Naunet

I really like "Gizem" as a name. It rolls off the tongue well and is fairly unique. But that's just my person tastes. ^^ A little powerful, with a bite to the sound that could give it the strength that a Garlean name should have.

A bit off-topic, but I can't help but be reminded of a situation I experienced while managing a roleplay forum for my old WoW server. There was a... very large and incredibly involved fiasco, and one of the accusations hurled at the admin team (myself included) was that we were biased in our moderation because two of the three admins were part of the same guild, and I was part of a guild that was friends with that guild. Needless to say, the accusations were complete bullcrap. I'm not quite sure what my point is here. Perhaps it's just to caution against perceptions of bias in leadership just because said leaders happen to be a part of the same external organization. I don't really know anything about these people or whatever has gone on, so I'm totally just basing this off my own experiences, but... There it is. Whatever it is. I'm not sure. I think I'm just rambling now. *shuts up*

Biased or no, you're right on. Take a walk around Gridania some time and try to find any Duskwight NPCs. They don't really exist. I think the prejudice against them on the part of the Wildwood is still very much alive.

If his family isn't following the traditional clan rules of breeding/non-breeding males, then I see no reason why he should have to have to follow the designated Tia/Nunh surname scheme.

This past week of beta, my friends and I have met up to RP every couple days or so. It turned into something of a beta short story that involved characters traveling into the Shroud, to Gridania, and then back down through the Shroud and out into Thanalan. My character was on a business trip ICly. Considering the restrictions on airships - being only reserved for exceedingly special circumstances - as well as the idea that average citizens likely don't have the ability (or even the funds) to teleport via aetherite, I decided Antimony's options were walking (when the distance from town to town could be covered in a day) or renting a chocobo (for longer stretches, such as from Camp Tranquil to Camp Drybone). Travel is a fun thing to consider, but on thing I always keep in mind is that the in-game world is decidedly smaller than it really would be, so tacking on days (or even weeks) to an IC trip is prudent. I'm actually going to take the next two weeks we don't have beta access as IC time in which Antimony journeys through Thanalan and then crosses back into La Noscea before finally ending in Limsa Lominsa. That seems a reasonable amount of time, given her age and the average speed of walking and chocobos (equating them to horses). When beta 4 starts up, I'll RP her as having just arrived back in Limsa.

Padjal are probably the result of supernatural meddling in the birth of a child. There are a select few Hyur families who consistently - but extremely rarely - give birth to padjal children. While they are born to Hyur, they may as well be a different race. They don't seem to age at the same rate, living for much, much longer than any normal Hyur, they have an uncanny affinity for the elements and nature and its voices, and of course there are those horns. I honestly would advise against trying to roleplay a padjal, considering how very rare they are and how significant a role they play in Gridanian culture. It would be akin to roleplaying as part of the ruling body of Ul'dah.

Oh my god, this thread. I want to have its babies.

I wish female elezen bodies actually looked like that. >_>;;

Technically, yes. Antimony is not my character's given name, just one that she's adopted since leaving her clan. So while her in-game name won't outwardly seem to fall within the naming traditions of Sun Seeker miqo'te, she does have a lore-appropriate name! I've made sure all her kids (played by other folk) have lore-appropriate names as well. ^^ [edit] I wanted to add, that if anyone does meet a character without a lore-appropriate name, it could always be interesting to question them ICly!

I wish there was a race where the females were taller than the males for once.

A single PC character - not an average citizen of Eorzea. Not everyone RPs an adventurer, and certainly as I said, the majority of people in Eorzea are not adventurers. I think it's absolutely critical when considering these kinds of things to divorce the large gil accumulation you get OOCly from playing the game, from the theoretical actual gil accumulation any typical individual in the world would get from a roleplay standpoint.

So I did a thing. The data collected is just from Ul'dah's Sapphire Avenue Exchange, but I think this provides some very important insights into the potential financial reach of the poor or working class versus, say, a high-falutin' adventurer or the finer folk. Take, for example, food. There's an NPC in the Coffer & Coffin who describes marmot meat as low-quality (and thus, probably the cheaper side of meat, considering it's favored by miners and such, who aren't going to be making a lot of money). Marmot steak sells from a potwatch for 9 gil. You can use this understanding of the relative value of marmot to compare to other food items, both raw and processed, and from that I feel comfortable saying that any food item over 15 or so gil is probably considered to be a splurge for the average poor or working class individual (such as those cooks or leatherworkers or other such employed individuals just trying to get by). If you compare the cost of meat to the cost of clothing, you can see quite clearly why the refugees in Ul'dah are having such a difficult time making a living. If they can barely afford to eat, it's unlikely they can afford any clothing much more than rags. As my fiance puts it: "Three chicken breasts for five dollars, or one shirt for thirty? Guess I'm going naked for a month." Anyway, there's more that can be said about this (such as drawing tentative conclusions regarding the types of materials lower class individuals use for their clothing/jewelry vs. the more comfortably living), but I need to get some packing done.

