I'm glad that a lot of people mentioned the existence of NPCs and areas that we don't meet or experience. I think that a lot of people on here confuse the exceptional with the mundane due to the fact that frankly, most people seem to not want to play those sorts of mundane "normal peasant craftsman" roles, and I don't blame them. For many the heroic aesthetic of FFXIV is appealing; players want to be larger than life, even if they don't RP the WoL. To play something that you could play in almost any medieval fantasy or even historical medieval setting is not something the average player is looking for. If you are, that's good, and I'm glad you can have fun doing it, and standing out from the crowd a little, but I really do understand the desire to play combative, heroic, or otherwise distinguished characters. Players want to be exceptional, or at the very least very good at something. This should not be a surprise given the typical content of both video game and pen and paper RPGs. Why count on PCs to populate your world with layfolk when NPCs you create or the game provides do that for you?
It's not necessarily fun to suck. Sometimes being noncom narrows your RP opportunities, or being incompetent at your profession makes it difficult for you to interact with others outside of a mentoring role. Naturally you can turn these into opportunities, if you're creative enough, but if you're not able to come up with ideas or have a limited pool of players to interact with, even being illiterate constrains your character's option. That's why while I sometimes wish the player demographics reflected the setting, I'm not too bothered by the fact that they don't.
When something that is supposed to be rare, such as male miqote, is common in game because of players' tastes, I accept that and roll with it. I just assume that my character is seeing a disproportionately large number of them because of the social circles she is in. I've only made one male Miqote NPC for an event once, and he was not used because none of the PCs looked for him. Almost all the others conformed to demographics of the locale. When the PCs are exceptional, I introduce placeholder NPCs with backgrounds based as much in the lore as I can to balance them out.
The other thing that probably provokes this disconnect from the setting is the nature of the story players want to tell. If they wish to play a gritty story, they might make their character heavily flawed and fallible in combat; if they do not, they might make them extremely potent in their abilities or have superhuman, uncanny abilities. In old Dream Pod 9 games, campaigns could be adjusted based on the type of campaign your group is excited to play. "Gritty" for lasting injuries, sudden death, and severe challenges to a meager skillpool. "Adventurous" for being able to achieve some things that are improbable in real life, or survive injuries that would normally be a death sentence through some contrivance or luck. "Cinematic" for featuring larger than life heroes who accomplish great things and overcome insurmountable odds with grit and unbelievable skill. In an ideal world we would all be able to fit at the same comfortable level as one another, but in reality, the only real way to reconcile the difference between the players who want to know exactly how much water you have on that trip into the Sagoli and the players who are more interested in the antlion fight at the end of the adventure is just through judicious choice of who you play with. I'd like to think most of you are flexible enough to play with anyone, but maybe sometimes you just can't tell the kind of story you want to without having actual flesh and blood people behind every merchant and lowly peasant with speaking dialogue. For me, it's enough to keep the camera lens focused narrowly on the players, and assume things that happen offscreen take care of the nitty gritty of real life, until I want to actually play those events myself.Â
Anyway, sorry for rambling. I'm perfectly fine not paying my character's taxes. (She's a vagrant and probably doesn't pay them anyway...)
I think a thing I'd like to see more of in the game that is common but rare among players is internal discrimination. What I mean by this is PCs who do apply to the norm of their race pressuring those who do not to conform. If a lot of players are out of the ordinary, and those who play ones who are ordinary OOC are raising an eyebrow at this, it'd be cool to see them step up to the plate and exert pressure on the exceptions more heavily. There's a lot of talk about the racism in Eorzea and that would be interesting to see more of. But I also think that cultural norms in the setting work when the average person enforces them. Aggressively suspecting a loner of being a heretic in ishgard, or Ul'dahns who don't give two shites about money being laughed at.Â
Another thing I'd like to see is more crime RP, such as theft and swindling. Not just theft for a good cause, but legitimate greedy crime done for one's own sake. Of course, be polite and ask if it's fine with the other player to pickpocket them; I think a lot of RPers would relish the opportunity to chase or try to negotiate with a criminal, and RPers of law enforcement such as Blades or Yellowjackets would have more to do. A murderer PC can kill NPCs they've created if there is nobody available who is looking to retire a PC, which brings me ramblingly to another point; there seem to be a lot of players who want to retire characters for one reason or another, and I figure character death can be a convenient solution to that urge to stop playing someone in favor of that shiny new Au Ra. Maybe players could get together and arrange a dramatic, or for the grittier stories, sudden, death. I've always felt that a person is killed randomly, or suddenly; a character only dies when that becomes their purpose.
