I'm NEW... What do I do?

[Andipoo]

So I'm completely new to FFXIV... My account was purchased by a friend when it came out and he tried to get me to quit the current game I was playing and join him... But he's not much of a roleplayer. I only just now resubbed and am actually wanting to play the game now. If anyone is willing, I'd love a mentor to help me figure out what is going on.

I am Victor Redscar and I'm located on Gilgamesh.

It might be an improper name. Don't know, he's kind of an OC character pulled into this game and I'm not sure if that kind of name will fit or not.
I can dream though, right?

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Heya there!

 

Welcome to the RPC!

 

FFXIV was technically the first MMO I've RPed in as well! (Although that was a few years ago now.)

 

What sorts of questions do you have? We can help! While I don't know of any RPers on Gilgamesh at this time, I do know they used to be around and active on the regular. (A good number have probably since moved to Balmung or Mateus though, aftrer certain sites started pushing anti-RPer attitudes onto Gilgamesh while trying to promote it as a raiding-centric server.) The good news though, is that the World Visit feature is coming sometime in patch 4.5-ish and that'll let you hop over to servers with RPers on them. (Or if you don't mind alts, definitely try to get a character on servers with people who pique your interests. Balmung's pretty locked down currently, but Mateus, Jenova, Faeri, and Siren also have RPers on them, with Mateus being the second largest server after Balmung).

 

In terms of "how do I RP" style questions, these are pretty open-ended and you'll likely get a different answer for each person you ask. The basics include using chat channels and the /emote (or /em for short) command. Length of text varies depending on the person, but I'd suggest maybe 2-3 sentences so you can fit a reply, an action, and something to build on. Others may prefer doing longer paragraph RP (para-rp). Eventually you'll get a feel for about how long the other people you're interacting with type and kinda go fro mthere.

 

In terms of finding other RPers, many now use the RP status tag, search info, or make a listing on the RPC or RPC Wiki. The wiki's a great way to see and post character concepts and log events. Sorta like an interactive character sheet! There are also Linkshell and Free Company sections in a couple places here on the RPC! Over in the Club section, you'll find listings where people are making use of the club feature, giving them a personal subforum, gallery, etc. For a more RPC traditional layout, we've also got dedicated forums for listings as threads. There are also a bunch more people on tumblr and various discord servers, with RPC only showing a tiny amount of the overall RP population.

 

[Andipoo]

3 hours ago, Unnamed Mercenary said:

Heya there!

 

Welcome to the RPC

Thank you for the warm welcome! I actually found the roleplayer community on Gilgamesh after some searching. I was forced to join Gilgamesh instead of Balmung or Mateus because both servers were locked and not accepting newly made characters at the time I was making mine. I imagine it's only worse in the evening but I will certainly keep trying to get in to one of them. 
My questions are more of how to play the game, as I am a very experienced roleplayer already. My only roleplay problem is that I don't know the lore of the game at all! I'm not sure how far I can go with my creative boundaries due to strictness of lore. I would certainly like to move my character to one of the other servers... As I've already ended up buying some optional items and receiving my recruitment rewards on the character I've already made.... Which I do not know if they are account bound or not.
Thank you so much for reading!

[Unnamed Mercenary]

26 minutes ago, Andipoo said:

Thank you for the warm welcome! I actually found the roleplayer community on Gilgamesh after some searching. I was forced to join Gilgamesh instead of Balmung or Mateus because both servers were locked and not accepting newly made characters at the time I was making mine. I imagine it's only worse in the evening but I will certainly keep trying to get in to one of them. 
My questions are more of how to play the game, as I am a very experienced roleplayer already. My only roleplay problem is that I don't know the lore of the game at all! I'm not sure how far I can go with my creative boundaries due to strictness of lore. I would certainly like to move my character to one of the other servers... As I've already ended up buying some optional items and receiving my recruitment rewards on the character I've already made.... Which I do not know if they are account bound or not.
Thank you so much for reading!

 

Mog Station stuff will let you know if it's account-bound or if it's character-bound. (Typically, if you had to select a character to have the mog mail with your items sent to, it's character bound. Other things, like the recruit a friend campaign or veteran's awards are account-wide.)

 

But in general, if you've found a group you like RPing with, I wouldn't jump ship. FFXIV's pretty incredibly alt friendly! (Although when the Aether/Primal/Crystal split happens, Gilgamesh is gonna be separated from Balmung/Mateus, so I would prolly still stick an alt to have a character there. A lot of people in soon to be Crystal that I know are doing similar to keep a presence on Aether for friends they won't have cross-world contact with anymore.)

 

In terms of lore-abiding-ness, my personal experiences have been that getting too polarized on either side of it is a can of worms. And lore isn't the only topic on that end! (Like high/low "power" levels, aether usage, how much gil is equivalent to a US Dollar, etc. There are a lot of sliding scales and gradients. And I definitely don't mean the character creator there.

Some people skip the lore check by saying they're from [insert other places unfamiliar with the setting you want to RP in]. Like take someone from Othard/Doma and stick 'em in Eorzea. Or take an Eorzea who's gone east as they discover a whole new land of people with culture differing from their own! Or take a more tribal/clannish character (Miqo'te and Au Ra seem to be the common fit here) who may not be accustomed to things they haven't really encountered much outside their own people.

 

If there is lore you'd like to read up on, Sounsyy on the RPC has an incredible amount of writeups and compilations on a large variety of topics. The main link is on tumblr, http://mirkemenagerie.tumblr.com/post/167534982764/mirkemenagerie-update and there's a formatted link on our previous site layout (disclaimer: long load time. link may die soon-ish because running the older forum software's a security risk these days. https://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=17897 There is a converted version of the post, but since links didn't get updated and spoiler tags broke, it's even more unruly than the mybb version. Cleanup was paused while content was moved to tumblr to join other compilations.)

 

There are tons more threads there and I do recommend searching for common topics if there's one you're thinking of! 

 

If you've got a character-centric question or are looking in assistance in creating a character, I'd head over  to the Character Workshop forum and make a post there. Do note that while most concepts are usually pretty easy to get going, there is a divide between "we can MAKE this work" and "should this even be a plot point?" styles. Like there's nothing stopping a person who -really- wants to do multiple lifetimes worth of things in a 20 year old, but whether or not other RPers will want to jive with that is another matter. Standard RP character style things.

If you're unsure of a more general RP-related topic, like, "how should I do combat RP if I'm interested in that" and the like, head over ot RP Discussion which is less FFXIV-based and more RP-based for those styles of topics. Quite a few things can be posted in different parts of the site depending on wording though, so these aren't strictly enforced and a moderator can always help move a topic or help point you in the right direction if you're unsure where to post something!