My groups greatest challenge

[Taskill_Mckennan]

The greatest challenge my group faces is a difficulty creating Troubles for their characters i've attempted multiple times to explain it to them as a "problem your character will almost always have such as "The temptation of power" or "Pride above everything"  " but they still have difficutly grasping it,  Anyone have a better idea how to explain it or wanna give me some ideas if i post the Pc's? We've been going with cruddy placeholders for a while but i'd like to get REAL troubles in there

[Mr. Death]

I tend to describe it as either the character's most serious flaw, or something that's going to directly complicate their High Concept. That seems to have gotten most of my groups' players to grasp the idea and come up with good ones.

[devonapple]

Another way to explain Trouble is to have the Aspect answer the question "why are you out in a thunderstorm at midnight fighting Trolls instead of safe at home, ignorant of the true supernatural nature of reality?" It should be the character's number one plot hook, the Aspect which, if nothing else works, will motivate or put pressure on the character.

[sinker]

Yeah, I've always described them as one part motivation and one part mayhem. It should be the reason why the character usually gets into trouble coupled with what that trouble often is. It should be the thing that drives the character.

[UmbraLux]

I suggest describing a flaw.  Whether character (greedy), personality (angry), social (snobbish), economic (poor), or something else.

[EdgeOfDreams]

Another way I've often phrased it is "Your trouble aspect is the thing that gets you in trouble."

I also suggest pointing them to some of the characters from Our World who have good trouble aspects, assuming your players have read the novels. Those examples may help.

[Praxidicae]

I've often found the term "Trouble" aspect misleading, the thing to remember about Trouble aspects is that they don't necessarily have to be earth shatteringly profound or problematic, they simply have to be a consistent issue that the character faces on a regular basis.
Not everyone has the Doom of Damocles hanging over their head, or is in Hiding from the White Council, maybe the character is just a Manipulative Jerk or suffers under Unbelieving Bureaucracy.
In fact I'd go so far as to say that these 'less powerful' forms are far more useful in general. Sure, if you've Sworn Vengeance against the Red Court then in any adventure featuring the Red Court that aspect will earn you a bucketload of Fate points and you'll probably kick all kinds of Red Court ass. But if you're facing off against Summer Fey, or negotiating a peace settlement between two rival gangs of Were's then that Aspect is just gonna sit there collecting dust.
Something like Unlucky in Love and Life, or "My Way or the Highway" however, can crop up all over the place, it's not situationally dependent.
Thus, I've found that, unless the player has a firm idea of what their character's defining problem is, it's easiest to ignore the whole "I must come up with some profound 'Trouble' for my character to confront" situation, simply come up with another aspect for the character, and work together to spin the wording in a negative way.

[Vargo Teras]

Another way to explain Trouble is to have the Aspect answer the question "why are you out in a thunderstorm at midnight fighting Trolls instead of safe at home, ignorant of the true supernatural nature of reality?" It should be the character's number one plot hook, the Aspect which, if nothing else works, will motivate or put pressure on the character.

I think this is the most useful way of thinking of it.  Trouble, I would think, is the aspect which should be compelled often and invoked seldom, compared to the others.

[Thaumologist]

I just told my group to give me personality aspects that would allow me to mess with them on a regular basis, whilst not giving themselves too much of a bonus.

IE, one of my guys is levelling a Knight, built from cliches. He's an army camp raised kid, family troubles, joined as a chaplain, and mostly lost his faith when his entire squad died, and he was forced to trek a hundred miles with nothing.

So his trouble is PTSD. It gets hit quite a lot, because his character is the most close quarters driven, I can drop it whenever the rest of the group sits back, and it allows him the chance to use his other, VERY useful aspects the rest of the time. He only tends to hold onto fate counters for ten minutes, tops.


One of my others is a wizard, but he helped come up with the current campaign design, so we both came up with his trouble...
"On the run from the Illuminati". It gets tagged on a reasonable basis.

My brother's lycanthrope has "on probation". He tags it himself often, as an escuse to not be able to do stuff. It annoys eveyrone else, and often results in someone (the wizard) blowing stuff up.

I also have "I don't like the way you smell", which very rarely gets used, and "God may forgive your sins. I don't.", which is great fun, because I deliberatly have that one kill people. No prisoners, ever.


A few we didn't run with, and therefore maybe bad ideas (but probably usable if you know what you're doing. We don't):
-I lost my sex-tape
-Brittle Bone disease (we didn't allow this one because of the potential to have to sit out of EVERYTHING).
-Narcoleptic
-A bit of a w*****
-Where's my goddamned heroin!

