Ildur

You'll still see the name in the chatbox, though.

I ussually don't let the limitations of the creator stop me when imagining characters. However, the limit forces one to think if you really want that particular physical feature and, if you decide you indeed do, how to show it within the limitations. For example, maybe I want my character to be missing an eye completely. That's quite fine and all I have to do is just emote at the beginning of an interaction to stablish it. The same could be done with a half-breed, certainly. The books and movies don't serve any purpose here, because neither of them are cooperative storytelling. In a movie/book, the author can pick a trait, decide it's a social stigma, and have all the universe adhere to that. In roleplay, you have characters controlled by other players. The social stigma aspect of your character dissapears instantly if the majority of the other players don't follow up on it. If you claim your character is stigmatized, but no one but NPCs of your making are there to stigmatize the character, he isn't really stigmatized. It's just background. As said: the whole social stigma thing falls apart if the other players don't follow it. At least if you want the social stigma to be an active part of the character, I mean. There's a difference with some of those and half-breeds. Male Miqo'te sudden growth in population has to be handwaved or explained somehow because the game allows for players to create them, unlike half-breeds,and most players will use whatever means the game gives them to create the characters they want. This will mean there might or might not be many male Miqo'tes running around. Mechanically, male Miqo'te can now be as plentiful as any other. Something similar happens with White Mages, Dragoons and Black Mages: the game allows the player to (eventually) become one, so we have a small story-and-gameplay segregation where, in lore, some of those classes are ancient lost arts and should be exceedingly rare but, in gameplay, they will be plentiful. This two occurrences are mistakes on Squeenix loremaking: we are forced to handwave their inconsistency for the sake of roleplaying what they give us. The other examples: Ala Mhigan refugees, Garlean turncloaks and people with magitek technology populations are highly dependant on the roleplaying community. If there's no lore contradicting the existence of any of those, or specifying that they are very rare, then there's no reason to think they are. If there is, though, then they are a 'trait' of your character. Personally, I'd say that, except for the Ala Mhigan refugees, the other two are a 'Thing' or 'trait' about your character anyway. I can see why you say garlean turncloaks should be rare (because of the brainwashing and imperial propaganda), and the same with magitek technologists (since Eorzea isn't very high tech), but I'd like to see where you saw that Ala Mhigan refugees are rare in lore. At the end, though, you can play whatever you want if you have good enough reasons to justify it.

By not acknowledging the IC consequences of his IC actions, he's straight up godmodding. Nothing strange about it. You just have to OOCly point out that their character actions are not coherent or consistent witht the frame of the group and that they have to either start acting properly (ie. not ignoring IC consequences, or trying to come with something Icly reasonable as to why he's ignoring them) or that they better leave. Sure, nobody can tell him how to react. But he can't tell anyone else how to react, either. And kicking him out ICly or OOCly is a very valid reaction since he's being disruptive and god-mody, I'd say. In my experience, excesively dramatic characters (like the hypotethical suicide here) get often ignored or brushed aside. Players who make those characters just to call attention are rather unsubtle about it, so it's easy to detect them. Anyway, I'm a bit confused by this paragraph. Are you trying to say that some character concepts cannot be played out if there's someone troublesome, because the troublesome one will call more attention than that other character concept? And by troublesome we mean someone who is godmodding to some extent to ignore IC consequences. In which case the group should talk to him OOCly about the character and then decide if he ever had a place in the group.

