Foreward: This isn't about game systems or anything - it's really just a quick observation about something I've done in a game I'm playing in.

Background: Shooting Stars (as it was named today) is a game GMed by my friend Jim. The premise is that the game is actually a sci-fi drama on network TV (think Firefly). The characters are all the main characters of the drama - we are the crew of a ship we salvaged. We all started as passengers aboard a cruiseship which was attacked by mysterious alien raiders known as Reavers. Reavers normally don't leave survivors - we managed to steal a ship docked to the cruise ship and made our escape.

The characters were all half pre-genned against templates from popular dramas. The templates were (just fyi)

The Speed Freak (aka pilot - lots of driving and piloting skills)
The Hottie (lots of social skills)
The Warrior
The Person of Mystery
The Young Innocent
The Geek

Anyway, I ended up with the Speed Freak. Through in-game consensus I'm the captain and sort of in charge. Now that I think about it, I'm going to make another later post about the templates, my impressions of the players who got them, and how they've turned out in play. But that's for a later time.

Anyway, this brings me around to the point of my post. In the four sessions thus far I've made a conscious effort to have several "trademarked actions" for Dayne. These are filler description I use to get across what his character is like to the "viewer" of our show. Frankly I think they've been really effective, as they've been commented on both IC and OOC. To be honest, I think the players and GM have a more vivid idea of what my character is like than any of the others. They are:

1) Drinking. Dayne carries a flask with him and when he gets nervous or in a sticky situation he tends to take a nip off of it. This has inspired all manner of "Oh god the captain's drunk again, can someone land the ship?" jokes.
2) His hat. Dayne wears a fedora most of the time. I wear one to game. He's very much like Indiana Jones with the importance of his hat. In tonight's session my character lost a fist-fight with a Reaver who had stowed away in our ship. Waking up from the confrontation with a broken jaw and several broken ribs and some internal bleeding (2 wounds away from whatever happens when I run out of wounds), the first thing he did was sit up, cry out, and then reach for his hat to put it back on.
3) Napping. Just about every session thus far has opened with Dayne napping in the captain's char - leaning back, feet up on the console, hat over his eyes.

I know there's an acting term for these things, but I'm at a loss as to what that term is so I'll call them "trademarked actions"

So Forge readers, what other "trademarked actions" have you used for characters in games you've played in / ran.

JD

These are also called "Tags" in some systems -- GURPS refers to them as "Quirks." I use them all the time for my characters.

In Pax Draconis, an indie SF game by Justin Dagna (jdagna on The Forge), I played a medic who had several tags. One was the bottle of Scotch that he always had on hand -- usually tucked in his medkit satchel. Another was the inevitable bill for services that he'd present to people he patched up with a discount if he had been the one who shot them. That actually got him a reputation on one planet: all he had to do was hold up his laser rifle and say "I don't want to have to patch you back up," and the criminals would surrender. That entire group had a bunch of oddball tags.

Can't say I've ever had a character that didn't have at least some defining quirk. It think the most common to date, though, would be the wide-brimmed hat. I can think of five past characters, both short and long term, that had my trademark "wide-brimmed" hat, two of which were fishermen (one who was a 2 foot gnome who couldn't swim).
Another that stands out in my mind at the moment includes a drunken-boxer. After every bar fight (the group couldn't go in a bar without a fight), he would take the tavern's sign from over the door as a trophy. This list could go on, but I've got food waiting.