[Taskill_Mckennan]

What about a trouble for a Blacksmithing Warden?

[admiralducksauce]

"Dirty Magic Cop" - he might not be able to be paid off from Lawbreakers, but maybe he's not above bribery (and thus is in the blackmail pockets of) whatever clued-in mortal agencies or supernatural powers you like.

"Rampaging Asshole" - The guy is a jerk. It's a good common troublesome Aspect that applies to a lot of actual people; why not the PC? 

"It's No Secret I Know the Secret of Warden Bladesmithing" - this guy can make Warden swords, but it's not a secret. Dangerous people (and I use the term "people" loosely here) are going to want such an artist to make THEM weapons that can slice through enchantments too. The more I think about this idea, though, I don't like it. It'd be too easy to fall back on Compels like "I can't go on the adventure today, the Wardens need three dozen swords by tuesday and I'm really behind."  IMO it's never a good idea to Compel people AWAY from the adventure.

[Thaumologist]

Well it depends on what you want to do with it. Some of my players picked ones that they wanted me to develop plots around, some picked troubles they could use anytime without real effort, and some wanted to pick ones that would give their characters character.

A blacksmithing warden has several options. Because he works in a forge (I presume), he works with iron. That right there smacks of possibility - you could use something like "iron stained fingers", that makes it really hard for him to do any work with the Fae, and could be used to twist any spells he casts/lightning rods.

Or you could use the smithing to make a connection - "temper as hot as my forge". Being a bit of a hot-head isn't a specific
trouble, so you won't get many plot points based around it, but you might get called on it frequently. Or "Hephaestus OWNS my soul", which gives you a lot of chances for godly compels, with the possibility of being tagged as well. Because your GM might find this interesting, you could get several quests about it, or you could end up with nothing.


Finally, something that could fit to any character, and any situation - "Abusive racist". Anyone non-human/magical/humanoid/race-of-your-pick will have insults thrown at them. At the worst possible time.

[Taskill_Mckennan]

He's more of a blacksmith as supplement he doesn't really know how to do the wardens swords, so their still rare as hell.

[Praxidicae]

"temper as hot as my forge".

Quite like that personally
How about:

Unyielding as the Iron I Forge - You're tough and inflexible, both physically and morally, the rules are the rules and that's the way you like it.

For want of a Nail - "For want of a nail the shoe was lost, For want of a shoe the horse was lost.....For want of a battle the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail." Sometimes you forget things, usually they're insignificant and don't particularly matter, but occasionally, just occasionally they can snowball into a major problem.

Between the Hammer and the Anvil - When there's a conflict you're always there right in the middle of it, forced to make tough choices, not by design, but by Fate.

Other iron's in the Fire/Too many iron's in the Fire - You're a multifaceted individual with diverse interests and hobbies, sometimes this can cause problems as a multitude of niggling minor issues can draw your attention away from the big picture.

The curious case of [Insert Holmes-esque title here] / The one that got away - You are haunted by a past case, whether it was unwittingly(or deliberately) sent an innocent to their death, losing the perp, or getting your partner killed, you can't put the events behind you.

All Crimes are Equal - Some people say that the world exists in shades of grey...For you everything is White or Black, Right or Wrong, Innocent or deserving of...Punishment.

By any means Necessary - If you're on a case, you're gonna solve it, no matter what it takes, no matter who you have to kill, what you have to destroy, no matter the consequences...

The Chief's favorite doormat - Some time in the past you REALLY pi**ed off the boss, maybe you slept with his daughter, maybe you scratched his car, maybe you just put the wrong number of sugars in his coffee, but he just LOVES to give you the worst jobs, partners you with the greenest rookies, dumps backlogged paperwork on you around the holidays and generally makes it his life's work to scr*w with you.

Watchman...Unwatched - Who watches the Watchmen. In your case, no-one, you work almost entirely without supervision, great for when you need to bend (or break) those pesky rules. But when you need official backup there's usually somewhere more urgent that they need to be.

To know him, I must become him - You have an instinctive knack of understanding the criminal (lawbreaker) mindset...Maybe a little TOO instinctive...Hmm, doesn't that power look mighty tempting.

I've found that a good place to look for inspiration is in the categories section of

(click to show/hide)

http://tvtropes.org

, those trope titles are almost always aspectworthy.

edited:link put in spoiler tag as requested and cleaned up some of the text.

[Taskill_Mckennan]

I've found good place to look for inspiration is in the categories section of http://tvtropes.org, those trope titles are almost always aspectworthy.

Put that link in a spoiler tag. Or at least put a "tether yourself to another page before clickling" warning. We don't need to lose anyone here Praxidicae,