By Jennifer Brandes and Chris Hepler

So there you are, settling down for a campaign of your favorite RPG. The GM's told you about the flavorful background, a few interesting fantasy races to choose from, potential abilities and power factions, yet when he hands you the character sheet, your eyes take on the television-stare. You don't know why, but somehow you just can't define who this refugee from polite society is, or why she's here, or even her height and weight.

And when the inevitable Guy Who Wasn't Here Last Week shows up to play in the second session and the Mouseketeer roll call of PCs fires off, you realize you don't have much beyond name, rank, and THAC0 number. A few dozen dead monsters later, it dawns on you that you're not gonna be making up much more any time soon. Two more months of bad sessions and you're telling the GM that you can't make tonight, because you'll be busy meeting pedophiles in the chatroom.

The good news is, it's not necessarily your fault.

Core rulebooks these days often say "If you don't like our rules, throw them out!" But rarely, if ever, do they exhort you to make up your own or lift them from other games. (And why should they? They have supplements to sell!) And though no game stops you from designing a character who has vowed only to use her sword on alternate Thursdays when the moon is full, few players will put their character at such a disadvantage, especially when the rest of the group is stacking numbers to make their PCs the best. But for GMs who hide in fear of yet another group of, "um...adventurers, um...seeking their fortune," there's a fabulous method to encourage players to flesh out their characters, and its name is bribery.

Whether they're called Advantages and Disadvantages, Edges and Flaws, Merits and Flaws, or "Step 7: The Kitchen Sink," you know what we're talking about. The players and GM strike a deal: Clueless Hero comes up with a coherent picture of the character beyond a mug shot, and Papa Points-Based Game System lays on the sugar.

Some games have long since covered this ground: GURPS, the World of Darkness games, Shadowrun, Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea all have point-based allocation systems with benefits for fleshed-out characters. But not everybody plays those games, or favors their rules systems, and there's no reason to wait until the system of your choice introduces a bunch of quirks before you use them with your players.

THE SYSTEM
Quirks are a way for characters' personalities to shape the rules, providing a counterbalancing game effect for specific advantages and disadvantages the player chooses during character creation. Each Quirk is rated Mild, Moderate, or Extreme, and Positive or Negative. Positive Quirks give the character an unusual "advantage," Negative Quirks a "penalty."

Those terms are in quotes because if you believe the goal of roleplaying is to have fun, "penalty" is a relative term. The "penalties" are strikes against making a mighty- thewed God-mode Champion of All That Is Right who can blast every bad guy on the first hit, snap his fingers and have presidents on their knees, and generally breeze through every scenario without any help from the other players. This kind of fantasy is fun in small doses, but it can quickly ruin a game when there's more than one player trying it.

To encourage players to off-set their strengths with interesting weaknesses which facilitate character interaction, taking Negative Quirks can give them a small bonus to their stats during character creation, while Positive Quirks must be paid for to offset their helpfulness.

In the following charts we present the payments and benefits for four sample game systems: Earthdawn, Orkworld, Cyberpunk, and Call of Cthulhu. For each Quirk chosen, you select one of the possible effects. We recommend characters be limited to a maximum of two Positive and two Negative Quirks, otherwise your games may degenerate into another common fantasy, which we like to call the "Pay Attention to Me, I'm the Albino Pre-op Transsexual Mime" Syndrome.

Earthdawn - This system prevents point abuse with its "step" system and sharply limited starting Talents. As such, balanced Quirks are very direct and easy to integrate. Characters add or subtract the change from their Attributes or Talents during character creation, with modifiers applying after all points have been distributed. For example, a player who chose the Moderate Negative Quirk Dependents might use her two extra points to "buy" additional levels in two Talents; if this puts them slightly nearer to Second Circle, so be it. Starting characters may not exceed their racial maximums for Attributes with these points.

Orkworld - Although this game already has a system of advantages in place, these apply to the tribe, not the individual. This is extremely useful for the "Realistic" or "Civilization" modes, but can be a little limiting for those who want to play the next "Doolay of the Two Spears" and be remembered for themselves. The "Point Value" changes below apply to the character's pool of points, and can, like all points, be used toward Virtues or Skills. These points cannot be applied to any Household Virtues. In Orkworld, however, because personal property is limited, it is more valuable than in Earthdawn and can therefore be traded for other benefits. In story terms, your ork develops other heroic abilities to compensate for losing his spear or reindeer, or lost that eye when he stayed outside, building up his home's defensibility during a human raid.

