Hydaelyn Role-Players

Hi there folks. Pretty new to Final Fantasy XIV, but I've been playing most of the FF games since back at the beginning with FF1. I'm still learning the lore and the general rp atmosphere here. In fact, I wasn't even sure if this question should go here or the lore forum. Decided here, since it does boil down to a question of roleplay.

While studying the lore and thinking of interesting things I could do with a character, I came across the multiverse theory. At first I thought it was just one of those fan theories. Then I started reading solid evidence on it being true. Namely Gilgamesh hoping from world to world in the games. Then there is the appearance of Lightning and even that Samurai girl. All strong indicators that the multiverse theory is not only possible, but likely.

Then I watched videos on the storyline of 3.4. I won't spoil anything, just in case, but even more information that seems to indicate that the multiverse theory is correct.

Said all that, to ask this. How valid would a character be that had visions of these other worlds? For example. The character might one day be sitting around, minding their own business when... BAM! They see Cecil from FF4 changing from a dark knight to a Paladin. Or maybe they witness Kefka moving the statues and bringing ruin to that world.

Maybe even have it so that the visions are so frequent that the character sometimes has trouble distinguishing which world is which.

It sounds like such a fun idea to me.

So. What do y'all think? Mind you, your answers are probably going to be the reason I go forward with it or not. I don't want to roleplay something outside the bounds of lore.

The game does make it pretty clear it could be possible. If you went ahead with it you would have plenty of basis.

There are other potential problems or troubles using that kind of narrative but lore compatibility isn't amongst them.

So, which one of the other FF titles turned into the World of Darkness? Where a Warrior of Light among others was called Cuchulain?

And where would FF15 (and the next ones) fit? Nowhere since they were released after?

What other potential problems, Warren? I'd like to go into making a character with my eyes wide open, as it were.

Valence. The only time that Cuchulainn is even mentioned is in FF12. But he's like an esper or boss there. Not a warrior of light. That's a good question about FF15. ... A good question that I don't have an answer to!

As for SicketySix. If I can do it, I should do it. Right? It would add more variety out in the world if there were that crazy oracle that saw things that didn't even happen in this world.

Man. You people answered fast!

(12-09-2016, 07:37 PM)Thecrystalprelude Wrote: [ -> ]Valence. The only time that Cuchulainn is even mentioned is in FF12. But he's like an esper or boss there. Not a warrior of light. That's a good question about FF15. ... A good question that I don't have an answer to!

Chuchulainn is also the name given to one of the Lucavi demons in the re-release "War of the Lions." So, which one would they be seeing? One? All?

Gegenji. Sadly. Final Fantasy Tactics series of games were one of the few games I never got a chance to have a go at. I know that Tactics apparently takes place on Ivalice, the same planet as Final Fantasy 12. Also... Cloud Strife shows up in Tactics I believe. Further pointing towards multiversal shenanigans.

Lets not even bring Dissidia into this.

(12-09-2016, 07:45 PM)Gegenji Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-09-2016, 07:37 PM)Thecrystalprelude Wrote: [ -> ]Valence. The only time that Cuchulainn is even mentioned is in FF12. But he's like an esper or boss there. Not a warrior of light. That's a good question about FF15. ... A good question that I don't have an answer to!

Chuchulainn is also the name given to one of the Lucavi demons in the re-release "War of the Lions." So, which one would they be seeing? One? All?

If folks want to get super technical, he appeared in FF Airborne Brigade, Tactics A2, and others though he's namely associated with the world of Ivalice save for when we see him in the Void Ark as a big bad.

Also to note: almost all of these summons/espers/bosses have multiple forms in at least two or three FF titles even outside the mainstream 1-15. Though some of them, like Cuch, are normally specific to one 'world'.

(12-09-2016, 07:51 PM)Thecrystalprelude Wrote: [ -> ]Gegenji. Sadly. Final Fantasy Tactics series of games were one of the few games I never got a chance to have a go at. I know that Tactics apparently takes place on Ivalice, the same planet as Final Fantasy 12. Also... Cloud Strife shows up in Tactics I believe. Further pointing towards multiversal shenanigans.

