LF2 Qualities

New Qualities

Coordinated partly replaces Athletic and subsumes Ambidextrous. It's meant to oppose Butterfingers.

Computer Savvy replaces Internet Savvy. It adds a little more flexibility to the kids' rolls concerning computers.

Sharp Eyes and Good Ears respectively oppose Glasses (below) and Hearing Aid.

Lookout opposes Haunted. The idea is that both Qualities represent the same thing – that your character is a magnet for spirits – but are different polarities of it. If your character has a creepy almost-her reflection that occasionally speaks to her, she's Haunted. If your character's grandfather is watching over her from Heaven, just like he promised, she has a Lookout.

I Say Strange Things isn't actually a new quality – it's one that was left out of the book. I just spent an hour hunting around for the original material I read on the Key 20 website when I discovered this (and if I'm misremembering it, please, set me straight), but the book refers at one point (page 30, under Guided) to Mouths of Babes. As I recall, the site reported that that phrase was referring to this Quality. I usually run it this way: occasionally, the GM puts a cryptic phrase into the character's mouth. The character has no idea that s/he's said something (but, of course, the other PCs let 'em know). I use it maybe once in a session, often as a way to nudge players in a new direction.

Sensitive replaces (and expands upon) Compassionate. A Sensitive character isn't just good at noticing people's emotions, but also at getting that hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck thing. It's both social and spiritual sensitivity, which I think of as exocentrism.

Bad Influence opposes Older Friend. I've run several games in which a kid had an older brother who was the typical bad boy, and therefore way cool to the character.

Glasses replaces Corrective Lenses, because it lets the GM give the child's sight back to him (by picking up his glasses, rather than hunting for a dirty contact).

Nightmares replaces both Heavy Sleeper and Light Sleeper and opposes Visions. There's more to work with, story-wise, if the character has nightmares, and the Sleeper Qualities only rarely seem to come into play. Would you go to sleep in this game?

Scrawny replaces Skinny simply because it's more evocative of a lack of Muscle than Skinny. It opposes Hearty.

Changed Qualities

Athletic was always a good Quality to take because it seems to help you in all physical activities. Since it's purview is split between Hands- and Feet-based rolls, Coordinated appeared to handle catching baseballs and Fleet of Foot stuck around to help you steal second. And since we now have Coordinated, there wasn't much need to keep Ambidextrous.

Compassionate was replaced by Sensitive, Internet Savvy by Computer Savvy, and Skinny by Scrawny. All of these changes either expanded on the scope (computers, not just the Internet) or aligned the idea of the Quality with the Stat it would affect.

Guided was intended to be like I Say Strange Things (above), but instead of your character just speaking, she'd get up and go do something. I found that players either took the trait because they thought it was something like Lookout (again, above), or that they knew what it was but never liked having control of their character taken away from them, for any reason. I think people who like Little Fears love its immersability, so saying something weird was okay but having to watch their child do things they don't want him to isn't. So, away went Guided.

Whiz Kid was so named because it was cheese. Players could spend a single Playaround Point and get an extra die to almost all Smarts rolls. The idea is to represent gifted kids, I understand, but when there are other Qualities that cover some Smarts rolls (Excellent Memory, Horror Buff, Computer Savvy, and of course Bookworm), it's too much to have Whiz Kid on top of all those others. If it doesn't apply to all those same things, using it almost requires going down the list of other Smarts Qualities to make sure there's no overlap.

Corrective Lenses was replaced by Glasses, as discussed above.

Heavy Sleeper and Light Sleeper have been subsumed by Nightmares, above.

Phobic and Potty Mouth were great. Thematically. Having a kid who faces down monsters but freaks out every time he sees a daddy long legs, or a child who swears like it's just talking and can't figure out why everyone makes such a big deal about it... that's just the way a game about children should be run. I really didn't want to get rid of these two, but despite their perfect fit into the game's theme, I have never run a game in which characters who took these Qualities didn't derail the plot or ruin the atmosphere. If your players are in character, they'll gasp and titter when Sally drops an F-bomb, and they lose focus on the game by reacting appropriately. If a child freaks out when his phobia comes into play, it can as easily create gameplay chaos as create an interesting in-game complication (and as with other games that have Phobia as a flaw, if it never comes into play, that character got to play with a free extra character point). Sadly, these two were too disruptive to the game (if not the plot) to keep.