed the other side of the coin. If I was going to have a Pro/Con style mechanic. It’s interesting that people assumed that, because I’m not. The rest of your character is a Pro for you, I don’t feel the need to have a separate category to “balance” my Cons against.

Anyway, here are the suggestions I’ve got thus far. My favorites have been highlighted:

Glitches (Cam Banks, Daniel Solis, Kevin Weiser, Jermey Elder, Robert Timmerberg)
Bugs (Cam Banks, Saniel Solis, Sir Guido, Matt Dukes, Robert Timmerberg, Murph Murphy, Neosect)
Negs (Cam Banks)
Viruses (Daniel Solis)
Worms (Daniel Solis)
Features (Tim White, Richard Ashley, Robert Timmerberg, Mike McMullan)
Defects (OtherDoc, Matt Dukes, Mike McMullan, Neosect)
Robot Herpes (Antiable)
Runtime Errors (Wintjen)
Defaults (Carl Morgan)
Malfunctions (Scott Anderson)
Baggage (Greg Stolze)
Emotional Tech Support Issues (Matt Dukes)
Issues (Derek M. Johnson)
Bad Coding (Richard Ashley)
Faulty Code (Richard Ashley)
Noise (Alex Tsotsos)
Static (Temmogen FHotA)
Downers (Jessie Foster)
Crush (Alex Tsotsos)
Zeros (Richard Ashley)
Bio Bugs (Tadeusz Cantwell
Overlocks (Alex Tsotsos)
Cyber Psychosis (Mike Morelock)
Service Packs (Robert Timmerberg)
Setbacks (Marshall Miller)
Errors (Marshall Miller, Mike McMullan)
Bias (Marshall Miller)
Dissonance (Marshall Miller)
Catches (Mike McMullan)
Troubles (Mike McMullan)
Breaks (Murph Murphy)
Black Hats (Murph Murphy)
Idiosyncracies (Neosect)