Cyberpunk 2020 - This system functions similarly to Earthdawn, but since the 'ware makes the 'borg, starting money is a lot more influential. Those lucky enough to start off with a wad can pay for their bennies, and poorer folks can take penalties for euro -- perfect for the tone of Cyberpunk. Since there are so many skills in the system and so little time before the local Boostergang gives you the Flashing Red Special, they're a bit easier to get.

Call of Cthulhu - In a percentile-based system like COC, points can be distributed in many combinations -- three percent here, ten here, and so on. Money is irrelevant compared to shoring up that all-important Sanity score if you want to last longer against the forces of darkness. Or players might "pay off" those special advantages (Positive Quirks) by being a little bit more...frayed. GMs should be aware that using extra Attribute Points on POW will increase Sanity. This may be disallowed. Skills, Sanity, and Attributes cannot exceed normal maximums.

These are just four examples of how Quirks could function in four fairly divergent systems. This Quirk method can work for any game system with some work by the GM to figure out specifically how much a given strength Quirk should be worth. An Extreme quirk generally should not change more than approximately ten percent of the starting amount of points allocated to a widely-available game statistic (for example, skills in most systems). Rarer and more essential stats like attributes that combine with skills should be on a smaller scale yet.

WHAT THE DEGREES MEAN
Quirks are not just window dressing that you write down on the character sheet to get some extra points. Each Quirk should provide an advantage or disadvantage that actually affects the game and story. If the change is in something that will never come up (Racism against left-handed anemic Eskimos), or can be cured in five minutes (being Blackmailed by the very first enemy the group kills), the GM can either strike the point benefit, or simply add an equally inconvenient Quirk into the character's history (whether or not the character and player know). Characters should always feel the effects of a Quirk. (Hey, if you can get +6 to your attributes from two of these things, expect to pay through the snout for them.)

GMs and players can also design their own Quirks, keeping in mind the guidelines here. It is essential to ask if the Quirk can be ignored or forgotten easily when determining its point cost. A Dark Fate or other Grand Ultimate Destiny arrangement with the gamemaster can be shrugged off without a hitch: after all, it only shows up when the character is going to die anyway, right? It may sound impressive, but it will only be used in one game session. An Advantage that lets you use any skill at Rank 1 without having to learn it will show up many times a night.

A Mild Quirk is just that. Though it can provide a little edge or amusing change of pace, it affects the character under one or two very specific circumstances. For instance, Brian wants Ryoi, his yakuza character in Cyberpunk 2020, to have cut off his little finger out of shame, and asks the GM whether he could count this as a Quirk. The GM rules that he can, deciding that the effect is to make it hard for him to grip a katana properly, so Ryoi's Difficulty Number increases by one when using melee weapons. Since the penalty is small and restricted to two skills -- fencing and melee -- it is a Mild Negative Quirk. A Mild Positive Quirk would give a similarly small bonus.

A Moderate Quirk affects the character on a fairly regular basis, but is not insurmountable. If Ryoi got his hand completely mangled going after a kilo of synthcoke fed into a wood chipper, and refuses to get a cyberhand because he wants the injury to constantly remind him to be careful, the GM might call that a Moderate Negative Quirk. This disability affects Ryoi all the time and on some important skills, but not everything -- he can still lift and carry things, but climbing, typing, and wrestling is going to suffer. Moderate Positive Quirks usually apply a mild advantage over a broad area.

An Extreme Quirk changes the character's life, and usually the course of your story. For example, if Ryoi has a remote camera/bomb combination in his skull that relays back information to Biotechnica HQ, he is going to have to dance to their tune 24 hours a day; an Extreme Negative Quirk. And when Ryoi begins hunting down the Biotechnica execs who did this to him, and enlists the help of the other, non-bugged PCs, the plot is kicked off to a running start. In fact, many Extreme Quirks, positive or negative, are practically screaming to be plot devices. If an Earthdawn character is hailed as the "chosen one" by a major cult, it can give her all sorts of friends, information, and goodies -- but the PC had better live up to her new reputation, whether or not she actually has the powers her followers think.

