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Kellach Woods · **04-29-2016, 07:57 AM**

My problem with the FFXIV lore is that we're privy to so little that if we want to do something that's out of the establishment we run a heavy risk of being so far out of whack with the lore that it ain't even funny.

I don't disregard it at all, but I'm about as lenient as they are when it comes to establishing stuff for my characters. I'd rather do the extra work to retcon/fit-in once something is clarified than assume I can't do it because the devs ain't seen fit to explain it in-game or in a Q&A.

Nebbs · **04-29-2016, 08:01 AM**

Hmm, I would say I treat the lore as a backdrop/framework that I reskin. So it all holds up but I take a different view on my characters perspective and understanding. The other thing i probably do is reduce things from there OMG EPIX level to something relate-able.

On the surface I may be non-lore but behind all that it does fit. However, I'm not going to IC justify it or even get into an OOC discussion on specifics as that spoils the illusion.

Virella · **04-29-2016, 08:44 AM**

Grey areas? Go for it. Make something up if need be! Anything directly contradicting lore, and you can't sell it to me? Eh, no thanks. (â—•á´—â—•âœ¿)

Warren Castille · **04-29-2016, 09:04 AM**

For the most part I keep Warren pretty mundane. That hasn't stopped him from interacting and accepting some of the following things, though:

*beings claiming to be thousands of years old
*shapeshifters
*people who claim to have slain Bahamut and/or Alexander
*dragons in humanoid form
*psychics
*people who have legit died and then come back
*beam-spamming mages
*people who can limit break at will
*players with half a dozen canonical Jobs with a capital J
*a sith lord
*wizards from other dimensions

It's been a fun trip playing the "straight man" to some of this stuff.

Guns Blazing · **04-29-2016, 09:11 AM**

In general, I try to stick pretty close to the established lore. I think my biggest diversion from that path is probably how i role play my characters' combat knowledge and potential. It is my own personal belief that the class system should not be held as the bible for what your character is capable of, for example. I don't role play a gladiator or a pugilist, but instead, incorporate small tidbits of classes that make sense for my character to know. One, for example, is a former huntress from a Xaela tribe. She can thus use a bow quite well, as that was her primary means of felling prey. This translated directly to the battlefield once she came of age to begin participating in the wars that her tribe was involved in. She didn't know any "special skills" with a bow, she merely knew how to use it as a weapon. She picked up hand-to-hand combat over time because there were situations when the enemy would get close enough for her to require a means to defend herself. From there, she was taught how to channel aether through her limbs so that she might be able to actually HURT a Xaela male in h2h combat... Because, well, she's little, and they're not. So, she learned what could sort of be compared to the "fists of 'Element'" type monk skills, just a much more crude version. She later used that knowledge of aether control to learn arcanima in Eorzea, but found that she kind of sucked at it. She can only summon carbuncles, and they are pretty unruly and not at all helpful, other than being cute.

I like to think of the classes as an analog to real world skills, crafts and disciplines. An MMA fighter, for example, isn't usually just a student of Karate, Kickboxing, Taekwondo, Muay Thai, etc. They learn bits and pieces of all of these different fighting styles in order to be competitive in a fight. You do have boxers who only box, so these would be your people who are dedicated only to one class, but then you have the veterans of war and sport that realize that they need a more diverse platform to ensure they remain victorious in their feats. Personally, my taste in combat tends to lean more towards realism. I don't like it when Lalafells beat up Roegadyns in fist fights. Sure, that Lalafell could probably roast the Roegadyn's ass if he used magic, but fisticuffs? Gorillas can physically snap a human's neck with a single blow. Roegadyns are bigger masses of muscle than they are. I don't think you'll survive! For someone to beat a physically superior foe, I tend to feel they need some sort of explanation. If a Hyur squares off with a Roegadyn and the hyur wins, I'd expect that the Roegadyn is either extremely drunk, not a trained combatant (whereas the hyur is), or the Hyur manipulated aether in some way that gave him an edge the Roegadyn did not possess. However, the story has a couple instances of lalafells easily besting other trained fighters like it was nothing. Especially in 1.0.

ArmachiA · **04-29-2016, 11:13 AM**

Anything that's a hard "No" or "Yes" I follow pretty much 100%. No exceptions. UNFORTUNATELY, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of those, so most roleplayers have to play in the grey area anyway. There's something called "Deductive Logic" that I pretty much use to fill those gaps. It's basically just means "If this is true AND this is true, then there's a good chance this is also true." Of course, even if there's a 90% chance of <thing> being true, that 10% can easily rear it's ugly head, so there's always a risk. Also, RPers may not come to the exact same conclusions, and will have a different end result - which with gray areas I generally accept. We just can't agree on what the lore means 100% until the devs come it and stop making it grey.

