Hydaelyn Role-Players
Time and Aging Characters - Printable Version

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RE: Time and Aging Characters - Flickering Ember - 07-31-2014

I also go with 1 year IRL= 1 year in game. It's been almost a year since ARR launched? To me, only one year has passed then but I know others will disagree. It's just easiest to keep up with and the game is very vague about how much time passes. 

If I didn't age up my character it would be weird. RP chronicles our characters adventures and their lives. It would be unnatural for my character to be caught in a time bubble.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - LiadansWhisper - 07-31-2014

I go by what the storyline says.  Storyline says that first patch happened in a year?  Then that's what it is for me.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Illira - 07-31-2014

Personally, as I don't necessarily / normally equate 1 RL day to 1 RP day, I can't bring myself to ever say 1 RL year = 1 RP year, though I appear to be in the minority in this!

I think I used to follow along that line though. But... as of the past several months, most scenes that I'm involved in take a least a couple of days if not a week to wrap up due to scheduling, sleep needs, and the needs of the scenes, etc. So... yeah, the 1-1 ratio hasn't been around for me in a while.

Luckily birth days and exact ages don't tend to come up often in RP that I'm involved in, so I've gotten into the bad habit of not assigning specific ages to characters. I usually say like this character is say... -mid thirties- or something. Though for sake of world plotlines/character history they are sometimes needed so that I can chart out a correct timeline for the character. For those that do have a specific age, its really just a feel-for-it sort of thing. (So scientific!)

Like, I remember writing (and then never posting) an interlude for a character in which I was like, o-hey. I think it happens to be her birthday as well. Whelp! Sucks to be her. It was never mentioned to anyone OOCly or ICly, though the interlude was headcanon/checkpoint for me to use for that character.

So... yeah. I go by feel and by an approximation of how much time has passed in that particular RP canon.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Eva - 08-01-2014

I treat a RL day as a game day. As the character has been keeping a journal over the past several years it's interesting to go back and look at her changes over time.

I have disregarded them saying that 1.0 took place inside the span of a year (largely due to the fact that 1.0 encompassed two years worth of changes and personal growth and compressing that simply doesn't feel realistic).

Eva is 34 years old biologically (but would be 38 based on the time skip since she was at Carteneau Flats on D-Day [Dalamud Day]). She added a year to her age since she feels like she missed her nameday (disappeared in autumn, returned in summer).

RPing namedays is a lot of fun. Though for Eva it usually boils down to not telling anyone she's a year older and just lamenting about it in her journals and hoping that nobody finds out. XD

But yes, absolutely... this character has grown in age and evolved gradually and appropriately over the past several years since 1.0 launch, and it has been a lot of fun!!

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Erik Mynhier - 08-01-2014

The character Erik started on a different account in 1.0, and was not really flushed as a character yet. As of the launch of 2.0 he was 33, as am I. On our birthday I will take him to 34. Personally, this is nothing anyone has to follow mind you, but for me the year was 0005 at the launch of 2.0, and at the one year anniversary, it will be 0006. Counting from there, Erik was born in 1544, escaped Ala Mhigo at the age of 13, came to Ul'dah at 16, and the rest is history.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Clover - 08-01-2014

I don't tend to age any of my characters. Clover was 18 at launch, and she still is ^^;
She's not following the main story anyway.

K'mih is still the same as well, 16. And considering she's been in the same scene for a few months, I can't take 1 real life year as 1 year in game.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Miza - 08-01-2014

I tend to go with the whole one IRL year = one RP year deal. However I don't really go by 1 IRL day = one RP day because things can get confusing with scheduling people and going backwards or forward in time on stuff like forum RP here. I use the main storyline's timeline as a guide line, but I'm not too concerned with matching up to it 100 percent because I never RP my characters in MMOs as going through the official story for the respective game. Like someone else mentioned earlier, stuff like Mor Dhona makes it evident that time is passing in the game and I like to acknowledge things like that.

Personally, I used when the Calamity happened to determine how old I wanted Miza to be in the present. I wanted her to be old enough to have that event cause consequences for her life direction. With her going into the Limsan Navy, I decided to make her 17ish when the Calamity went down making her 22 today.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Verad - 08-01-2014

The nice thing about playing older characters is that if I want to, I can just kill them without incident.

. . . Not that I'm planning that, of course.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Melkire - 08-01-2014

(08-01-2014, 04:58 PM)Verad Wrote: The nice thing about playing older characters is that if I want to, I can just kill them without incident.

. . . Not that I'm planning that, of course.

[Image: carol-kane-princess-bride_0.jpg]

LIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR!!!~


RE: Time and Aging Characters - Berrod Armstrong - 08-04-2014

I go with a strange mix of one year IRL = one year in RP in addition to aging 'by the patch'. Depending on the events in the next patch, I make a small estimate of how much time has passed and see if I have to make any adjustments to what I've already done.

I don't have a dedicated 'birth date' in IRL time for Berrod, but if I decided to I'd keep it on or as close to the little Astral/Umbral character thingie in game. Since I started playing in September 2013, after September 2014 I'll suddenly start saying that Berrod is 24 instead of 23. *shifty eyes*

I don't put too much thought into it really, since Berrod's age has rarely ever come up IC.

([sup]"He's that young? But he's HUGE!"[/sup])

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Kailia - 08-04-2014

I use real world time to dictate my character. When I made K'ailia during open beta which went to live launch, she was 16. On January 20th which is also my real life birthday, I had her also age up to 17.

So yeah I do rp the passing of time. Which is why when 2.1 came out, I also considered the events of 2.0 also being the past, and the ending of 2.0 having us move into the seventh astral era, which coincided with the real world new year, meant the calamity for my character happened 6 years ago.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Eva - 08-04-2014

(08-04-2014, 01:16 PM)K Wrote: On January 20th which is also my real life birthday, I had her also age up to 17.

:offtopic:   Hurray for January 20th birthdays!!!  (is also Eva's and mine, and makes it easy to remember/maintain ages and things)

:ontopic:  Now that I think about this, our company held a night of remembrance on the one-year anniversary of the night the game went down, which we treated as a "six-year-since-the-calamity" event.  I don't think we held any expectation that every other RPer regard it similarly, but it's pretty tricky not to acknowledge the natural passage of time.

:semi-offtopic:   I will admit that this is also one reason why I seldom participate in forum RP.  Causality and events happening either in-game or in the forum thread having consequences which may impact RP in the other medium seems like it could lend itself to a lot of confusion and this is just my own way of sidestepping that particular obstacle.  I do enjoy reading the story threads and community forum RP posts though.  Smile

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Chika Ito - 08-04-2014

A lot of my friends do the 'one out of character year = one in character year' with Chika I don't mind this. I can handle realistic aging for her. She'll actually be twenty-eight this January. However when it comes to playing a child, or a teenager, part of me wishes to speed the process up a little for development. That is my personal opinion though ^^

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Aerghwab - 08-04-2014

I use real time, but in terms of growth - experiences can "age" a person well beyond his/her years. With my characters, I tend to explore that more than actual physical aging.

RE: Time and Aging Characters - Cato - 08-08-2014

I usually leave it vague as to the exact age of my character(s). It's a habit I got into after role-playing as a blood elf for years back in WoW. MMO's typically have rather confusing and often conflicting timeline issues to deal with and so I only really touch upon such things when strictly necessary. Simply describing a character as 'young', 'middle aged' or 'elderly' is enough for me. My characters do grow and age over time, though - but it happens in a way that combines role-play based progression with what is happening in the canon lore.