Some Quirks can be taken at two or three levels of intensity. Use your head when deciding whether or not someone can have the same Quirk at two different strengths: Unstable (Moderate) is going to be overshadowed by Unstable (Extreme), but Hunted (Mild) and Hunted (Extreme) just give a character two different people to watch out for.

SAMPLE QUIRKS
Since these are intended as a guideline for multiple games, use your judgment when introducing them into a campaign. As a rule of thumb, if there's already a way to do something in a game, introducing a Quirk with the same effect is usually unbalancing. For example, in Call of Cthulhu, Education is an Attribute; obviously, the Quirk Higher Education is not needed there, although it provides nice color in other games. The meanings can also be stretched to fit the game system: Orkworld's nomadic tribal orks are hardly going to be attending the local community college; for that game, Higher Education may mean private sessions with the Tala, or actually having spent time with Dwarven or Human scholars.
And, of course, these are not all the Quirks possible; the number of Quirks is as unlimited as the number of characters and people in the world. With that in mind, we've tried to provide ones that haven't been done before, or that we thought were especially funny or interesting. To that end, we didn't include some which are already common in other game systems because we thought you could figure out "Ambidextrous," "Lightning Reflexes," "Phobia," and so forth on your own. We have also avoided most combat-related advantages and disadvantages because they are reasonably easy to think up, and such a list of specifics gets tiresome in a multi-system article.
Again, since this is a generic system, we are presenting descriptions rather than numbers. While it's quite possible, and fun, to play these as pure roleplaying benefits and penalties, the idea may be better driven home if there's a number change to go with it. Remember, to most players' minds, a bonus is there to be taken.

POSITIVE QUIRKS
Adaptable: Moderate
You can fit in easily to new situations, are naturally at home with many groups of people, and can pick up local gossip without even trying. When trying to fit in somewhere -- infiltrating the local thieves' guild, trying to make friends in prison, or hobnobbing at Congressional dinner parties -- use your highest social skill, even if it is less applicable than another.

Crack Driver (Horseman): Mild
You are a natural behind the wheel or in the saddle, and may take your primary transportation skill at three-quarters the normal cost. This does not work with car/riding-focused cybernetics or magic, as it is practice that makes you good. This also allows you to do cinematic moves which might otherwise be considered impossible -- training your horse to run through raging fires to rescue you from certain death, and so on.

Day Job: Mild to Extreme
You have a real job that you hold down in addition to your secret life as an adventurer/cyberpunk/investigator/superhero. While this job has its own responsibilities and takes up some of your time, it is useful for keeping the IRS off your back and for earning a little extra cash. In a pre-industrial setting, you might be a minor noble, earning money off your estates, or be a member of a merchant house. This money will never count as treasure worth experience points. Orks may have a hobby such as beekeeping or leatherworking that gets them higher-ranked equipment that others value.
Mild - Part-time, $800 U.S. circa 2000/800 eb/50 sp a month
Moderate - Full-time, $1,600/500 sp a month
Extreme - Full-time, $5,000/1,000 sp a month

Dealer: Mild
Hey, you know the real way to make spare silvers, yeah? One of your friends or contacts can get you an illegal substance (drugs, guns, explosives, scrolls) for half normal cost and in half the normal time after play begins. Keep it imaginary and in the game, of course.

Experienced: Moderate
You're not one of these young 'uns that think all there is to life is swingin' swords and throwing spells. You've been around. You know these streets like...like some awful cliché. Your professional training and hard-headedness have kept you alive, giving you a mild bonus for rolls to resist urges, such as checks for psychological drug addiction, going berserk, sanity checks, or falling asleep on guard duty. This does not affect resisting stunning damage, tranquilizers, or the like. It affects compulsory or coercive magic, but not mind reading or similar scanning. You are probably older than other characters and have built up a network of connections among like-minded NPCs, beginning play with at least one local contact (a Fixer in cyberpunk worlds). In Orkworld you may be an older Shoola (outcast) taken in by a younger tribe.

Flexible: Mild
You can (within reason) fit through openings too small for normal people, receive a small bonus to dodging melee attacks or escaping locks and grabs in wrestling, and there's always the chance of doing your country proud as an Olympic gymnast.

