My crowdsourcing experiment ended this morning. I closed out the poll (you can see the final results to the right) and have drafted up the first stab at the system.

The truth is, I didn’t post the poll to get an answer. I already knew what I was going to call Character Flaws. I knew the minute it was first suggested. I wanted to see if it was an acceptable idea. While I liked all five suggestions, I already had my favorite and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a terrible choice.

Lets talk about the contestants, shall we? Defects and Glitches are very similar in my mind, I liked both of them but they sound a bit too computer-y for my tastes. You don’t really think of people as Defective or Glitchy. Baggage is solid but I was worried that it went too far the other way from Glitches and Defects. Baggage is a really strong human term but not very cyber. While I liked Issues (It reminded me of the old joke about the Korn album: “What’s your problem man? Do you have issues?”, “Yeah, I love Korn.”) it sounds a bit adolescent for a “mature” game. With Dissonance my concern was that the word itself sounded like Thesaurusitis. It’s a good word, but does it need to be there?

If you’re interested in my choice and seeing the first draft of my Character Flaw system, I’ve posted it after the break. Remember, first draft. It’s likely to change a bit but I think the core is solid… I mean, I borrowed the idea from another game system. (Full credit for the inspiration will be given in the final product.)

Bonus points to anyone who can figure out what game system its inspired from.

Step D: Baggage

Baggage is all that crap you carry around with you. Sometimes it comes in handy, but most of the time it just weighs you down. Sometimes you choose to take on the burden and other times you’re forced to carry the weight. No matter the details, everyone has Baggage.

I really don’t like doing mid-game credits. It breaks the flow of the game. This time is an exception to make a point. I didn’t coin the name Baggage. I put out a call for help across the internet and got a ton of great feedback. I mentioned this idea up in your Concept and here it is, Crowdsourcing in action. For the name Baggage all credit goes to the marvelous Greg Stolze. I was struggling with what to call this system and Greg stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park. Not to dismiss the other feedback, as there were tons of great suggestions. It was just that Baggage really captured what I’m going for.

Baggage represents a character element that work against your character. All of your Baggage is ranked from 1 to 5. The higher the number, the more detrimental the Baggage. You can have multiple Baggage traits, which just means multiple problems.

Insert 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one joke?

While Baggage never directly hurts you, other people can use your Baggage against you. Anytime your Baggage would be appropriate, your opposition can add it’s Rank to their dice pool. Unlike other elements, your opponents can use multiple Baggage traits against you too.

Every Baggage Trait comes with a Buy-Off and Resist cost. The total cost is always 50^¤ but divided between Buy-Off and Resist. Your Buy-Off is always how many Ranks you don’t have while your Resist is always equal to how many Ranks you do have. Your enemies can pay a number of Credits equal to your Baggage’s Buy-Off amount and force you to act a certain way. If you don’t want to go with that program, you’ll have to pay a number of Credits equal to your Baggage’s Resistance Cost.

Basically: If you have Alcoholism at Rank 3, your Buy-Off is 20^¤ and your Resist is 30^¤. Might need to find a better way to phrase that paragraph.

Why would you want Baggage at all? Because sometimes it comes in handy. Baggage allows you to re-roll any dice pool you’ve rolled. You have to take the second result, unless you choose to re-roll again. Every session you can re-roll a number of times equal to your highest Baggage Rank.

If you’ve already re-rolled a number of times equal to your highest Baggage Rank, you’re not out of luck. You can re-roll again, all it costs you is another Rank of Baggage. Increase one Baggage train by one Rank and roll again. One of your conditions gets worse so you can roll again.

Baggage also has one other advantage. If you’re ever about to die, you can cash out and survive the encounter. You can only do this once per session, so try not to die again. You gain a Rank of Baggage and can’t re-roll via Baggage for the rest of the session.

May or may not need this rule. Evaluate after playtesting.

You can’t just buy off Baggage with Advancement either, you have to work on your problems. At the beginning of any session you can declare that you’re working on your Baggage. For the rest of the session you need to role-play working on your problem and if by the end of the session you haven’t used any Baggage re-rolls or had to cash out to survive, you lose one Rank of Baggage. The only exception to this is if you only have one Rank of Baggage left. You can never be 100% Baggage Free.