We are moving right along through the Fudge "core" set of choices, and the next is Gifts and Faults. There are a lot of ways to go here, so for us, trying to define a fairly standard fantasy set of rules, we will have to give a number of examples, and warn the person running the game. But for now, we will focus on describing this for the players. To faciliate that, I am going to avoid giving the Faults or Gifts levels of their own. These traits can possibly help to add dimension and life to a pile of stats, or at least hint to the player that their character isn't a killing machine with a personality of carboard and a cookie cutter shape. 

The Gifts and Faults will also, when we get around to listing them in one of the big data dump lists later (along with the skills and equipment and such) be of a decent strength.  A character may only have two or four of these, total, so they should speak to the character, and not be something mild, useless, or worse, boring. Some of them will have tactical or combat effects, to be sure, but we want to help inspire when we can. 

So without further ado, Gifts and Faults 101:

Gifts and Faults are two broader traits that a character can have. Their names are pretty big hints as to what they do. A Gift, like Night Vision, or  Absolute Direction, are certainly a positive for a character. A gift is a trait that usually doesnt' have a default. It is something that, well, you either "got it" or you don't.  In the description of the gift will be the blatant "rules" effect, like "sees in the dark" or "+1 to Navigate" but they also can help you define your character and give the person running the game a better idea of who your character is, and they may find more ways you can apply your Gift than just the "textbook" definition.  
Faults are the flip side of the coin. They work. mechanically, or rules-wise, very much like Gifts, but usually to a characters detriment. Clumsy, or greedy, or sensitive to light would all make a characters life harder in different ways.  They have their "rules" effect, that will get in the way of the character, challenging them with themselves. It also  rounds out your character, making it mre real, and gives the person running the game another way to involve your character. 

Gifts and Faults have one other useful function. They can be used to fill in the spaces missed by attributes and skills. Gifts can give characters unique and interesting abilities (in some cases, Magic!) thats makes the character more than the sum of the skill list. Faults can be taken, as needed, during character creation, to add more than the normal number of Gifts or skills, and let the character's accounting balance out. 


Thank you for reading!