Friends Abroad: Mild to Extreme
You aren't local talent, or wherever you've been, you've left friends behind you. You've kept in touch enough that if you have to run, there's someone you can call on. Begin play with a contact in one to three other countries/tribes according to the level of the Quirk. Be warned, if you don't work on keeping in touch, the benefits of the Quirk can fade. These contacts may also need help from you at times, so keep the reindeer fed and those frequent flyer miles handy.

Higher Education: Mild to Extreme
At Mild, you remember more than most people about school, and still use some of what your parents and friends have told you. On any knowledge-related subject, you can get a base skill roll with one rank (or 10%) of a skill to see what you remember. At Moderate, your parents actually sent you to college, or some corporation picked you out of the lineup and decided to help your future. In a fantasy game, you were apprenticed to a trading house, military academy, or individual with a specific field of expertise. In any game, you get the benefits as above, as well as a +3/30% to the knowledge skill of your choice. By Extreme, if you weren't going on wild adventures, you could make a living at your specialty. You're known in your field, and people will respect or at least consider your opinion. This can be useful in situations such as convincing academics that the cops really are possessed by demons from beyond space, or that the bioplague was not just engineered, but tailored to the murder victim.
Gamemasters should pay careful attention to ensure the skills acquired are not so distorted in point value that it makes no mathematical sense not to take this Quirk.

Intimidating: Mild
Something about you says "Danger! Don't Touch!" You can easily intimidate other people without having to resort to actual violence; useful for bodyguards and enforcers. All Intimidation tests are at a decreased difficulty. NPCs find it tough to make themselves attack you in single melee combat, requiring them to pass a Willpower or fail an Intelligence/Sanity roll to do so. (Being ambushed, shot, or mobbed has no restriction.)

Member: Moderate
You belong to a large, multi-national organization -- Yakuza, Mafia, Freemasons, Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow, the Elven Liberation Front, etc.. There are a few other members in your local area who can help you out with information, extra muscle and a place to hide, although they'll expect the same from you. The group can also help when you travel, setting you up with contacts, rooms, and illegal equipment dealers wherever you go. Since you are adventuring/superheroing/investigating/edgerunning rather than working with the group, you're assumed to be a low to mid-level member. Any higher would require taking the Quirk as Extreme.

Military Background: Mild
You've been a part of the military and know how the military machine works. This can manifest itself in many small ways. You may know Morse Code, battle standards of nearby countries, and/or standard-issue equipment for soldiers of different branches. You know (in theory) how to conduct a war. This can also help you explain less-than-legal equipment which you might have, especially useful in a restrictive setting. You may also have a contact or two within the army who can keep you up to date.

Not Memorable: Moderate
For whatever reason -- acting ability, generic looks -- you can blend almost instantly into a crowd, and people find it difficult to describe or recognize you, even after having just seen you. Increase the difficulty for people trying to pick you out of a crowd, when running away or in a line-up. You also tend to be overlooked when anyone is reporting on your group's doings.

Powerful Contact: Extreme
You grew up in the palace/corporate headquarters/Senate building, and you're still remembered by one of the influential players in your world. The GM can decide how far up this goes -- the King himself, or one of the palace serving girls. In any case, this contact can sometimes pull strings for you, getting you out of trouble or passing along useful information. This contact must be used sparingly -- each favor asked makes the next one more difficult to get.

Understanding Family: Mild
You have a family, parents, children, spouse or group of up to four close friends who know about your "other life." They will cover for you when you need a place to hide, make sure you get food and sleep, and handle most of your mundane affairs. This family is assumed to not have any skills or occupations of particular use to you. If you want to treat them as contacts, henchmen and the like, the Quirk becomes Moderate. In Orkworld, this may mean you are still welcome in the tribe/camp of your mother, since an understanding family of your own is a presupposition of the game.

NEGATIVE QUIRKS
Addict: Extreme
You are addicted to one or more serious drugs which keep you high and jittery or dreamy and floating most of the time, and grumpy from withdrawal for the rest of it. For game systems with rules for addiction, use those, if not, the GM and you should sit down and discuss what drug you're on and what the specific effects are (see "Name Your Poison," elsewhere in the Articles section). For less physically debilitating addictions like gambling, reduce the Quirk to Moderate.