The prices for player housing are going to be based of PC gil income, not the average income for an average citizen of Eorzea. It would be a mistake to base estimates of cost of living on something intended to be a gold sink for the game.

I think this is getting away from the original intent of my post - though it's an interesting tangent. What I was really trying to drive at in my OP was seeing what kinds of definitions we could surmise regarding relative wealth. How much money would an average, working-class individual possess? At what point does one cross over barely scraping by to living comfortably? When does an Eorzean become "rich"? Here's a basic question that, if answered, could help inform these questions: About how much gil do ya'll think a simple apartment would cost?

But those servers probably won't have roleplayers. OP, I think Balmung is going to end up with the largest population of roleplayers, so you're more likely to find folk playing in your times there than you would elsewhere.

But how accessible would teleporting really be in the in-character world of Eorzea? According to the game, our characters are fairly special people - certainly above average in opportunity and such. I'd hesitate to think the average normal citizen would have the ability to teleport (though that brings up an entirely separate topic on the reality of the Teleport spell and its costs - if one can teleport anywhere, why would it cost money ICly? But that's a bit off-topic). I'm always wary of using gold sink and PC market prices (i.e. prices on the broker) as guides for the actual economy of a world, because player characters tend to accrue a lot of gold, but obviously the majority of people in the world aren't player characters.

So one thing that always seems to get overlooked until it comes up in RP is the actual value of a game's currency. We as players tend to accrue a lot of in-game money over our play hours, but the question remains: how much really is "a lot" when it comes to roleplay? I've seen items from vendors that sell for as little as a couple gil, upwards of several hundreds. Repairing your gear can take multiple hundreds of gil. But how accessible are certain items or services to the average Eorzean? How much gil do you need to be categorized as "rich" versus "dirt poor", and where is that middle line where you can live comfortably but a lot of things are out of your reach? Let's hear some thoughts!

When traveling for work, Antimony would take water and some non-perishable food of course, but more importantly the ledger assigned to whichever client she is investigating, sorting, moving or whathaveyou the assets of alongside a quill and sealed ink well. She may also carry other necessary paperwork when applicable, and occasionally a journal of her own, which is covered in attempts at theoretical equations describing aether flow and other such things (part of her hobby). Lastly she would carry enough gil to rent a room at a cheap inn should she need it. She carries no family or personal mementos, as she would rather not be reminded of loss.

I know it's Keepers of the Moon who have a far more strict gender stratification, with a matriarch of the clan and everything. But I don't really know the details of it.

ICly, Antimony is primarily an accountant (so, none of the available options ), but she hobbies in conjury and arcanist studies because she's very much a mental person. OOCly, I intend to level what I need for her to be both white mage and scholar.

If it's not happening in /p or whatever, it's fair game for getting involved in, IMO.

I'll have to keep an eye out for this. Thanks for the heads up.

I saw a gaggle of roleplayers inside one of the buildings at that larger town west of Horizon. It was far too crowded to really do much, however, so my friends and I trecked across Eorzea and found a nice place to do some beta no-strings-attached RP in a town in the Eastern Shroud.

Oof, I love these things. Going to fill one out for Anti. :3

I think this is far too restrictive, as the lore we have is hardly complete. It is perfectly okay to try and reasonably fill in the gaps with a little theorizing. That's not really an unusual thing in RP communities. I highly doubt Squeenix will ever provide lore on the evolutionary history of the species populating the planet, or its geology, or even much about its ecology. There are things that we as roleplayers should feel comfortable speculating on and creating micro-canons for. To tell people that they shouldn't try to fill in gaps means a lot of people may have to RP with gaps in their thought processes, and that's not fair at all. Coming from TERA, where in order to RP properly, you need to more, uhm, cross vast chasms of nothingness rather than fill in a few gaps here and there, I know the value of people able to identify the particular rules a fantasy universe seems to be following and then extrapolating. All believable fictional universes follow consistent rules; if they don't, then they're not constructed properly. It's more than fair to take knowledge and apply it to something to fill a hole that may be missing. I'm talking in rather general terms here, as this is a topic that goes well beyond the idea of half-breeds and bleeds into just about every corner of lore out there.