The Clumsy Bad Trait - Interpretation ?

[Escher]

I had a moment when a player's character took a photo using her mobile phone of a hostile group of aliens that had been pursuing her and the Doctor. They were hiding behind rocks and about to make it back to the TARDIS.
Because she had the Clumsy Bad Trait I decided as GM to declare she had left the flash on. The flash went off and alerted the aliens and then we entered into a chase sequence.

Afterwards she looked up the literal rules on Clumsy and didn't disagree but said it was open to discussion...so...

What do you think?

Physically clumsy, yes, but also 'accident prone' can cover a lot of things, even though the specific example in the rules gives a physical example only.

Maybe I've been reading too much of John Wick's 'Play Dirty'...
Maybe we need a new Bad Trait called 'Scatterbrained'.





Clumsy (Minor Bad)
The character is accident-prone.

Effect: In times of stress, especially when being chased, the character will have to make additional Awareness and Coordination rolls to avoid knocking vital things over, dropping the vial of toxic chemicals or tripping up and landing on their face.

[infinitydoctor]

I suppose, taking Clumsy as written, it is referring to physical ineptitude and a lack of manual dexterity, rather than being forgetful or just unlucky.

If you made her take a Co-ordination test, then said she fumbled the phone and accidentally triggered the flash if that roll failed, you would have gotten away with it....

[Siskoid]

For me (and my players agree), any interpretation that makes the game more entertaining is fair.

[Escher]

My own philosophy on Bad Traits or Weakness/Drawbacks etc in any game system is that they should serve as a dramatic opportunity to make things interesting. I think the GM has a right to use this in any fun way possible within reason.

I would count clumsiness as also covering mental quirkiness too, as being Clumsy is about being oblivious about your surroundings to a degree (knocking your mug of coffee onto that laptop etc) but I guess that’s a house rule.

As for the phone mishap, she didn't say she was checking to see if the flash was on or off...mwah ha haaaa.

One more chase before dematerialization...

[Stormcrow]

As a player, I would have taken Clumsy because I thought it meant what it said: the character is physically clumsy. If my GM started making me Unlucky too, I'd be annoyed.

The trait you describe sounds like Unlucky--as described, but not in its effects (rerolling boxcars).

Remember that the list of traits is not exhaustive. If you want, create a new one called Accident-Prone which does what you want. But you should decide whether it is a tool for the GM to do sucky things like telling you you forgot to turn off the flash, or a tool for you to add complications to the game to receive Story Points. The latter is more in keeping with the other traits.