Amnesiac: Extreme
You have no memory of your past beyond a few weeks ago. Brain trauma, data lock, psychogenic fugue, overwhelming psychic attack, mind-wipe -- who knows? Certainly not you. You begin knowing no one; if you choose the Quirk Powerful Contact, Understanding Family or Member, this asset is unknown to your character when play begins. In addition, the GM may choose up to three more Quirks for you to find out about over the course of play.
Be aware that this Quirk should not be used as an excuse to pass the character-background-creation buck to the GM. If this occurs, the GM should feel a liscense, perhaps even an obligation, to become nasty or whimsical in return. Incurable brain cancer, old gay lovers turning up, and the revelation that the PC is only a hologram projected from an earring dropped by a 27th-century time traveler are apt deterrents for fellow players.

Blackmailed: Moderate
Someone knows the dirt on you and is blackmailing you for money, information, favors, or something as yet unnamed. The person could be a major recurring enemy or just looking for a quick buck. This implies that the blackmail material is something you don't want to share with the other player characters. If it's only non-player characters who would care if the secret were exposed ("Gosh, I never figured ol' Black Death was a mercenary! Guess it's the end of the world now!"), reduce the Quirk to Mild.

Cause: Mild to Extreme
You were put on this world for one purpose: to make people realize the sanctity of God/democracy/the environment/Bashthraka/your global empire. You have devoted yourself to the betterment of the cause and it is a rare day when you don't do something, no matter how small, which will help. The level of the Quirk determines how strongly committed you are and how willing you are to suffer for your devotion. It is difficult to avoid helping your cause if the opportunity is there, and nearly impossible to actively act against it, even in self-preservation.

Code of Ethics: Moderate
You have a code of honor you abide by at all times, even if it means some inconvenience. This may be religious, moral, legal, or personal in nature, but it must be rigid enough to effect your daily life. Situational ethics are not for you. Sit down with the GM to work out the specifics of your belief system.

Complex, Conan: Mild
Guns are for wimps! Real men and women use katanas, sledgehammers, and fists to settle things. You like your combat to be up close and personal. You can't take any skill with ranged weapons during character creation (or any weapon skill in a fantasy game). In extreme circumstances, you may use a higher-tech weapon than you're used to, but it takes a difficult Willpower check.

Complex, Hero: Moderate
You are the noble hero, patrolling the endlessly corrupt streets of the sprawl/ kingdom/steppe/galactic empire, spreading Goodness, Peace, and Justice in your wake. It would be beneath you to ever allow a just cause to go unserved, an innocent victim to go unsaved, or an evil-doer to go unpunished. You can't refuse any job for a good cause (even for no money), or fail to help someone who is suffering. This may be assumed in superhero games.

Complex, Superman: Mild
Your cyberware/magic/mutant powers/vast experience has left you feeling invulnerable, or at least egotistical. You can't admit that anything is too tough for you, and therefore get yourself into situations that are over your head. It is difficult for you to ever admit you're wrong, or to stop something simply because it is too much to handle.

Death Wish: Extreme
Something so horrible happened to you that you view your own life as cheap. Trauma, loneliness, the death of a loved one; whatever it is makes you subconsciously court your own death, drawing you towards situations that might kill you. This wish is probably not conscious, and you will make up rationalizations for why you can't leave a dangerous situation, even while you subconsciously choose to handle it in the most dangerous way possible ("Save yourselves! I'll hold them off until you make it to the ship!")

Dependents: Moderate
You have friends or family whom you care about deeply. While this isn't a problem, per se, heartless villains can find this out and use them against you. Who wouldn't you betray when you see your sixty-year-old mother in the hands of the cultists? Of course, this doesn't mean your family care about or listen to you...in fact, they may even be working for the other side.

Disabled: Moderate to Extreme
Blind, deaf, maimed, deformed, a Siamese twin, or otherwise "a little irregular," you've had to deal with something most people don't. Ever since birth, that tragic accident, or when the street doc double-crossed you on the table, you've been disabled in a way that severely interferes with your life. Neither science nor magic can help you, or you have a psychological reason to not fix the condition. Moderate Quirks either make using the damaged sense/limb extremely difficult or pose an unusual but not impossible penalty, such as being mute. Extreme Quirks prevent you from using the sense/limb entirely.

