> This is an interesting point. It seems that, to some extent due to the
> fact
> that you can tailor keywords, that all abilities are implicitly optional.
> So
> I've always been intrigued by the fact that personality traits are
> explicitly optional.
>
> What do people see this as meaning?
The intended meaning was that while all, say, Farmers needed to know specific skills (Raising crops, animals, etc), all farmers *don't* have the same way of thinking about them, though they *tended* to have certain outlooks/personality traits.
So a list of useful abilities are included ("All farmers know how to"), and a list of traits among which you can pick & choose were included, explicitly optional ("A lot of farmers think this way").
You'll notice that we sometimes include diametrically opposed persoanlity traits in such lists. A Sailor might be "Swashbuckling", or "Dour", but *probably* not both (without adding modifiers, of course - he might be "Swashbuckling in Combat" and "Dour about Love" - think Porthos from the Three Musketeers)
Yes, all keyword abilites are optional, (though if you say "I'm a Farmer" and then take no farming abilities, what's the point?). Frex, my own "Drive Car" is about 6, even though my cultural keyword is "American". Remember that the keywords included in the book are meant to be the broadest strokes possible - a Dara happan Farmer and a Sartaite farmer and a Seshnelan farmer have different skillsets, but we didn't have room to include all the variations - that's what Homeland books like Thunder Rebels or Men of the Sea are for. And even they aren't all-inclusive even for their region./culture/occupation.
So we encourage you to play around with keywords, add or remove abilities before play begins to better represent your particular "Farmer", or "Dara Happan", and even add abilities during play. Maybe the current ruleset doesn't say so in so many words, but that *was* the intent.
RR
He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad
R. Sabatini, Scaramouche
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