I have a lore compliant guild that runs really smooth in that department, but we still have a lot of grey area characters. Thaumaturges who use blood magic to strengthen their elemental magic, Conjurers who still use the complete elemental wheel, Void touched, Hearers, Summoners with an actual Egi, Scholars with a fairy, Garlean experiments, Garleans, etc etc. As long as it can be explained using deductive logic and with some evidence in lore, grey area characters are generally fine.

For me? Even as lore compliant as I am, I hit the grey area quite a few times - especially as a Storyteller. I think the worst the guild has done was someone accessed the Succor and used Holy in the middle on the ocean (So nothing of note would be destroyed you see) in order to kill a supposedly immortal voidsent. Was it grey? Hell yes, but we added a lot of consequences to make it at least somewhat viable. The person who accessed it had his ability to use Conjury completely revoked by the Elementals (A grey area in itself, since we don't know how much power they actually have) and Gridania came down hard on the guild itself once they caught wind - which was actually a fun story in and of itself. As I do stories for the entire guild with a small team, the stories have to be somewhat big and dramatic, which means grey areas. However I generally stick to a few rules so keep it within limits (I.E - bad guys may threaten to destroy Ul'dah and even have a bomb set up, but they aren't actually allowed to destroy it, the status quo created by the devs must remain in tact).

Personal Grey area? As I have my character as someone who grew up in a priesthood and studied Aether, she's basically a monk - but not a Monk. She knows about Chakras and everything but can't fight as a Monk - she can barely throw a punch. I think that's the worst thing I got.

Caspar · **04-30-2016, 10:47 PM**

(04-28-2016, 09:33 PM)Graeham Wrote:
(04-28-2016, 09:19 PM)Caspar Wrote:
(04-28-2016, 09:15 PM)Graeham Wrote: FFXIV is FFXIV. I detest the idea of completely breaking the game's lore even if I dislike certain elements of it. Bending, however? That's a different story - but even then I only do it if it's plausible and a means to add some depth to an element of the lore that may not yet have been expanded on. I feel like there's more than enough interesting material to work with in this setting without having to defile what exists. Especially when there's countless interesting niches that go without any love or attention.

Ultimately I hold the firm belief that if someone is just going to ignore the established lore in a setting and do whatever they like instead then that's probably a solid sign that they'd be better off elsewhere...or just limiting their role-play to something like Skype or a setting they create themselves.

I can only assume they'd be happier doing that if they show no actual love or passion for FFXIV itself. When I fell out with Blizzard's storytelling I took my leave of WoW because the game's lore no longer interested me. I could probably go off and pretend the stuff I disliked didn't happen but...that's only a way to exclude a great many people. Even if people buy into it then it's just replacing canon with fanon. Which, to me, comes across as rather obnoxious.

That's my personal stance on it anyway.
Defile? That's strong language. But although a great deal of lore is very much set in stone, other elements are vague. We don't know much about the climate in Othard, for example, or the type of food Garleans eat. In those cases, how do you address things the lore *doesn't* cover, or not in enough detail? I guess how much bending is "permissible," is my question.

If something is left vague - such as what, exactly, Othard is like - then it's fine to make an effort to fill in the gaps, especially if it's done by expanding upon what we do know about a particular vague aspect of the lore.

I do feel as though people risk writing themselves into a corner if they embrace too many aspects of the setting that are left without much lore though.Â

In short? I'm willing to turn a blind eye to 'bending' but not to 'breaking'. The former is something I've done myself whilst the latter, to me, just makes me lose interest altogether.

I think this makes quite a bit of sense. In general, that is how I feel.

I like to try and give people what they want if they come up with a concept, so I will instinctively seek holes in the lore to grant them the freedom they want as creator. However when it comes to me, I do that only if the concept I want to execute demands it. There is so little lore in the corners of the setting I'm most curious about that I have to scavenge here and there to make something resembling a background that would satisfy me.Â

These elements are usually written such that I can downplay or minimize them to adjust organically to the tastes of the RPer opposite me. Some people refuse to acknowledge anything they don't see in the game. While that defeats the purpose of creative writing for me, and I think it's inherently self contradictory as a viewpoint given every original character is non-canon, I appreciate the challenge inherent with writing according to self-imposed restrictions a great deal, and I've gotten used to being vague enough in dialogue that this usually never causes a clash in writing styles between me and others.