Distinctive: Mild to Moderate
You have a flair for the dramatic in dress, behavior and speech. This makes you dangerously memorable at times, because you can't stand not being recognized for your work. Or you're too set in your habits to change them, even when in obvious danger.
With a Mild Quirk, you may have a metallic gold afro and wear golden robes on the streets of New York, or demand that your hired bards yell "Who's the baddest?" after your every statement. This makes it easy for people to pick you out of a crowd. At Moderate, you're (in)famous somehow. Before your life of adventure began, you were a movie star, sports hero, musician, serial killer or other celebrity. In a fantasy game, maybe you're a noble, church figure, or well-known war hero. This can be good and bad; although your fans will sometimes help you out, you can't be incognito anywhere (especially if your face is stamped on the local coinage or wanted posters).

Extreme Age: Mild or Moderate
You're an unusual age for your chosen profession. At Mild you are extremely young (under sixteen for humans) and no one takes you seriously. You may not have reached full growth, and are not well educated. You cannot take the Quirks Higher Education or Intimidating. At Moderate, you're getting old and have lost the edge you once had. Your body is going and so is the psychological readiness. People dismiss your advice and caution as the worrying of an old fart. You can't improve your physical attributes from their starting values, and take twice the time for non-magical recovery from injury. A very young character (pre-puberty) would also be a Moderate Quirk.

Flashbacks: Extreme
You get wild delusions under conditions of stress. You experimented with every drug on the books and a few not yet in print. Or you had some traumatic experience in virtual reality situations such as simsense, netrunning or astral space, or from implanted memories, Horror-sent dream images, or past lives. When something stressful (or a specific trigger stimulus, for a Moderate Quirk) sets off the flashback, you relive memories and hallucinations for the next 1D6 combat rounds. The GM should make the descriptions as wild as possible. Can you still act during the flashes? Kind of...but your friend may turn into a two-headed purple humanoid lizard if you glance away. Or even if you don't.

Hunted: Mild to Extreme
Someone is after you. Maybe you killed someone he loved...or maybe he killed all your friends and wants you to finish his collection. Maybe he just hates your race/cult/ corp, or wants to destroy you to stop your fight against the old regime. Maybe it's your parole officer, still hunting you down ten years after your prison break. The enemy may be known to you at the beginning of play, or can be revealed over the course of the game. At Mild, you have a single enemy of about the same power level as yourself. At Moderate, you get either two Mild enemies or one more powerful one. At Extreme, you have either three Mild Enemies, one Mild and one Moderate, or one extremely powerful one. The level of the Quirk also determines whether you know why you're being hunted, and how hard it will be to stop your pursuer.

Illiterate: Extreme (Mild for pre-industrial settings)
You were born on the streets, or in some remote rural village and never learned to read. This is common in fantasy settings (although a hassle for magicians and other wannabe scholarly types), but can be a great inconvenience in the information age. While you might be able to have a point-and-click computer skill of no more than 1, you won't be able to read memos, send e-mail, or use a voting ballot without getting confused.

Lucky Charm: Moderate
You have a charm of some sort -- rabbit's foot, clover, favorite hat -- which you are sure is responsible for all your success. Without it, you become frightened, frozen, unable to act. Choose an object without which you believe you can't perform your primary occupation -- fighting, magic, netrunning, etc. This applies to all skills and actions involved in the activity, rather than a single skill roll.

Medical Condition: Extreme
You have a pre-existing medical condition such as a heart murmur, diabetes, asthma or epilepsy which is exacerbated under stressful situations...like your life as an edgerunner/adventurer/investigator/superhero. Make a 2D6 roll at appropriately difficult times; on a 2, you trigger an acute attack. Additionally, once every month make the same roll. Regardless of activity level, a 2 still means an attack, and anything below 5 means the condition has worsened to the point where hospitalization is required for 1D6 days. In a pre-industrial world, the kind of treatment you can expect may be as bad as the condition.

Outsider: Mild or Moderate
You aren't from around these parts, and are going to need help breaking onto the scene. At Mild, all your friends are in another country, or back in prison where you met them. You aren't likely to return to them soon, and they aren't very influential here. At Moderate, you just got out of the institution, unplugged from the sim, fell off the hay truck, or woke up from the coma. Maybe the cryonics people unfroze you because they found a cure. Maybe you don't believe magic exists because your village killed all magical children at birth. Or you don't speak the language, and must be taught it by the other PCs over the course of the game.

