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Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Printable Version

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Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Ashe - 08-30-2015

Specifically Xaela...
I have about near given up with Shar and I know a lot of others who have given up or running into walls with their RP with Au Ra and more specifically Xaela. 
I'v been trying so hard to RP with her and it's just so...bland. She's so bland and I think it's because the lack of any real NPC guide to how Xaela are supposed to act. 

How is everyone else coping with this or did you give up and change your character to something else? 
I really am thinking of just switching her and my other alt (he doesn't have a wiki yet >> ) so I can RP on him more and have it actually be interesting...


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Kaiz - 08-30-2015

I'm having no trouble. 

I'm also BSing my way through it all and just inventing whatever I need to fill gaps.

What specific areas are tou struggling with? Maybe you just need some inspiration.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Blue - 08-30-2015

I'm RPing both Xaela and Raen, and having loooots of fun!

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RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Ryanti - 08-30-2015

This is food for thought.

I always thought of the Xaela as a kind of race inspired by the Mongolian nomads that ride the steppes of their homeland and build elaborate tents to rest their heads. The section of Othard that the devs describe as home of the Xaela involves how the tribe used to 'ride the steppes' of Othard or such. So my headcanon immediately went to Mongolia.

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So if you are looking for inspiration, I recommend checking out the Mongolian nomads.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Ashe - 08-30-2015

I learned a lot about the mongols before I switched my major in college.
I am wondering if it's just the fact I'm RPing a female character (I am a girl who sucks at rping girls >>) but she's just so boring. I am comparing her to all of the stuff I do on my Elezen and it's like...she's so lame >.< I can't think of ways to change her.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Kaiz - 08-30-2015

Square has actually stated officially that there is a Mongolian inspiration to the Xaela, so drawing from Mongolian influences is totally legitimate in my mind. I've decided that Kaiz does throat-singing, for example :p


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Ashe - 08-30-2015

I am aware of that. My character has a tribe and I've read all of the stupidly limited lore available on Xaela. It's so difficult to find any reason to have any of them in Eorzea and make them feel like they belong there...there aren't many Xaela npcs.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Kaiz - 08-30-2015

(08-30-2015, 03:01 AM)Ashe Wrote: I am aware of that. My character has a tribe and I've read all of the stupidly limited lore available on Xaela. It's so difficult to find any reason to have any of them in Eorzea and make them feel like they belong there...there aren't many Xaela npcs.

Well, that's probably intentional. Au Ra escaped the Empire in Othard and are in Eorzea as refugees. A lot of those refugees would be survivors and/or exceptional individuals (in other words, players).


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Ryanti - 08-30-2015

(08-30-2015, 03:29 AM)Kaiz Wrote:
(08-30-2015, 03:01 AM)Ashe Wrote: I am aware of that. My character has a tribe and I've read all of the stupidly limited lore available on Xaela. It's so difficult to find any reason to have any of them in Eorzea and make them feel like they belong there...there aren't many Xaela npcs.

Well, that's probably intentional. Au Ra escaped the Empire in Othard and are in Eorzea as refugees. A lot of those refugees would be survivors and/or exceptional individuals (in other words, players).

Adding to that, it's fairly implied throughout the game that the Raen came to Eorzea with a rather large population compared to the Xaela. The Raen have more of a non-mobile, stable civilization about them, so I think they were more able to have access to leave Othard versus the nomadic Xaela. At least that is my head canon speaking.

I do find that Xaela are very rare to find in the game NPC-wise. Even compared to Raen.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Lydia Lightfoot - 08-30-2015

I have difficulty roleplaying an Au Ra and I haven't even made one.

Hah!

But in all seriousness, I can see where you're coming from. Since its the new thing to be, there's a ton of "Flavor Of The Month"-ing going on with people making new Au Ra or using a Fantasia to repurpose an older character, and with limited lore available for their mannerisms, I've seen multiple interpretations of them. Some people type them as having accents or broken "English" to represent their foreign nature, some people don't. Some roleplay them as being very knit into clan concepts, others play them as odd loners who don't really fit a mold. Some people seem to believe that the Au Ra females made the long journey to Ul'dah to pursue the valiant quest of becoming scantily clad attention-bait.

Were it me, I'd examine first the question "what do /I/ want to get out of this character's story", and then link up with other Au Ra players who are of a like mind. If it's not the same as everybody else's vision of their racial lore, so what. Yours came from a different clan or whatever, so they're different, everyone gets to do their thing, and life carries on.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Ashe - 08-30-2015

She has a backstory and everything. Like...I am pretty good with lore. I've interpreted things with the lore given that ended up being affirmed in Heavensward (which made me really happy with Ashe 'cause it's legitimized a lot of what I was rping on him). Anyways, I don't understand the foreign accent thing with the domans and othard people at all. In the Japanese version of the game, they just speak a more archaic yet understandable version of the language...I never once thought about the language as a part of their characters.

I have a backstory on her. I've rpd with her multiple times but there is this wall with the limited amount of lore that can't be interpreted. I see people RPing their Xaela as like...regular Eorzeans who are all about that city life and it's like...that isn't really possible because they aren't about living in cities or really liking anyone outside of their own tribes (which is what I've interpreted). To get my character out of her tribe, I had her kicked out...

Also, lining up stuff with other Au Ra players sounds easy but with Xaela they are warring tribes. Does that, lore wise, even make sense? Some of the tribes were especially violent--Jhungid is a tribe that held an annual battle against the Kharlu and while they weren't doing that they were enslaving other tribes. That doesn't seem all too friendly to me...