It's not necessarily fun to suck. Sometimes being noncom narrows your RP opportunities, or being incompetent at your profession makes it difficult for you to interact with others outside of a mentoring role. Naturally you can turn these into opportunities, if you're creative enough, but if you're not able to come up with ideas or have a limited pool of players to interact with, even being illiterate constrains your character's option. That's why while I sometimes wish the player demographics reflected the setting, I'm not too bothered by the fact that they don't.
When something that is supposed to be rare, such as male miqote, is common in game because of players' tastes, I accept that and roll with it. I just assume that my character is seeing a disproportionately large number of them because of the social circles she is in. I've only made one male Miqote NPC for an event once, and he was not used because none of the PCs looked for him. Almost all the others conformed to demographics of the locale. When the PCs are exceptional, I introduce placeholder NPCs with backgrounds based as much in the lore as I can to balance them out.
The other thing that probably provokes this disconnect from the setting is the nature of the story players want to tell. If they wish to play a gritty story, they might make their character heavily flawed and fallible in combat; if they do not, they might make them extremely potent in their abilities or have superhuman, uncanny abilities. In old Dream Pod 9 games, campaigns could be adjusted based on the type of campaign your group is excited to play. "Gritty" for lasting injuries, sudden death, and severe challenges to a meager skillpool. "Adventurous" for being able to achieve some things that are improbable in real life, or survive injuries that would normally be a death sentence through some contrivance or luck. "Cinematic" for featuring larger than life heroes who accomplish great things and overcome insurmountable odds with grit and unbelievable skill. In an ideal world we would all be able to fit at the same comfortable level as one another, but in reality, the only real way to reconcile the difference between the players who want to know exactly how much water you have on that trip into the Sagoli and the players who are more interested in the antlion fight at the end of the adventure is just through judicious choice of who you play with. I'd like to think most of you are flexible enough to play with anyone, but maybe sometimes you just can't tell the kind of story you want to without having actual flesh and blood people behind every merchant and lowly peasant with speaking dialogue. For me, it's enough to keep the camera lens focused narrowly on the players, and assume things that happen offscreen take care of the nitty gritty of real life, until I want to actually play those events myself.Â
Anyway, sorry for rambling. I'm perfectly fine not paying my character's taxes. (She's a vagrant and probably doesn't pay them anyway...)
I think a thing I'd like to see more of in the game that is common but rare among players is internal discrimination. What I mean by this is PCs who do apply to the norm of their race pressuring those who do not to conform. If a lot of players are out of the ordinary, and those who play ones who are ordinary OOC are raising an eyebrow at this, it'd be cool to see them step up to the plate and exert pressure on the exceptions more heavily. There's a lot of talk about the racism in Eorzea and that would be interesting to see more of. But I also think that cultural norms in the setting work when the average person enforces them. Aggressively suspecting a loner of being a heretic in ishgard, or Ul'dahns who don't give two shites about money being laughed at.Â
Another thing I'd like to see is more crime RP, such as theft and swindling. Not just theft for a good cause, but legitimate greedy crime done for one's own sake. Of course, be polite and ask if it's fine with the other player to pickpocket them; I think a lot of RPers would relish the opportunity to chase or try to negotiate with a criminal, and RPers of law enforcement such as Blades or Yellowjackets would have more to do. A murderer PC can kill NPCs they've created if there is nobody available who is looking to retire a PC, which brings me ramblingly to another point; there seem to be a lot of players who want to retire characters for one reason or another, and I figure character death can be a convenient solution to that urge to stop playing someone in favor of that shiny new Au Ra. Maybe players could get together and arrange a dramatic, or for the grittier stories, sudden, death. I've always felt that a person is killed randomly, or suddenly; a character only dies when that becomes their purpose.
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AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.