Why this is necessary, and creates so much extra work for me, is that I've got tastes as well. Sometimes my story demands a rote character and other times it demands an unorthodox one that pushes the limit of what is available to us in the setting material. Whether I do the former or the later when entering a setting really depends on what I feel like at the time. I generally see the grey area RP as harmless so long as it doesn't subtract from what already exists in game. My phrase for this is, and always has been, being in favor of things that expand the setting and do not shrink it. Most of the original material I write is usually with the express intent that others, if they find it interesting, can participate or use it as well if they want to. The other factor I consider is whether it diminishes the value of existing setting details or contradicts them. I feel like overall, through putting time and effort into building my mortar to fill in the gaps, I've avoided this. The idea was to be vague in small strategic details about Doma that I can adjust it when more concrete lore arrives, or to localize the background such that it can coexist with new lore as it comes. Yet there's always room for improvement, and I have to be willing to retcon doing this, and that carries some inherent difficulties.

So in the end, I'd say that I'm fine with anything, even made up stuff, unless it directly contradicts the lore, and even in the latter case, I would be *privately* okay with it if it was sold to me well. If the work is invested, and the writer takes the time to construct detailed content to explain what they do, I'd be a liar if I heaped scorn upon that. If I broke the lore aggressively and criticized the lore bending of others, I would be a hypocrite, and if I was a strict lore adherent privately but outwardly approved of lore twisting, I would also be a hypocrite. In the end I think my view is not that different from most people so far. My only real intense sticking point is wishing for others to have flexibility and to not deliberately misrepresent the lore, whether they want to snap free of it or glue themselves to it.

Valence · **05-01-2016, 04:04 AM**

I guess the thing I like with my tastes is that my tastes like lore facts and stuff above everything else, so I usually don't have to worry breaking it.. That's kinda fortunate.

John Spiegel · **05-01-2016, 03:34 PM**

A cornerstone of my FC and all around RP circle: It's all about the details.

Give an engineer unlimited resources and a blank slate and they'll struggle to create but give them constrictions and they'll perform outstandingly.

That being said, having NO rules means it will inevitably escalate to godhood/godmodding RP and all around un-uniqueness of RP. Not everyone is an adventurer, great at fighting or knowledgeable as most of us are OOC. Having a spectrum of folks keeps things interesting!

While my group is small and not booming with plots, we enjoy digging into lore and working with it! The lore of this game is plentiful but there's so much missing or fragmented (pls Lore Book now pls pls).

Shofie · **05-01-2016, 04:38 PM**

I keep within the lore within reason. For what I do with my character though, I don't really need to adhere to strict lore to keep her "in-lore" anyway.

Lutka · **05-01-2016, 06:33 PM**

If you can logically explain to me why your idea fits in the game, then it's cool and I'm cool with it. If it's contradicting lore and you don't have a good reason behind it other than "lel speshul case cus reasons" I'm walking away. I like some level of logical reasoning and by logic I mean using the game's ideas and lore as proof of your theories/ideas/concepts, not using nothing but real life logic. My character isn't on the dot lore perfect, she sits in a grey spot. It is however sound, given that I have guidelines to use and logic that makes sense.

Spikewerks · **05-01-2016, 08:43 PM**

I try to stay as consistent to lore as possible. The only place I have ever really bent the lore a bit is with Zigovali's Echo (still unbeknownst to him), which changes the way he does some of his magick. This choice is purely to make things more interesting and give him some pretty profound predicaments; he is in no way stronger or more powerful than a regular caster for his differences.

TinyRedLeaf · **05-02-2016, 01:10 PM**

Nailah Wrote:I have been wondering about how people's relations to the canon lore is, and specifically how far outside of it you go with your characters. Are you fine with bending it a little, do you just do as you please no matter what, and how do you go about it?

Thanks for making this topic. Smile

I don't often make drastic departures from the main storyline, but I do bend quite a lot of plot points to suit how I imagine my character, Lyland Battersea, to be growing within the official lore. He started out as an arcanist, but is now a summoner, the only one of his kind in Eorzea at this point in the story.

As for how I go about doing this, it mainly depends on two things:
1) My personal reflections on the key themes, as presented by Square-Enix.

2) How I believe Lyland would react to key developments, based on his own beliefs and values, as I imagined them. My character is a part of me, no doubt, inspired by my personal experiences, but he does also have a "life" of his own. And his "thoughts" may not always be the same as my own.

Nailah Wrote:What drives you or could drive you to go outside of the canon?

