I'm going to start off by saying that I'm generally extremely in favor of adhering to official lore wherever possible, and not writing anything into your backstory that would contradict official sources. But.
I agree that the nature of most of the job lore in the game is sort of a sticky topic. Most of the job questlines that I've seen more or less state that the player character is extremely exceptional to be able to pick up the mantle of that particular long-lost Job, such that it's extremely unlikely that more than a very small handful of people (or just a single person) in Eorzea can canonically actually have undertaken that storyline.
But then, the main storyline in most of these MMOs have almost always been the same way: you are the chosen one, you are the one person that all of the rulers of the realm are able to trust, and you are the one person that's able to save the world from total destruction (and for good reason: if you were just a random schmuck who was milling around town while other people fought the big bads and saved the world, it'd probably be a pretty boring story!). Obviously, we can't ICly take these stories at face value, and have to either allow for some fudge factor ("there were actually many of us, not just me") or ignore them altogether ("someone in the world did that stuff, but I was nowhere near it"). We've already dealt with this to some extent with the Echo, where many players choose not to possess it ICly, since they don't want to give their character that much cosmic importance.
In terms of game mechanics, this also creates a conflict when the job abilities and equipment that we get become canonically implausible for our characters to possess. If you're playing a Dragoon and you're jumping all over the place and wearing fancy Dragoon armor in combat, should that be considered IC? Or are you just a regular lancer, despite what the game makes it look like? If you're healing as a white mage, are you actually the chosen one? Or are you just a generic healer? If you're not ICly a White Mage but someone comments on the AF that you happen to be wearing, what do you do? Is there a way that you can be a "White Mage" but not the "White Mage?" Do we have no choice but to completely ignore all of the rich Job lore that SE has written, or is there some way that we can adapt it to make it somewhat less lore-breaking? (I don't have an answer or opinion on this, I just think it'd be an interesting point of discussion.)
It's obvious that the player-centric stories of MMOs, and even the game mechanics themselves, can often be directly at odds with the RP group canon that we try to create for ourselves, and because of this, it can be extremely difficult to not step on the toes of the official lore in some way. We should strive not to trample across the fiction whenever possible, but I think it's impossible to remain 100% lore-adherent, especially as new lore is written later on that may contradict an assumption you made years ago. As such, I believe that we should allow each other some wiggle room about it, and some understanding. (Just so long as we don't all go off and start making ourselves Archons and turncoat Legate!)
EDIT: For references, there should be videos of all of the 1.0 job questline cutscenes on YouTube. Most of that stuff is in there.
I agree that the nature of most of the job lore in the game is sort of a sticky topic. Most of the job questlines that I've seen more or less state that the player character is extremely exceptional to be able to pick up the mantle of that particular long-lost Job, such that it's extremely unlikely that more than a very small handful of people (or just a single person) in Eorzea can canonically actually have undertaken that storyline.
But then, the main storyline in most of these MMOs have almost always been the same way: you are the chosen one, you are the one person that all of the rulers of the realm are able to trust, and you are the one person that's able to save the world from total destruction (and for good reason: if you were just a random schmuck who was milling around town while other people fought the big bads and saved the world, it'd probably be a pretty boring story!). Obviously, we can't ICly take these stories at face value, and have to either allow for some fudge factor ("there were actually many of us, not just me") or ignore them altogether ("someone in the world did that stuff, but I was nowhere near it"). We've already dealt with this to some extent with the Echo, where many players choose not to possess it ICly, since they don't want to give their character that much cosmic importance.
In terms of game mechanics, this also creates a conflict when the job abilities and equipment that we get become canonically implausible for our characters to possess. If you're playing a Dragoon and you're jumping all over the place and wearing fancy Dragoon armor in combat, should that be considered IC? Or are you just a regular lancer, despite what the game makes it look like? If you're healing as a white mage, are you actually the chosen one? Or are you just a generic healer? If you're not ICly a White Mage but someone comments on the AF that you happen to be wearing, what do you do? Is there a way that you can be a "White Mage" but not the "White Mage?" Do we have no choice but to completely ignore all of the rich Job lore that SE has written, or is there some way that we can adapt it to make it somewhat less lore-breaking? (I don't have an answer or opinion on this, I just think it'd be an interesting point of discussion.)
It's obvious that the player-centric stories of MMOs, and even the game mechanics themselves, can often be directly at odds with the RP group canon that we try to create for ourselves, and because of this, it can be extremely difficult to not step on the toes of the official lore in some way. We should strive not to trample across the fiction whenever possible, but I think it's impossible to remain 100% lore-adherent, especially as new lore is written later on that may contradict an assumption you made years ago. As such, I believe that we should allow each other some wiggle room about it, and some understanding. (Just so long as we don't all go off and start making ourselves Archons and turncoat Legate!)
EDIT: For references, there should be videos of all of the 1.0 job questline cutscenes on YouTube. Most of that stuff is in there.
Adelpha Sarantas (ARR) / Aldrisi Shirantas (1.0)
Currently retired from RP.
Currently retired from RP.
