One of my favorite parts of Lady Blackbird was the "Keys" system. It was the first personality mechanic I ever saw that didn't suck. I think there were several reasons for this: the keys were fairly specific instead of maddeningly vague; they triggered off of actual events in-game instead of internal monologue; and they had these cool buyoff conditions so that you weren't locked in to a personality mechanic you didn't like but you couldn't just change your personality any time you wanted, either.
And I've been frustrated by D&D 5e's "characteristics" system (traits, bonds, ideals, flaws). Each character has 5 traits so in a group of 4 that's 20 different characteristics that the DM has to watch out for. And the characteristics vary between obvious and significant, to small things that you role-play continuously. So the characteristics may have some value in helping people role-play but I don't think they're super useful as a way to hand out inspiration.
So I tried to port the Keys to D&D, by stealing ideas from the Blackbird Companion, Savage Worlds, and of course the characteristics in chapter 5. My emphasis was on keys that had a fairly clear trigger; that would relate to meaningful events in the game; that would occur often enough to be worth considering; and that fit the D&D genre (by which I mean, I tried to think back to the kinds of stuff I've seen players do to portray their characters). There's some trade-off between these things. Like Key of the Wilds won't happen very often, so the standard for "meaningfulness" is lowered to compensate; but I included it because I've seen so many players do this instinctively as an easy way of role-playing.
I really want to use Keys as an alternate XP system, but I included this only as an optional variant because it's so different from the default assumptions of D&D. These XP numbers (actually, all the numbers in the document) are pretty wild guesses. Using keys for madness, and demonic madness, is also not as satisfying as I'd like. I considered a single Key of Madness but that seemed like a weak option too. I also struggled to create a Key of Law, Key of Chaos and Key of Neutrality -- since these are classic D&D personality mechanics -- but they are such broad concepts I couldn't figure out how to phrase them (which may be why they've always been so contentious).
This is very much a work-in-progress so please let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions!
And I've been frustrated by D&D 5e's "characteristics" system (traits, bonds, ideals, flaws). Each character has 5 traits so in a group of 4 that's 20 different characteristics that the DM has to watch out for. And the characteristics vary between obvious and significant, to small things that you role-play continuously. So the characteristics may have some value in helping people role-play but I don't think they're super useful as a way to hand out inspiration.
So I tried to port the Keys to D&D, by stealing ideas from the Blackbird Companion, Savage Worlds, and of course the characteristics in chapter 5. My emphasis was on keys that had a fairly clear trigger; that would relate to meaningful events in the game; that would occur often enough to be worth considering; and that fit the D&D genre (by which I mean, I tried to think back to the kinds of stuff I've seen players do to portray their characters). There's some trade-off between these things. Like Key of the Wilds won't happen very often, so the standard for "meaningfulness" is lowered to compensate; but I included it because I've seen so many players do this instinctively as an easy way of role-playing.
I really want to use Keys as an alternate XP system, but I included this only as an optional variant because it's so different from the default assumptions of D&D. These XP numbers (actually, all the numbers in the document) are pretty wild guesses. Using keys for madness, and demonic madness, is also not as satisfying as I'd like. I considered a single Key of Madness but that seemed like a weak option too. I also struggled to create a Key of Law, Key of Chaos and Key of Neutrality -- since these are classic D&D personality mechanics -- but they are such broad concepts I couldn't figure out how to phrase them (which may be why they've always been so contentious).
This is very much a work-in-progress so please let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions!