Lets not even bring Dissidia into this.

Vaan also shows up as a bonus character in Final Fantasy Tactics, which takes place hundreds and hundreds of years after Final Fantasy 12. Same world, so is it multi-verse or time travel in his case? What about far-out multi-verse examples in the form of Kingdom Hearts? How do the FF7 characters retain their relationships and personalities with the absence of Gaia? Why did YRP turn into tiny flying fairies? Why and how does Sora show up in World of Final Fantasy?

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is... where do you draw the line between multi-verse and just plain old fan service? Just something to think about.

(12-09-2016, 07:37 PM)Thecrystalprelude Wrote: [ -> ]Valence. The only time that Cuchulainn is even mentioned is in FF12. But he's like an esper or boss there. Not a warrior of light.

Must... not... infodump... okay damn it's happening.


Anyway... it's hard to say where it all fits together - we know the devs have said FF14 is a "theme park" of other FF's, so there are going to be aspects and shout-outs. But it's hard to say if they're going to intend for the shards to literally be the other FF games.

I guess I'm gonna echo the "why though?" - what character development will this give? What things will it allow you to do with the character, narratively speaking? What practical impact will it have on them?

The way I see it, since there's no possible way for your character to reliably travel to or intervene with these events (inter-universe travel, as we've seen it so far, generally seems to involve... death... or extraneous circumstances), these visions will presumably have as much practical impact on your character's day-to-day life as those weirdly elaborate dreams everyone sometimes has...

While FFXIV definitely does have its own multiverse in the story, I think that's split from say, the great FF multiverse containing other games' worlds.

Going strictly on what 3.4 and the lore book provide on creation myths, Hydaelyn (the planet) is one of 14 worlds, being the "source" which then got a bunch of mirrored reflections. Each of those reflections had their own histories (however similar) and then plot happened.

If we take old seasonal events seriously and literally, Shantotto from FFXI does use some powerful form of magic to travel across the void to visit Eorzea. But it seemed much more like a fluke or an experiment than something intentional. The same for the Lightning event and the Maiden's Rhapsody event).

So while there is certainly some form of possibility in linking these worlds, the Warriors of Darkness had to pay quite the price just to hop from a relatively "local" world. And gods (or Tarutarus with the power of gods?) have had to be the means of bringing in other characters for these usually short-lived cameo events.

I'd ultimately ask what it would bring to your RP beyond people/IC characters/NPCs thinking your character was insane. ...let alone how they'd manage to communicate with a world of people speaking some language that isn't theirs. (Not all Echo-enabled people got the free translation of intent/meaning feature. And it doesn't handle reading.)

Hrm. All good points. *sigh* I guess I just like being different or to change up the "normal" types of characters I play. But maybe it's just that I haven't had any decent roleplay situations in two or three years. All that stagnant rp on WoW and various other mmos may have lead me to this. I'm not sure.

Edda. If I were to go through with the idea.. I'd probably stick to just the main games. If I got off into the others, or even Kingdom Hearts, I think my head might explode.

Mercenary. That was a question I forgot to ask. The thirteen shards. Are they just worlds in FFXIV's own little multiverse, or are they the other FF game worlds? Also. When I get 50 dollars to splurge, I'm so getting that lore book. I didn't even know about it until today.

Ah well. Back to the drawing board!

(12-09-2016, 08:37 PM)Thecrystalprelude Wrote: [ -> ]Hrm. All good points. *sigh* I guess I just like being different or to change up the "normal" types of characters I play. But maybe it's just that I haven't had any decent roleplay situations in two or three years. All that stagnant rp on WoW and various other mmos may have lead me to this. I'm not sure.

There's no surefire way to get RP here, on Balmung in general or likely elsewhere. (Or people would probably have done it and written about it.) What I can say from my own experiences is that I've seen people have better success with a "less is more" approach. instead of having lots of features, get people involved in a few of them. Motivations and struggles tend to provide more hooks than "I have this shiny thing." (Unless your character has literally found something shiny on the ground and that's the RP hook!)

