The deviant aspect.

[YPU]

My group is slowly gearing up to start our game. (things have been slow for the usual reasons) and I have been discussing character concepts with my players for the past weeks now, tough I try to keep them from pinning everything down as city generation should bring up some new and tied in ideas.

Anyhow I have been writing up aspect lists with some of my players to illustrate how aspects work and what can be an aspect. During these I have noticed I vastly prefer character to have at least one aspect that describes something particularly outside of their archetype. For instance we did a one shot and a player made a shy and quiet college student with a knack for veils. He also gave the character an aspect declaring him an active Urban BMX rider. (is that even the right word?) Suddenly he had a reason to have a decent athletics score and during the game he used the aspect to declare he knew a shorter route, because he had biked there before.

I found that this breaking of the mould to give the character a lot more depth and options as well. So I was thinking of requiring my players to give their characters at least one such aspect. Naturally some characters will be rounded enough that more then one aspect could fit the description and that's fine, but I think we all have players who sometimes lock in a bit to much on a archetype and stick to it. Do you guys think this is a good idea or would I just be trying to force something that has to happen spontaneous? Has anybody done something like this before? did it work?

[Tedronai]

I'd avoid implementing anything like this as a 'hard rule', as I'm a firm believer in player agency, but a strong suggestion, if you believe it will promote a better story, is all well and good.
Good players will work to conform to GM requests and suggestions where such is reasonable, and holding back from phrasing it as a rule allows them to ignore it when it would cause undue problems for their character.

[YPU]

I'd avoid implementing anything like this as a 'hard rule', as I'm a firm believer in player agency, but a strong suggestion, if you believe it will promote a better story, is all well and good.
Good players will work to conform to GM requests and suggestions where such is reasonable, and holding back from phrasing it as a rule allows them to ignore it when it would cause undue problems for their character.

Oh yea, I really wasn't aiming for it to be a written rule. It's not like I am going to make them draw a Deviant box on their character sheets they have to fill. But putting it in there during char Kind of as a rule might make the more rule focused players comply to it and in my experience they are the ones who tend to stick to archetypes the most.

In any case its so subjective a thing that it really can only be done by GM/group veto anyway.

[UmbraLux]

It's an interesting idea - kind of a friendlier version of a Trouble. 

I've been considering simply creating a list of alternate aspect inspirations.  Get twenty or so and let the player choose five that fit his concept.  (Keeping High Concept and Trouble.)  It'd be a bit more flexible than current character creation.  However, still need to tie each character to the group through one or more aspects...