Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Oswald Rabbit]

Going by their descriptions, isn't the Loyal Hindrance really just a minor form of the Heroic Hindrance? It seems to me that if a character is Heroic, he'd be Loyal too. To take both seems rather redundant.

[Clint]

[Oswald Rabbit]

[Jordan Peacock]

Another possible factor depends upon how the GM awards Bennies in the campaign.

Most Savage Worlds games I run or have sat in on go by the premise of "you get Bennies for role-playing your Hindrances / being HINDERED by your Hindrances." For me, at least, this is usually limited to one Benny per Hindrance per session (unless you've REALLY got a nasty Hindrance that keeps on making my job as a GM easier ;D ). In any case, I've had some players who seemed to think themselves very clever for picking out Hindrances that would hardly ever come into play, and then come to regret it when they saw that if it hardly ever came into play, then they'd hardly ever get Bennies for role-playing their Hindrances.

I suppose this mindset could make things worse with overlap in Loyal and Heroic, depending on how I treat it. To a certain extent, I see overlap, because I see Loyal as "go out of your way to help your buddies," whereas Heroic is "go out of your way to help people in general." So, if someone takes both, I'd expect him to go above and beyond to justify it.

Generally speaking, I don't see a GM being persuaded to give someone two Bennies for one action (e.g., saving a buddy) just because the character is both Heroic AND Loyal. At best, in my games, it turns into a chance to get a Benny for saving one of your buddies (Loyal!) and a Benny for saving some complete stranger (Heroic!), but certainly not TWO Bennies for a single action (I Heroically prove that I am Loyal to my buddy!) because that would be so redundant that if a player tried to argue for it, it's begging a GM to call shenanigans.

If a player picks up both Hindrances, then I'll happily acknowledge his role-playing if he consistently does his best to help his fellow team members AS WELL AS random strangers, even when such things come into conflict.
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[peregry]

While I know hindrances are a PC thing, but they can be useful for defining any character in a game or other setting.

Another point to bring out the difference, a Heroic character would generally be "one of the goods guys." It would be hard to justify a Heroic character working with villains or being a villain.

Loyal, on the other hand, is easy to envision an evil character with, even a downright psycopathic one. Say what you will about Harley Quinn, but she is definately Loyal to the Joker, and is clearly a villain.

As someone else mentioned, much of it has to do with scope. A Heroic character tries to deal with everyone, all of humanity, in the right way. A Loyal character focuses on their friends/family to the exclusion of the world.

In fact, a common narrative struggle comes from the conflict between Loyal and Heroic. The basic plot is this: a loved one is destined to destroy the world. What do you do? A purely Heroic character would be more inclined to do what is nessesary to save the world, harming the loved one. A purely Loyal character would stick by their loved one and damn the world. The character that is both Heroic and Loyal? There is where the struggle is (or those who find the way to Take a Third Option).
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- Peregry
It is always giant stompy robot time!