In the RP I pay attention to (which is to say a focused and small portion of it), people are about as powerful as the non-MSQ NPCs. Like the ones you'd see involved in a Levequest. Or a FATE. Or the ones our monster of a player character beats down without a sweat.

My best advice here is kinda echo-chamber-y with some others' on the RPC. When thinking about your character and their interactions, remember that while they're the main character of your story, they're also a side character in other peoples'. If it seems like your character has features or traits that would make them seem like the main character of another player's story, issues could arise.

(12-09-2016, 08:37 PM)Thecrystalprelude Wrote: [ -> ]Mercenary. That was a question I forgot to ask. The thirteen shards. Are they just worlds in FFXIV's own little multiverse, or are they the other FF game worlds? Also. When I get 50 dollars to splurge, I'm so getting that lore book. I didn't even know about it until today.

As far as we know, the Thirteen Shards are clones of Hydaelyn from some time before written history. I think of them more like parallel worlds that developed slightly differently from each other. Going with the same motif, maybe more like refractions of the source.

(12-09-2016, 07:23 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: [ -> ]The game does make it pretty clear it could be possible. If you went ahead with it you would have plenty of basis.

There are other potential problems or troubles using that kind of narrative but lore compatibility isn't amongst them.

This, pretty much. There are multiverses in FFXIV canon; that much isn't up for debate. Problems arise in the why and how your character would be having visions of another universe, as well as what meaningful utility that would add to your character from an OOC/narrative perspective. Only immensely powerful characters have been able to travel universes, so would a character have to also be very powerful to see into them? Does this add anything to your character but a special quirk to make her extraordinarily unique and potentially more powerful (i.e. gaining meta-knowledge from another universe)? These are the problems I can see with it potentially, along with the usual issue that no matter how fair you make it and how well you play it, deviating from the norm will always cause at least a few role-players to turn up their nose at you and your "special snowflake" RP if that's of any concern.

Challenges and troubles:

Your character would be very, very difficult to relate to. The roleplaying community skews from the highest highs of power levels to the lowest lows, and your character would be experiencing panic and anxiety literally spanning across multiple worlds. There's enough trouble brewing in Eorzea, and your character is not only living through that but ALSO experiencing the most important and historic adventures across the annals of the universe? That would make it extremely hard to commiserate with you: Your trouble isn't something 99.9% of the community can help with. Roleplay is a lot of give and take, and I think that a plight of that level, i.e. having visions of worlds and worlds of strife, would render almost everyone you meet as a completely helpless "Dude, that sucks" degree of powerlessness.

Your character could very easily be construed as completely insane. The number of people who know for a fact world-traversing is a possible thing is a very, very small number of both the canon game world and the extended roleplay community. Even in a world of magic and godlike dragons, claiming that you're seeing other worlds and meeting people who don't exist would probably get you arrested and/or thrown into some sort of asylum. You'd look and sound like a crazy person.

It would be very easy for your "template" to overshadow your character's identity. "That's Jim. Jim sometimes falls through dimensions and meets extremely important canonical characters." It's a drum I tend to beat when looking at adding "templates" to a character ("template" here meaning "extra doodad or character perk used for flavor." Things like aether-sickness, iconic jobs, vampirism/hearer/werewolf or whatever. Things that don't define your character, but are just extra traits or ideas you've attached, usually for plot points.)

Subjective opinion: Roleplay is about give, take and collaboration. It's definitely a lore-acknowledged angle to see between worlds. The issue is that something of that magnitude doesn't let a lot of people interact with your plot. You'd get people interested, probably, but how do you get them involved beyond being sympathetic and listening to exposition?

Keep in mind my default mindset to looking at plans angles and concepts is to riddle them full of holes before seeing if they float. Don't let anything I say here persuade you to give up your idea. It'd make for a unique set of experiences, but I particularly don't see an easy way to get others involved aside from being an audience to your woes.