Virtues & Vices

[Zyraen]

This is a stand-alone post that is not part of a Character Creation thread for reference.

[Zyraen]

VIRTUES & VICES (V&V)

For each character, there are 6 boxes on their sheet indicating up to 3 Virtues and up to 3 Vices.
These are meant as Roleplay aids, to help remind the player who the character they are playing is.

It is not necessary to fill up all 6 boxes, in fact it is probably a good idea to leave at least 2 blank, so over the course of the adventure the player can fill in the V&V that the character is discovered to have. Discovering more about your character at the table can be a rather enjoyable or even fascinating thing.

In addition, the GM may award WP (or Temp WP, in case of the character being maxed) for "good" roleplaying of V&V.

"Good" is very subjective, but usually a somewhat more objective view is taken, in that if the character (due to a specific V&V) takes on a burden / risk / danger that the player would probably not have wanted to (if not for that V&V being present), and possibly suffers for it (or just barely scrapes through), that is typically the normal benchmark for getting WP.

Of course, sometimes it just might be sheer brilliance in RP, but that is very rare, especially since brilliance in problem solving is usually a reward in itself. In view that it contributes to adventure / character progression, therefore it generally does not warrant WP.

Note that because teamwork is very important (if not, utterly essential in UB), using V&V to mess over the interests of the party is generally a bad idea. That said, if the party is agreeable (OOCly, typically) to go along, it can make for extremely memorable character development scenes sometimes.

In any case, V&V needs to be written down beforehand, because the burden/risk/danger must be related to a pre-existing V&V. It is not a matter of convenience in roleplaying or just randomly adding "Oh I decided he would have a taste for blueberries, so he has a taste for blueberries which is good RP right?", but if it was in the character all along.

I have on at least a few occasions suggested that I would award WP, except that the character did not have any related V&V written down. In that case, my suggestion is to decide if the associated V&V (say, "charity") is a key part of the character, or if it is a one-off thing. If it is a one-off, then do not write it down, but if it is to be key, then write it down, or even replace a pre-existing V&V if there is conflict or just that all 3 boxes of the Virtue/Vice are occupied.

Note that this approach is intended to be a "carrot" without a "stick", so as not to affect player agency. I might occasionally remind a player "Isn't George a cautious character?" but if the player so disregards or feels he is sticking his neck out for a reason, it will certainly not be punished.