On the matter of power levels and clashing microcanons: Ussually, I'd recommend to try to merge both the group's microcanon and the player's microcanon into a single one. The only way to do this is to discuss it OOCly. The other way is for the participant to ignore the clashing parts of the microcanon during interaction, trying their best to avoid them coming up or handwaving them if they do. However, you have mentioned that, in this case, the strifing character is acting in such a way that would mean he should get kicked in-character from the organization. This tells me this character isn't fit for the group in the first place. He should leave the organization in-character. OOCly, however, if everyone's fine with the player and the character keeping in touch, then there's no reason for him to stop interacting with the group completely. It can also be handwaved with other reasons. For example, maybe he brings some very useful set of skills to the group that cannot be easily replaced. Or maybe his lack of respect for authority is not seen as a deal breaker by the authorities theirselves. The way I'd handle it is to approach him in-character first. Then, if the character doesn't agree to change ways, talk with the player OOCly about ways that will not break character for anyone. If he insists that his character would never change his actions, not even for the sake of staying in the group (as in, respecting the authorities but not really), then an in-character kicking is probably the best way to mantain internal consistency. As an example: I had a character joining a group and then be immediately kicked afterwards for doing something the group's leaders disliked (trying to run away with an asset, which in some ways was also a kidnapping...but details!). ICly, she was not part of the group anymore after the fact. But OOCly, she was still part of the guild and still interacted with their members whenever it made sense for her to do so. So I guess that, in conclusion, the troublesome character in your case should be kicked ICly. Then, if the players agree, they can still interact with him and, perhaps, even include him in the story as an out-of-group character. Special snowflakeness (yay for made-up words!) is very dependant on your roleplaying circle, the personal story of the character and the circumstances of whatever traits make her special. Having a special ability or unique trait doesn't necessarily mean your character is a special snowflake. Having a lot of special abilities that nobody else seem to have, though, will place you at the edge of special snowflakeness. For example, a character who is a master battlemage who can also teleport himself and an undefinite number of others across long distances without previous preparation or posterior fatigue is a special snowflake. However, your roleplaying circle might be okay with that. He might also be an important character for the story, and his teleportation skills are actually needed for it to move forward (for whatever reason). Let's not forget about the circumstances: maybe his magical expertise is dependant upon a powerful artifact that, if taken away, would make him into a complete and useless wimp. It's, at the end, a matter of balance. Sadly, there's no mathematical formula for it (though I have seen people trying to stick to no more than 3 special traits for their characters, which is as far as math will help us here), and there's a great deal of common sense involved.

I wouldn't reduce stealing only to a matter of scarcity. There's plenty of people out there who steal luxuries (like, say, cars), sell them for profit and then buy a brand new pair of shoes instead of food, water, medicines, or whatever. Not to mention you can't remove scarcity in a world with finite resources. You could maybe camouflage it if you somehow managed to give every man, woman and child the exact same set of stuff. But then you'll run into people who have different necessities, or who just want different things. And in turn you'll run into people who, upon seeing this people having different stuff than them, will demand you give it to them too. And if you don't? They might steal them. And it wasn't a problem of scarcity, but a problem of 'you don't need this'. Anyway! Back on topic...I...uh...pickles? Yeah, let's go for pickles.

Welcome! But don't go back to that corner, T'sal, because that corner is actually booby trapped into releasing an horror from the depths every third full moon. But only in January. Which is why it didn't trap you with its thousand maws the first time. I guess I should work on my traps some more, uh. Anyway, welcome! I'm sure there are some other threads you would like to poke your head on. Just remember to not look into the closet. That's were we keep the spiked ceiling trap.

Only if you want to. You could play it as that, in the new story (or, heck, even during the course of the same history), the authorities changed somewhat. To give a very silly but obvious example: the sheriff in town was changed and the one in charge now is competent. It's something you have to decide OOCly with the 'full-time' villain, though. Unless you want to make the authorities into alts, in which case you have to talk with the villain anyway to let him know that there'll be a group of semi-competent NPCs helping the good guys. I'm not sure what you mean with knocking on their door and asking about their villainy. I guess you are refering how I said you have to ask the villain player about it. You do that in Out-Of-Character mode: you ask the player, not the character. Communication is important in this cases, so you have to go OOC when discussing details about the plot or planning the story. Otherwise, crap will happen. About the railroading and the corollary: You are assuming villains have to railroad to work properly. I have the feeling the villains you have roleplayed with were just terrible. Which is, I admit, a problem I have run with full-time villainous groups. But in those cases, you just discuss the railroading (OOCly, of course), hoping they'll get better...or you just drop the storyline, if you are sufficiently fed off and you don't think there's any chance of salvaging it. I'm, however, a bit unsure of what you mean by railroading. I know the technical roleplayer term: it's when the Dungeon Master forces the players to follow a very narrow path to move forward in the plot. I'm unsure of what you mean, though, because, for what you said, it seems to me you are calling 'railroading' to certain story details that are there to make the villain work as such. For example, in the example of the necromancer, that he's avoiding guarded graveyards. This isn't railroading: it's the character reacting. What would be railroading would be if he told you 'you can't put a guard there', or him going 'I still managed to dig out another body!'. Though the second is more godmodding than railroading. This is all stuff you have to solve OOCly. Nobody's a telepath on the internet. We cannot fully communicate with our fellow roleplayers purely by in-character means. That's just asking situations like the ones you have described to happen. You have to drop character for a moment and whisper them, form a party and discuss things in chat, use private messages or a forum. Whatever. But communication is the key. Otherwise, things will start falling apart and nobody will be able to hold the thing together.

It depends on what you want to do. When I was planning how my main character's backstory, I considered making her some sort of vigilante, wearing one of those creepy gridanian wooden masks whenever she wanted to burn someone to a crisp. How I was going to play it was making a 'civilian' version of the character that would use the real name, while having an alt that looked exactly except for the fact that she would wear her hair differently (but taking care of picking styles with the same 'volume') and the mask all the time. The name of this alt was going to be "Masked Madness". That would have worked because the 'secret alt' would never show its face normally, so people might look on the similarities of both characters and draw conclusions without breaking immersion. I assume Isobeau Mauvaix is the real name of your character and the one you want to use on the 'masked' version. In that, case, using an Adjectived Noun (like, say, Travelling Duskwight) on the unmasked version would probably work for meetings in the street, as people will think both characters look alike but dismiss Travelling Duskwight as an NPC. The problem comes the moment other characters discover that they are the same person. Then the name 'Travelling Duskwight' suddenly is very, very innacurate. It depends on what you want to prioritize, at the end: IC knowledge, in which case it is better to use a personal nickname for one of the two identities; or OOC knowledge, where you'll want to use Adjectived Noun instead to keep the mystery as long as possible.

Hello, and welcome! We have pies in the closet, right below the spiked ceiling that slowly falls. The NA loremaster has stated in one of his posts (in the official lore forums) that half-breeds do exist, but are extremely rare. It is not stated why, though: it could be social stigma or a biological issue. So, in a purely technical viewpoint, you can roleplay a half-breed. I'm unsure if you should do that, though...but I'll come back to that in a second. Second: I think the only half-breed in lore is a Miqo'te, but she's a half-breed in the sense he's half Sun Seeker and half Moon Keeper, meaning she has blood of two clans of the same race and, therefore, doesn't really qualify as a half-breed (at least in the sense you are using it). So, no, I do not think there's any half-breeds. One of our lore gurus will surely corrcet me if I'm wrong. Now, I'll explain why I have my reserves about going for a half-breed. The first reason is that it will be impossible to portray visually: the character creator doesn't support half-breeds, so you'll have to settle on an appareance and get used to be called an elezen/hyur depending on what you pick. This is a minor reason, though. Like I said before, there's no in-lore reason as to why you couldn't play a half-breed. There are also ways you can work around it (using descriptions, or even use the lack of visual distiction as a character trait...though that nullifies the 'social stigma' you wanted to use). But, most of the time, people will think you are just trying to be a special snowflake. The second and most important reason is that, as stated previously, half-breeds are rare. To put it with the words better people than me would use, it's a 'Thing' about your character: something that makes the character special only for the purposes of making him special. The third problem is with the social stigma. It's dependant on other player characters. If they don't follow it (by not shunning the character away, not disregarding him...by basically being good people, really) then it comes out just as a meaningless trait that only exists to give your character reasons to go into angsty and dramatic episodes. For your wording, I think you probably wouldn't fall on the angsty side of things, so you might be able to pull it off. My take would to make the social stigma something that pushed him into travelling. Maybe the Duskwight clan he was part of shunned him heavily until he decided (or was forced) to leave. This way you can keep the social stigma side of the character, but instead of being interpreted by others as a 'special sparkly star thing' about him, it will be a part of his history. Following this thought, I'd personally drop the half-breed thing and go for a hyur that was adopted by a Duskwight (maybe he was friends with the real parents, or he found him alone after the Calamity and took pity on his life) but who was shunned and disliked by the other members of the clan. Duskwights have a nasty reputation and, maybe, this particular clan was quite xenophobic. I ussually try to stay away from in-universe rare characteristics such as this, as it's like placing a big neon sign over my head, claiming for attention. It sends the wrong message. So I would go for a more mundane and, dare I say, common, character.