Promiscuous: Mild
You don't have notches in your bedpost, buddy, it's just sawdust. You're easily distracted by members of the preferred sex, and regularly cruise nightclubs or joytoy stables, taverns and brothels. Every month, roll 2D6. On a roll of 2, you're in trouble: disease, pregnancy, or gain the Quirk Hunted. On a roll of 12, there's something interesting about this new lover. In societies where frequent, non-monogamous sex is the norm, you still go further than most -- dallying with other tribes or races -- or have some other perversion, such as abstinence.

Racism: Moderate to Extreme
You don't like a group of people who are a sizable part of the population near where you live -- elves, the Anglos north of the border, anyone magical, or those folks who won or lost the last war with your country. This can be any group of people, not necessarily a race as such -- you could be a snob, looking down on all those "beneath" you, or be uncomfortable around the handicapped. All social interactions with "them" will be difficult for you to stomach without showing your feelings. At Moderate, you may be a separationist, part of a jingoistic party that wants war because it'll hurt "them." By Extreme, you're the one the party sends on recruiting missions. You flat-out don't work with people of the group, unless you're using it to sabotage their efforts.
It should be noted that this Quirk is here because it is a negative Quirk that might be fun to overcome with roleplaying or provide an interesting twist in the plot, not because you get a bonus for being a bigot. This Quirk often gets characters killed.

Shell-shocked: Extreme
You've got shell-shock (post-traumatic stress disorder) from a past trauma -- natural disaster, accident, being raped, or repeated combats in the sprawl or during war -- leading to nightmares, anxiety, and a general state of distress. It is hard for you to ever relax enough to rest, doubly so after any dangerous or combat-like experience. Immediately after a combat, you become withdrawn and numb for 1D6 minutes, unwilling to do anything. For 1D6 minutes after that point you are suggestible, and will go with almost any offered course of action short of suicide.

Slow Learner: Extreme
Regardless of how intelligent you are, you have a hard time learning new things. You need someone to go over it with you, step by step, and then spend some serious time practicing to get the same effect most people can in a few hours of practice. You must spend one and a half times the experience cost to learn new abilities, and take twice the learning time. You may also actually be mentally retarded, having an intelligence of at least 20% below average.

Soft-Hearted: Mild or Moderate
You have this wild idea that people suffering and dying because of your actions and those of the psychos you hang out with is wrong. (Gosh, some people...) At Mild, you will use only stun attacks in combat, and will work to subdue rather than kill someone. At Moderate, you feel that killing is out-and-out inexcusable, and won't take part in any combat. If you kill someone accidentally, you are distracted and remorseful until you can do penance. In addition, you can't understand how your teammates can be so blasé about it, and work constantly to convince them to change their ways. (At Extreme, you'd probably be frozen too often to function as a player character.)

Unstable: Moderate to Extreme
Your casing is cracked. Maybe it comes from a bad home life, physical or sexual abuse at a young age, or maybe you just snapped. Or your magic has shown you Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. At Moderate, you're a little wacky, but can be reached. You hand-feed your pet rattlesnake and don't always jerk your hand away in time. You leap out of fifth-floor windows into the swimming pool in order to beat the elevator with the bad guy in it down. At Extreme it's no longer funny. Maybe you lavish people with affection and then threaten to kill yourself when they leave. Or the Good Adventurer in your head talks to people and lives a happy life and the Bad Adventurer kills anyone he's mad at, even your parents, teammates and friends. Or you wake up after three months with a new identity because you went into a psychogenic fugue. At both levels, you can try to resist the urges (more difficult the more extreme the Quirk), but if you fail the GM takes over the character for as long as the insanity episode lasts.

Untrustworthy: Mild
You betray confidences either for money, for personal gain or for gossip. People know this about you and avoid telling you anything they don't think you need to know. This reputation spreads quickly, giving even strangers a chance to figure out who you are and not to talk to you.

Weight Problem: Moderate
You have some extreme of weight, being either hugely overweight or anorexic. This may be from psychological reasons or physical ones, but in either case it puts a real crimp in your lifestyle. Your physical attributes cannot start above average, and any prolonged physical exercise is extremely strenuous. If you're in combat for more than 4 rounds, treat this as a Medical Condition, rolling 2D6 to see if you pass out. You must also make the 2D6 roll once a month to see if anything more serious happens (heart attack from being overweight, or getting extremely sick from starvation).