To fill in the details that are essentially left open to interpretation. As someone else pointed out, there are a great many things that are left open to us within the main storyline, and there's where our imaginations are free to run wild.

Our characters' backstories, for example, as left to us to fill out. And to make these back-stories fit, it's sometimes necessary to finesse some of the details. To me, it's more important to get the "feel" right, rather than to stick pedantically to the official story. In other words, I'll do whatever it takes to make my character "work", without breaking the official story.

Nailah Wrote:Feel free to mention examples if you want to, I am genuinely curious on what people have done/are doing that might be considered dubious/sketchy/grey-zone like.

It'll be a huge list, haha! I'll keep it to a couple of examples.

(1)
Lyland is from the Ciedalaes. It's not entirely clear whether the Ciedalaes is a part of Limsa Lominsa.Â Canonically, the Lominsan Navy does have a squadron named after the Ciedalaes, and this suggests the archipelago may be under the thalassocracy's rule. But there's very little in the story itself to corroborate this. The Ciedalaes are usually mentioned in a very off-hand manner that doesn't seem to suggest Lominsan sovereignty over the islands. Rather, the archipelago seems to be under very loose control, and appears to be the hideout for various pirate gangs.

So, I imagine the Ciedalaes to be under Lominsan "protection" instead. It lies within Limsa Lominsa's sphere of control, but isn't actually under direct rule. And this allows me to explain how Lyland is a foreigner, despite being fairly familiar with Lominsan culture.

(2)
I've largely departed from the Anima weapon questline as it's presented within the game. There's too much background to go through. In short, though, the quest to build Lyland's Draconomicon is not driven by Ardashir, but rather by Lyland himself. Lyland has come to a point where he realised that he needed a better way to control the chaotic primal essences that now reside within his aether, and Ardashir's quest to create an artificial soul provided the means to achieve this.

The anima (which Lyland has named Saravasna) currently acts as a counter-balance to the roiling primal aether within that was coming close to overwhelming him, especially after he learnt to tap Bahamut's power through the Dreadwyrm trance.

More pertinently, Saravasna is essentially a "filter" that's helping to reduce the primal taint on his soul, allowing him to stay in control of his growing power without being consumed by it.

It pleases me that, despite this major deviation, there are elements in the official Anima weapon storyline that dovetail nicely with my own interpretation of events. Take for example, the latest revelation that the anima is sustaining itself on its user's aether. Well, that's basically what Saravasna is doing as well.

And if later developments in the canon were to throw up some kinks, I guess I'll have to manage by making further bends along the way. :p

Mia Moui · **05-02-2016, 03:00 PM**

(04-29-2016, 06:25 AM)Valence Wrote: I don't consider personal headcanon on one's own miqotribe or school of aether control or whatever to be lore bending, but rather world building (with all the pros and cons it implies), which means expanding logical conclusions based purely and solely upon lore. It can be dangerous on the long run of course, like every kind of RP, but I believe that as long as you keep it 'regional' (vs 'universal') and pretty situational/lore friendly itself, the risk is rather low.

Of course if you don't base it on lore, or take liberties with it, then it's lore bending or even lore breaking. I define bending the lore as a willingness to introduce something that doesn't quite fit with the lore, but doesn't break it outright either.Â With the caveat of super vague lore that you somehow want to use neverthless, of course.

I don't find lore bending to be very spread, it's rather specific in my opinion. Either you break it most of the time (consciously or unconsciously), or either you don't.

If I bend or break the lore it's because I'm adding traits to my Miqo'te that they might not actually have. Â It's not a plot point that I know of, but Miqo'te are said to have a keen sense of smell. Â I've used that in RP. Â I add other cat-like traits like emotive signaling with tails and ears. Â Mia Moui sticks to the nocturnal ways of her people and will complain about no one being up at 3 bells. Â And she sees in the dark as least as well as Seekers see in the daytime. My Miqo'te tend to be traditional and hold to traditional views on relationships. Â Since Mia Moui is a Keeper, she is all about sisterhood and cares little for masculine companionship. Â She's not trying to be deliberately sexist but it's just not the way of her people to have men around. And of course, she'd never have left her sisters or extended family were it not for the Calamity.

I also enjoy RP'ing Mia has having an adversarial relationship with the Wood Wailers because of her family's reputation and because of the unfortunate association with the Coeurlclaw.

I suppose I do lore bend a little as I suggest that an unknown adventurer was able to free some Miqo'te from the Coeurclaw, including Mia and her sisters. Â It seems like something like this could happen but I don't think the player takes on the Coeurlclaw King until level 50.

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[Discussion] Canon lore & you?

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes