Wait, I'm a Balmungian now? (RP scrub, wtb creativity)

[Khiro]

Well folks, I've gone and done it now.  And by "it", I mean "peered beyond Balmung's shroud of mystery and actually made a character here".  You hear things, see, as a non-RPer on those other servers.  Balmung have a reputation, and it's not all bad.

So I made a catboy, all fresh-faced, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to dive right on in and experience great adventures and epic tales and entirely replaying the MSQ.  Thing is though, I have to entirely replay the MSQ am a massive RP scrub.  Unless cheesy one-line pretending-you're-an-anime-character 2004-Myspace-era RP counts.  And it doesn't.

So I don't really know where to start.  Or how in-game RP works.  (Custom emotes, maybe?  Do your characters just sit there staring at each other while you text-based RP like some bizarre Eorzean Dungeons and Dragons?)  I did a fair amount of fiction writing a few years back, so at the very least I can write (but as this intro will soon show you, I have this nasty habit of going off on tangents and just getting generally rambly.  I blame my love of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.  Especially Terry Pratchett) and am currently in the process of coming up with a suitable character base for Khiro here, but beyond that I'm a little stumped.  

TLDR be gentle, senpais ~ ♡

 

♡ MMORPG background ~ A little Guld Wars, a little Guild Wars 2, several years of my life lost to FFXIV

♡ RP experience ~ none, total scrub, although I have written creative fiction for fun, and short articles

♡ Character ideas/info ~ In contrast to the stereotypical view of a Keeper, Khiro is well-read and relatively well-spoken (although he does drop his "H"es, due to self-consciousness over his typically-Miqo'te pronunciation of them).  

He prefers to travel often and light.

He is the youngest of eight sons, much to the disappointment of his mother.  

Despite appearing generally sunny, he wears something of a stepford smile and struggles with the possibility that his entire personality exists only to try and make people accept him.  Occasionally, the mask slips, and causes a downward spiral of self-doubt.  When this happens, he is prone to lashing out, to "prove" to those closest to him what a terrible person he truly is.

His knack for sneaking, disappearing, and generally avoiding unwanted attention is a happy side-effect of growing up with a love of books in a family of fighters.  

I've not yet decided on a fighting style for him, or a DoW/DoM discipline, although he does enjoy cooking in his spare time so CUL is definitely on the table (pun intended).

 While I do have plenty of other ideas for him right now, I'm trying to not make this intro thread too long, and also trying not to paint Khiro'ya into a corner that he can't develop out of later down the line.  Characters are hard, yo.  Please feel free to critique any weak points in my ideas so far, it'd actually be a great help.

♡ How did you learn about the coalition? ~ Uhh... maybe Google?

♡ What kind of a role-player are you aiming to be? Light, medium, or heavy? ~ As much as I'd love to say heavy (go big or go home, boys!) I'm probably best sticking to the shallow end, for now.  

Medium/light, I'd say, although of course this doesn't mean I don't want to figure out long-term plots and character development! (and particularly if RPing on tumblr or the forums rather than in-game, I prefer a paragraph or two at a time, gives me more space to be needlessly verbose.)  I just find the heavy-heavy RP to be a little intimidating right now.

♡ Anything from real life you're comfortable with sharing? (Work, school, hobbies, etc) ~ I'm a 20-something British lady with anxiety out the wazoo.  The amount of coffee I drink probably doesn't help with that.  I'm a tea addict, and chronic insomniac, so my time zone and available hours are pretty much an "as and when" deal.  I enjoy reading, am attempting to rekindle my love of writing, and definitely watch far more anime than is good for me.  I'm a dabbler in things, a jack of many trades but master of none.    

 

 

While I make every effort to fit Khiro into the world of XIV as seamlessly as possible, I am far from a lore fiend, so please feel free (especially in the early days, when character details are easier to tweak) to point out if I'm getting something blatantly wrong.  For the next week or two I'll be considering his character still "in development" while I really get a grip on who he is and what his motivations are.  You're welcome to RP with me in the meantime (lord knows I've gotta dip my toes in eventually) but it's not gonna be deep stuff, because as you can see right now his character isn't very deep 

 

I just noticed the time.  It's Nope o'Clock in the morning, so I'm gonna leave this here, post it before I wuss out, and add a hastily-edited screenshot of sweet prince Khiro'ya to make this wall of text a bit easier on the eyes.

[LiadansWhisper]

Welcome new person!

[Khiro]

Thank you 

[PrinceOfPaste]

Best way to learn is to just jump in and do it! Good luck and welcome! 

[Aya]

Yay! Welcome to the madness!

 

I second the suggestion of just throwing yourself in there! Sometimes you get a little scraped up, but you learn from it and meet people!

[Shadottie]

Welcome!  And yeup, it's all a matter of just jumping in to write with others! It is a bit of a bizarre transition from writing stories, or on forums, or what have you! I compared it to something like playing house with your pretty pixel doll to make all those creative stories, but... bizarre Eorzean Dungeons and Dragons fits way better.

 

 

Khiro'ya sounds great though so far! Sometimes those barebone essentials are all you need to keep a character consistent and see what other characters and the world throw at them for interactions. That's the beauty of roleplay, that impromptu storytelling that feels very alive and persistent! What better way to do that than write and build stories with others, right?

 

I'll totally keep an eye out for you if you want to hop into the roleplay scene! I have a Keeper girl who has a father that was born into a similar situation as Khiro'ya (ALL THE SONS, WHERE ARE MY DAUGHTERS???). In turn, it's made her very awkward about her race's culture... among a multitude of other things that have made her into a bumbling, forever flustered healer trying to find her way in the world. I have a couple other quirky characters too that might get a rise out of him (or vice versa) or mother-dote on him.

 

All and all, I hope you have fun on Balmung! It's full of all sorts, even non rpers if you want to hit the pve/raid scene more than rping! Welcome to the forums!

[Gegenji]

Or how in-game RP works.  (Custom emotes, maybe?  Do your characters just sit there staring at each other while you text-based RP like some bizarre Eorzean Dungeons and Dragons?)

 

Just to help out with this, you're kinda right?

 

I mean, it literally is you writing at each other - either through chat or your aforementioned custom emotes (which are "/em" followed by whatever you want to emote, like "/em taps their chin thoughtfully"). However, a lot of RPers also weave in some of the other stuff made available by the fact this is an MMO. The built-in animations for one (using /yes for nodding, for example, which can be done sans the accompanying emote text by adding "motion" to it, so "/yes motion") and even some of the ability animations for the various classes.

 

So, sometimes it is just your two characters just standing there as you write at each other like a chatroom with a very fancy background. Other times you'll be moving your character around using emotes, attacks, and the geometry of the locales to better immerse yourself in the story that's happening.

 

Thus, Eorzean DnD sometimes... Eorzean LARP other times, I guess. :lol:

[Faye]

Hello there and welcome to Balmung! I like what you've got for your character so far catboys are best!

[Thunderbolt300]

Hey there, and welcome aboard to the RPC and to Balmung! :thumbsup:

 

The biggest thing with MMO RP is that it's persistent-world. RP here is always in motion, whether you're offline or online, and you are one writer writing one character in a story that spans thousands of characters. You help pen the story by moving your own character, but you get the suspense of a reader since you never know quite what's going to happen. It's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel on steroids!