All villains are antagonists, but not all antagonists are villains! Look at me, being all witty and stuff.

In the last beta, you could block them, but their emote text would still show up (at least the pre-defined ones that kick in when you type things like /wave). Hope they fix that.

I must say that, while I understand the reasoning some people decide to go to a Non-Legacy server over a Legacy server, I do not agree with it as the gap between Legacy and Non-Legacy will be meaningless after a few months. Having two unnoficial RP servers means there will be a lot of unreachebale people on the other side, with perfectly fine and interesting characters, stories and plots who will never meet with the others in-game. It's kind of sad. Still, I understand the decision behind it. I hope Squeenix will decide on implementing a dedicated RP server. My only hope right now is that they are waiting for the Legacy/Non-legacy gap is shortened so that all roleplayers won't have really many reasons to stick with their original servers. However, there's two problems with this hope: First, it assumes Squeenix is paying attention to the current mechanics of the roleplaying community, which I'm unsure if they are. Secondly, if they wait some months after launch to implement it, roleplayers will still linger on their original servers and refuse to leave to the designated one, for the simple reason that they might have done non-roleplaying friends who see no reason to transfer, which in turn will mean the roleplaying friends won't want to transfer either because their RP partners are staying because of their non-RPing friends...you get the idea. So I'm holding some hope, but it's an highly illogical hope.

There are a number of ways to handwave it. Lack of evidence, is one. Coherent villains are those that dance in the edge of legality and those who obfuscate their villainy well. Maybe your character knows that elezen on the other table is a necromancer who profanates graves to further his experiments. But maybe you have no proof of it to give to the authorities: yes, you could tell them anyway, but then the Law might not work properly: investigators could be bribed, perhaps there's no good protocol to find a grave digger besides 'let's put a watch on the graveyard'. Maybe this villain is smart and knows when and where to strike. There are also more mundane and selfish reasons: maybe your character is stubborn and wants to punch the necromancer himself. Or maybe he doesn't trust the authorities to do their work. On a more meta level, you can handwave it with 'that would be no fun'. Roleplaying is collaborative storytelling, and making the villain be defeated by the authorities off-screen is kind of...well, not particularly exciting. Whatever you do, though, you have to keep OOC communication with the villain. Know that they are planning, and discuss the conclusions of the engagements (be them physical or magical battles, or a battle of wits) to settle if the events that took place would call the attention of the NPC authorities and, if that is so, how each participant (including these off-screen authorities) will react and change the plot.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having separate characters for roleplay and actual gameplay. In the previous MMOs I roleplayed on, I first leveled to cap (mostly because I wanted to see all the available lore). That, at the end, gave me a better idea of what kind of character I wanted to play and what kind of story would fit the character I played with to that point. With that said, have you roleplayed this character? Sometimes you have to 'wing it', so to speak, instead of planning heavily how the character will act. My suggestion would be that, if you haven't yet, to roleplay her once in a casual enviorement (like a tavern, a street meeting, etcetera). That way, her personality will grow organically, and you will get to know if you like her or not.

The reason the mating strategies thread didn't answer those questions is because they are cultural and historical in nature, while that thread only concerns itself with Miqo'te society on a purely biological point of view: an study of Miqo'te as animals, really. Now, back on topic: I don't see anything lore-breaking in your backstory. The only thing I would point out is that, in Miqo'te tribal societies, the nunh are not traditionally the leaders. They are just the guys that get to have children. So it wouldn't be a nunh who allows Seto and his mother to join the Vulture tribe, but whatever Miqo'te was their chief (or chiefs, if its a council of sorts). I'd change it to say that the nunh was who vouched for them instead, and the chief(s) agreed with him.