"CURING" QUIRKS
Every bad habit can be cured with enough effort, and most innate physical or psychological disorders can be reduced to a livable level after a while. If players tire of roleplaying a character's Negative Quirks, it is possible to work out a solution in game and still keep the character. They should look for an in-game way to get over their problems, for example, seeking psychological counseling for an Unstable character. When the GM feels they might realistically be over the problem, the player must spend an amount of experience determined by the GM. We recommend an amount equal to twice what it would have taken to "buy up" the given attributes or skills originally. In some cases, the effect of the Quirk can be reduced in strength, from Unstable (Extreme) to Unstable (Moderate), for example.

USING QUIRKS
As presented, the Quirks are aimed at players, to help them create an interesting, well-rounded, or at least amusing character that neither they or anyone else will get tired of after a few sessions. But, as you probably figured out, Quirks can be a great help to the gamemaster as well.

Quirky characters are much easier to create stories around, or to drag into pre-planned stories. For example, Amir the Blackmailed nomad could be the hook which draws together a whole campaign, as the rest of the party are hired by the blackmailer to lean on him, then are converted to his side by his tearful protestations of how wronged he was. The group then works together to track down the villain, only to find that he has disappeared, but those notes commanding his obedience still appear at sunset every day. Only through their combined skills can they find the blackmailer's true location and identity...deep in the Thunder Mountains.

Even Quirks which seem like they would divide a party, like Outsider, can actually draw people together...bringing them all further into the plot. For example, in our Earthdawn campaign, we had a beautiful elven troubadour who had been brought to Barsaive as an exotic slave destined for Thera. When she joined the rest of the party, she didn't speak a word of Barsaivian. So, when the male elf in the party fell in love with her, there was no way for her to explain that where she came from the scars on both her hands were a sign that she was Horror-marked.

On the other hand, you should be careful, since some Quirks (and some characters) just aren't destined to work well together. We recommend that you print out the list and decide which ones you want in your world, as presented or modified. Since they are intended for use in as wide a range of games as possible, there may be several which don't work for your campaign. Distinctive, for instance, is almost a prerequisite to superhero games, but could be instant death (and GMing hassle) in a spy game.

Players should always check with you before working any given Quirk into their character, and you definitely will want to check out the composition of the whole party before giving the okay to actual character interaction. Having Joe be Racist against "those unfit of body" might be interesting, but stick him in the group with Jane the Disabled paraplegic, and Bob whose Hero Complex makes him defend the downtrodden from any slight, and you have a recipe for PC death. Once they start talking, things are heading out of your control and someone will end the night unhappy.

For verisimilitude, you may also want to limit the number of people who can take a single Quirk within one group. Amnesia may be a fun Quirk to roleplay, but the Vampire game we were once in where two out of the five characters were amnesiacs and three had Dark Fate made us reconsider our entire approach.
On a similar note, you should make sure all your players expect the same level of intensity in roleplaying their Quirks. Many of the examples can be played as either humorous or serious. An Unstable character, for example, could either be a bucket of laughs, amusing the group endlessly with the clever repartee he and his alternate personality exchange, or a tragic example of humanity gone wrong, whose own personality shines in brief glimpses out of the tortured soul he has become. While each of these are fun and legitimate ways to play characters, they don't work so well together.

If your campaign is primarily focused around roleplaying, with a lot of emphasis on finding and overcoming each character's weaknesses, Quirks should be taken seriously. PCs can work together to help each other overcome the sometimes devastating effects of Negative Quirks. Or you can use Positive Quirks to illuminate parts of their backgrounds they're trying to keep secret, leading to tearful confessions. If, however, you prefer flashier, action-filled adventures, four-color comic book heroes, and plenty of laughs, Quirks can give each character a chance to shine, or make them the willing butt of everyone's jokes.

In the end, Quirks are like everything in gaming. They may pose a little trouble in integrating their new suggestions into a world you thought you knew, but if they work out, they're worth it, allowing both breadth and depth of character to increase. They are not a substitute for roleplaying -- just saying that you spent the two Attribute points for Experienced so people should listen to you doesn't mean much if you have bad suggestions and don't speak authoritatively -- but they can provide inspiration for a character you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. If something in this article inspired you to create a new Quirk, go ahead. Who knows? Maybe your GM actually will let you play the twelve-year-old, anorexic, crack-dealing nun...