(09-25-2013, 02:46 AM)X Wrote: It is certainly a cultural difference, coming from someone who's long preferred western RPGs to eastern ones. Anime and Manga both glorify youth far more often. The most heroic characters are somewhere in the realm of 14-20 and are always very 'pretty' for lack of a better term.
It might sound very presumtious of me to say so, but I think it more or less goes back to the warrior culture which is still glorified in Japan to this day. As I recall, the creed of the warrior was to always choose death when there was a choice between life and death. They were meant to live very brief, very purposeful lives, which no doubt meant you did not see many old warriors. That's why the image of the sakura petals (cherry blossoms) are so prevalent in samurai lore. They live only briefly, but are the most beautiful flower, and with Bushido it is desireable to live such a way.
That is all me trying to recall the half a dozen reports I wrote in high school on the matter though. I may very well be wrong and simply pulling things out of thin air to justify my thought process.
The western fantasy tradition has widely grown from Tolkien's influence, who had strong elders like Aragorn and Gandalf. Tolkien was also a former combatant himself in The Great War, and a lot of his experiences and disdain for it are reflected in his writing. Warhammer, Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons, and other staples of the WRPG draw heavily from that 'war is hell' tone than resonates more with the battle hardened character.
I'm following. I'm a history buff, personally, and although it's not my forte, I have looked into Japanese history and Samurai culture before. While I'm not an expert on it, I did spend at least a year studying it. I get what you're driving at with the cherry blossoms and Bushido and it makes a lot of sense. Granted, my view of the Samurai in modern fiction is based more off of Kurosawa films than things like Samurai X (one of the few animes I've seen and enjoyed.)
As far as western heroes go, you bring up a solid point with Tolkien's own experiences in World War I (weirdly enough, I've also done some hefty research into his life, so now I'm double-following.) I suppose I'm just more of a Western style player than an Eastern one. My father is an amateur historian and collector of pre-20th century military antiques and I grew up on medieval legends of archetypical white knights and such, and it's still heavily reflected in my RP. I suppose it's a matter of taste and, in some cases, culture in the end.
(09-25-2013, 03:21 AM)Lament Wrote: Still, it feels to me like on a personal level, most people tend to RP characters who are close to themselves in age. Someone in this topic said you know you're getting older when you start RPing characters younger than yourself, and it's pretty true. Personally, I'm glad I didn't RP older characters when I was a teen - I would have done a terrible job of it, and people actually past their 30s would probably have cringed.
I agree with your whole post, but I wanted to highlight this. This is a good point. A lot of people, myself included, use RP as a form of light escapism (for some it's medium to heavy, but that depends on the individual). I used to go as far as to make my characters similar to myself in age, appearance, and interests, so I can definitely relate to this.Â
Lately, I've started making characters that are closer to characters I'd like to see in a single player game or set storyline rather than just making a video game version of myself. Uther is a character that I sort of picture as the supporting guy in the series that's cool enough for a cult following, but isn't important enough to have his own series. That being said, when we talk about age, I tend to make my more recent characters close enough to my age for me to know how to RP them well, but far enough away so that I don't feel like I'm RPing myself anymore. For the record, Uther is in his early thirties, and I'm in my early-mid twenties.