Well, I just discovered you can move your camera verticaly if you hold your middle mouse button, and also that you can rotate your character if you use right click instead of left click. I wish I had known this before! With that said, this is my evil character:

I like the name Mali, but I'm confused by 'Boodscythe'. I guess you typoed and really meant 'Bloodscythe', in which case the words Blood and Weapon Name are clichetastic. On the other hand: it is a pseudonym, so it's fine as a mercenary name, where Blood + Weapon Name is probably a tradition. It sends me the image of an over-the-top character in a comic book that dedicates her life to cutting people in half and laughing in the most villanous way possible.4/10. For the real name, Skaenwyda Ganzsaldwyn, you used the Roegadyn dictionary, so you get bonus points for it being lore friendly! It also flows quite nicely. The meaning does not bother me as its something you'd expect parents to name their children. I would be very dissapointed if she had no bonus in her Luck rolls, though. 8/10. I can see Tivahit as a Miqo'te name. Grimmgeist loses points because it involves the word 'grim' camouflaged with an additional consonant. Even less points because geist in german means 'spirit', and combined with the previous word we end up learning that your character is surnamed "Grimspirit". This presents me the character as an anime sorrounded with drama an apathy. And also an in-universe young girl favourite. 4/10. A Lalafell? Automatic 9/10! With that name, he's fated to great things. Like getting eaten by an eft and bursting out of it with his bare hands a minute later. Also, ew! -*- The name I want slaughtered is Thiereia Elentre, a female elezen with a severe drinking problem.

I demand everyone in this thread to lalaify their characters from now on. Why? BECAUSE! Here, let me start: Well, the third has a non-benchmark image but...technicalities!

I think that a better definition of what Rock is tryint to say is that he doesn't like exlusive jerks, i.e., jerks that exclude others out of RP. They just happen to be cliquey by proxy, but it doesn't mean that cliques are bad. Indeed, I'd argue that cliques are kind of natural: people who like each other will, of course, spend more time with each other than with strangers. The clique becomes a problem if they go out of their way to push people aside, I'd say.

I don't know how the Balmung denizens do it, but when someone 'claims' ownership over a specific place (like a tavern), they are not REALLY kicking everyone out of it forever. It's just they using the place temporaly until their scene is done. Sure, they might go there on a regular basis, but chances are that if someone else is roleplaying as the 'owner' of the tavern, then they will just look for another in-game tavern. In that sense, both Balmung and Gilgamesh are exactly the same. Or, once housing is implemented, and depending on how good it is, people will probably make their taverns in their in-game houses instead.

1- There's no mention of the lifespan of any of the races, sadly. 2- There's no indication that they don't age, so it's most practical to think they do. The character creator supports this: when making a male, one of the faces looks very youthful, while there's another one that looks much more mature.

The Sultanate is the form of goverment. It's like saying "The Republic" or "The Kingdom". What he meant by 'paladins of the Sultana' was "Sultansworn". That's their official name. They are not knights, though, in the sense that they have no lands or nobility title: they are just elite soldiers. Like roman Praetorian Guard, in a way. It makes sense for them to be 'paladins', from a gameplay viewpoint, because gladiators hail from Ul'dah and I think their uniform is similar to the paladin artifact armor.

I'm too classy for such lowly reactions. With that said, the pressence of magitek armor makes me go ohdearthere'smagitekarmorandtheylookawesomeandIwantonerightnowsqueeeeee! Ahem. As I said, I'm too classy.

I think the design idea is for Gladiators/Paladins to hold the bosses while Marauders/Warriors hold crowds of adds and trash mobs. At low level play it kind of doesn't matter: friends of mine have succesfully run pre-30 instances with no tank at all. With that said, I know nothing about the jobs, but I assume they'll follow the same general principles as their base classes.

I forgot if this was talked about before, so excuse my lack of memory. I thin we should pick an adjective for the tribe. So that it will be called "The Adjectived Hipparion Tribe". Like..."The Smiling Hipparion Tribe", or "The Orange Hipparion Tribe". Or maybe something along the lines of "The X Tribe of the Hipparion". I mention this because the wiki page, to a newcomer, tacitally implies it's THE Hipparion tribe. The main tribe. If we add an adjective or an adjectived construction, it will be more obvious that we are a subset of the much larger Hipparion tribe. Otherwise, we might get problems like people thinking we are picking the -whole- tribe.