I am surprised no one here has hit that wall with the lore...that or people are ignoring the lore completely >>
There is actually a TON of lore available to those who are Raen from Doma available in the game. RPing a Raen actually seems easy...
But Xaela....I guess it's easy if you ignore the lore >>


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - BroodingFicus - 08-30-2015

Xaela and Au Ra in general are, as said, pretty open to interpretation. There are a lot of tribes with varying vague ideas. I've seen people really embellish on these and congregate with others to sorta rebuild themselves in Eorzea and others who left the old traditions as more of a backstory and started anew once their character traveled from Othard. I rather like that it was left open. If they had laid out specifics we would have had a bunch of copy cat Au Ra running about with really similar backstories. As it stands now I feel like there are enough opportunities to accommodate lots of different styles and ideas without anyone being right or wrong.

Maybe its time to flesh out the character a bit more and see if its their race that is causing the problem? I've had times when I felt so so about rping one of my alts because I just didn't feel the same connection with them as I did for other characters I had....Now my Xaela has a tumblr and a 400 page google doc worth of rp. Sometimes it just takes time or that one rp that really sets you off. Whether it is or isn't due to race, maybe its just time to throw a wrench in the works? Personally I like nothing more than to throw a character through the grinder and see what comes out on the other side. Making them fall apart is good insight into how they were held together in the first place.

Edit: Personally I rp my Xaela 'mid range'. I don't buy into the little mermaid school of dinglehopper *sticks teapot on head* 'oh what a lovely hat' thing I've seen. He is mostly mute so that solves a lot of the speech issues but he has trouble with certain concepts. Like Gil. His first rp ever was trying to buy room and board with arrowheads and a pelt and nearly getting thrown out into the snow for it. I think some of the tribes might be better adjusted than others. There was one (I can't recall the name) that interacted with the outsiders more and others like you said who were violent in nature. I think the latter might very well mesh more seamlessly. Granted...what we have seen also shows that Ishgard, Gridania and Ul'dah may not be terribly welcoming based on looks alone so they still might have issues. Limsa is the only city I've not heard of being called out on some sort of discrimination against the Au Ra.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Ark - 08-30-2015

For me I was invited to the server and thankful. For me I've written a flexible backstory for either xaela or rean. (I play rean for the slightly more open for me)  I also change from my hyur but kept the name.

As far as problems I don't I have found any currently. The names I think is best researching in full before changing and you can change or not based what you want.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Kaiz - 08-30-2015

(08-30-2015, 04:38 AM)Ashe Wrote: She has a backstory and everything. Like...I am pretty good with lore. I've interpreted things with the lore given that ended up being affirmed in Heavensward (which made me really happy with Ashe 'cause it's legitimized a lot of what I was rping on him). Anyways, I don't understand the foreign accent thing with the domans and othard people at all. In the Japanese version of the game, they just speak a more archaic yet understandable version of the language...I never once thought about the language as a part of their characters.

I have a backstory on her. I've rpd with her multiple times but there is this wall with the limited amount of lore that can't be interpreted. I see people RPing their Xaela as like...regular Eorzeans who are all about that city life and it's like...that isn't really possible because they aren't about living in cities or really liking anyone outside of their own tribes (which is what I've interpreted). To get my character out of her tribe, I had her kicked out...

Also, lining up stuff with other Au Ra players sounds easy but with Xaela they are warring tribes. Does that, lore wise, even make sense? Some of the tribes were especially violent--Jhungid is a tribe that held an annual battle against the Kharlu and while they weren't doing that they were enslaving other tribes. That doesn't seem all too friendly to me...

I am surprised no one here has hit that wall with the lore...that or people are ignoring the lore completely >>
There is actually a TON of lore available to those who are Raen from Doma available in the game. RPing a Raen actually seems easy...
But Xaela....I guess it's easy if you ignore the lore >>

Actually, most of those things have cropped up pretty regularly for the Au Ra RP I'm involved in. There's underlying inter-tribal conflicts and suspicions going on, bloody brawls with agitators, squabbling and chest-puffing over whether Raens or Xaela are better. 

Not all the Xaela tribes are warring. Of the list we have, only maybe a fifth or fewer of them are noted for violence. That aside, they're not in Othard anymore. Most of them aren't with their tribes anymore. Old habits may die hard, but they are in a totally different environment, and some adaption is going to need to happen. It's not as if the local authorities would just shrug their shoulders at a Dotharl attacking everyone they come across, so it stands to reason that a Dotharl player has cause to curb their violence at least a bit.

Keep in mind that what we know about the Xaela tribes insofar as the little blurbs SE gave us are talking about those tribes in the context of their normal lives in Othard. Xaela refugees in Eorzea are living anything but ordinary lives right now, which means that there's a lot of room for players to come up with their own stuff.


RE: Is anyone else having difficulty RPing their Au Ra? - Korin - 08-30-2015

(08-30-2015, 01:21 AM)Ashe Wrote: Specifically Xaela...
I have about near given up with Shar and I know a lot of others who have given up or running into walls with their RP with Au Ra and more specifically Xaela. 
I'v been trying so hard to RP with her and it's just so...bland. She's so bland and I think it's because the lack of any real NPC guide to how Xaela are supposed to act.

I don't know if I managed to skip a response that answers my question, so I'll just ask anyway - but what walls are you hitting with her? Do you have any player connections in her background, or is she completely free?



But I can relate, somewhat, when you say you're trying to RP, and finding it bland...But less so with my Xaela, and more with a couple of other non-Au Ra characters of mine. I don't like to admit it, since they HAVE made connections that I don't want to just cut off...

Sometimes I find that I'll sit there and fuss over lore and background details and "oh no what if this isn't lore-friendly, if it isn't perfect people are going to judge me" and then I'm just horribly tense when it comes to RPing that character that it sucks all of the fun out of it. But that's just how I am - I know most people actually enjoy that process, so...