If you recall, in Blackbird a character has several Traits, and grouped under these are the related Tags. Further down the character sheet you'd have Flags or Keys*, and finally Secrets.
*Keys are used instead of Flags for stand-alone, one-off games. For example, in the footnotes of my original character description I underlined key objectives. Find the right wife. Bag the Golden Markhor. Keys, they'd help drive the story forwards. Not so important in a campaign.
In a traditional RPG, Traits and Tags would be skills, ability scores, powers, etc.
Flags are for allegiances, relationships and personality quirks.
Secrets are meant to give the character some special, possibly cinematic or meta-game effect. They aren't really relevant for this experiment.
In Blackbird, all the above have a mechanical effect, so it's important they're designed with the rest of the characters in mind. Since this is just an experiment, I don't have to worry about optimisation or carving my niche.
We'll pick out a couple of Secrets at the end, so for now I divide my descriptors into two categories.
A. Skills, Ability Scores, Powers
- Major
- Airs and Graces
- Gentleman
- Royal Marine
- Officer
- For Queen and Country
- Hunter
- Lion of a Man
- Built like an anchor cable
- Groomed
- Climber
- Marksman
- Adventurer
B. Allegiances, Relationships and Personality Quirks
- British Loyalist
- Stubborn
- Provincial
- Opinionated
- Brusque
- Fractious
- Gallant
- Foolhardy
From this I need 4 Traits and 3 Flags. Since this is Blackbird, one of my Flags
must be a bond with another player character, so that's only 2 Flags to extrapolate from the list.
Traits first then. Before I can subdivide, I need my categories. I accomplish this by elimination. If I was only allowed four descriptors (much like
Risus characters, frex), which would I choose from List A?
Immediately I see that "Major" is redundant. Right at the top of my character sheet is Major John Hare. That's sufficient, I don't need to repeat myself, so I'll cross that one out.
The Trait categories pop out at me straight away though. (I've noted in parentheses how I categorised them.)
- Officer (command/knowledge)
- Gentleman (social)
- Lion of a Man (physical/athleticism)
- Adventurer (survival/fieldcraft skills)
Put those into a character sheet and look at what you get.
Major John Hare
TRAITS
Officer
Gentleman
Lion of a Man
Adventurer
That's already a pretty good summary of my character!! I can heartily recommend anyone taking the process this far.
I drop my remaining List A descriptors into each category and these become my Tags. Important to note that a fully functional Blackbird character has around 30 Tags. I have 8 descriptors left, after defining Traits, so if I'll need to inject more at the end.
Let's move on to Flags though. We only have two to play with, since one's reserved (see above). They must give an insight into the character's personality. The Traits don't give us that. Major John Hare could be a nice guy or an utter shit for all we know. We don't want to nail down everything about the character -- where's the fun in that!? -- but Flags give guidance. If every character in a Blackbird group has well-designed Flags, the story should be driven in roughly the same direction.
A quick look at List B tells me we must have "Gallant" and something about him being a British Loyalist, frustrated by his Provincial heritage. I'll infere that he's headstrong, rather than Flag it. From a design perspective, you don't want to tell a player (in bold no less) to play a character as "Stubborn", "Opinionated" and "Fractious".
Major John Hare
TRAITS
Officer
For Queen and Country, Royal Marine
Gentleman
Airs and Graces, Groomed
Lion of a Man
Built like an anchor cable
Adventurer
Climber, Hunter, Marksman
Flag of Gallantry
Battle brings out the best in you, and you won't be swayed from the right course by the danger ahead or orders from above. Add a dice for daring heroism.
Flag of New World Ambition
You were born to wealthy British landowners... in Ontario. Add a dice when proving yourself to the Empire's elite.
I haven't discussed a bond to another PC, something well worth doing, but looking at the rest of the group, it's easy to create an example for my third Flag.
Secrets. Somewhat irrelevant; I'll never be playing this character using Blackbird. Yet I sense I might learn something from it, and I want to complete the experiment, so I'll continue.
The first thing that springs to mind is survivability. Gallantry is often cited in post-humous awards, so I might need some mechanic that keeps Major Hare alive long enough to earn his reputation. Perfect for a Secret. I grab an appropriate one from
Blackbird Companion and tailor to suit. I'd ideally use the second Secret to build in more co-operative gameplay between the PCs. As we don't have any other Blackbird PCs, so I'll use a Secret to add some gun fap. Yes!!
Secret of the Forlorn Hope
You've never understood why they call it that. If your dice pool is full (and was before you rolled) you may re-roll once.
Secret of the Howdah Pistol
Two iron barrels of tiger-killing mayhem. Made in London. You gain a bonus die to any action taken with your howdah pistol. Any other character using it loses a dice.
Technically, I should throw in some more Tags, probably in a 9, 9, 7, 5 formation, but that's largely redundant. Balancing Tags for Blackbird can take a while, and in this case there's no reason to. I feel the experiment is complete. So what do we have?