RPing the Jobs

[synaesthetic]

Well.

 

After that completely unwarranted explosion I think it's safe to say that I'd never want to RP with you, either. I've been on the wrong side of people who let IC affect OOC before and it's not pretty, so I don't really think that peoples' reactions to the way you are expressing your opinion on the matter is that unusual.

 

Edit: I will say I do appreciate the calmer response to my post, though.

[John Spiegel]

As for RPing a job like WHM or whatnot, why can't you just be a really strong CNJ? Hell, two of my characters are MNKs straight out of Ala Mhigo during the Garlean's big ol' genocide (second one in five years for them) and JJ's just a dude that's fought his entire life to be free - no guild affiliation or nothing. It's kind of narrow to think just because a character is a great healer or really badass with a lance automatically makes them one thing. I recall that the lancers of Ala Mhigo were the cream of the crop, giving Ishgardian lancers/dragoons a run for their gil.

 

And what if it's not about being "badass" but about tapping into the themes surrounding a particular job? Telling someone to just be "a really strong CNJ" might be completely contrary to what that person wants to roleplay because a conjurer is not a white mage, and the former does not carry the same themes or historical identity as the latter. Would you tell someone who wants to roleplay a monk "Why can't you just be a really strong PGL?" No, because the two are not the same.

 

I'm not one to police anyone's RP. I personally stick pretty close to the lore on things like this. If someone does want to be a white mage, it's not going to ruin my day as much as it may make me eyeroll depending how they do it. I was speaking from the angle of someone that just wants to be a really awesome healer/something rather than specifically follow a specific storyline, which I should have clarified. If someone wants to identify as being a white mage, they should be aware of the historical implications as well as the prejudices some characters may have of such as well as their skepticism REGARDLESS of the OOC implications.

 

Bend the lore, break the lore, some folks don't care, others do. That's how it always is going to be. SE didn't set it up to be RP-friendly. Not the first MMO to do so.

 

But yeah. Keep calm and Role Play. /shrug

[LiadansWhisper]

Well.

 

After that completely unwarranted explosion I think it's safe to say that I'd never want to RP with you, either. I've been on the wrong side of people who let IC affect OOC before and it's not pretty, so I don't really think that peoples' reactions to the way you are expressing your opinion on the matter is that unusual.

 

Edit: I will say I do appreciate the calmer response to my post, though.

 

It isn't unwarranted when someone is accusing you of meta-gaming (which, btw, is cheating, in case you didn't catch the reference!) because of opinions your character has.  You may be okay with being accused of being a cheater, but I am not.

 

I think the Lore is really clear about WHM.  Does that mean that I hate players who want to play one?  No.  Does it mean that I think they're terrible?  No.  Does it mean I think they should leave the server?  No.  It means that I think that it isn't going to fit with the lore in 99% of the cases (barring SE coming out and saying, "HEY, we changed our minds, here's some quests to loosen that bottleneck").  Can you make it fit?  Sure.

 

But we have people in this thread saying, "I'm just going to pretend the Lore doesn't exist because I don't like it."  And the implication is that my character would need to go along with this (otherwise I'm "meta-gaming").  Which is really infuriating.

 

You're accusing me of getting pissed off about IC things.  I'm not.  I'm pissed off because I'm being accused of cheating because my character has an opinion that fits with the Lore and setting.

 

On the other matter, I've already dropped you a PM.  

[FreelanceWizard]

All, I realize this is a pretty hot and contentious topic (dealing as it does with the topics of lore-bending, lore from mechanics vs. lore from storyline, and the like), but could we bring the level of heat down a bit so I don't have to lock the thread, please?

 

Thanks. :love:

[Zazalan]

Do many people really care about "RP Fighting"?

 

Consider how many people show up at the Grindstone every week, I'm going with quite a few.

 

I'm just of the opinion that RP battles take a major backseat.  Doesn't seem fair to say that wanting to be a WHM equates to wanting to be powerful. It's a FF WHM for Heaven's sake, lol.  It has a very specific theme.  I personally had the idea for a WHM who was highly reluctant to use magic - let alone white magic - and lived his life as a secluded, surly carpenter.

 

I'd have never thought so many people would think badly of it, though.  I say people should compromise but the more I think about it the more I'm inclined to rewrite the character as a THM and call it a day. Then I'll pray that THM gets Necromancer as a second job.  And then I'll pray that I don't end up in the same situation of another job being THE CHOSEN.

[Dravus]

I wouldn't consider it to be 'meta-gaming' for someone's character to hold a specific belief and stick by that belief - especially if that belief is well in line with what the canon lore presents. We don't need to like specific elements of the official lore - but that doesn't mean it suddenly ceases to be relevant.

 

I feel as if 'meta-gaming' in itself has become a term thrown around a little too loosely within the role-playing community these days - much like 'troll' and 'hater'.

[TheLastCandle]

I realize it's a divisive subject, but it's not 'meta-gaming' for her character to react in such a way. White Mages are, according to the lore, almost completely unheard of. What proof could you give to someone who doesn't even have any idea what he would be being shown in the first place? So, you can cast Holy. "Cool story, bro, but never heard of it." To take it a step further, if your character IS a White Mage, why would he/she care enough to prove it to some random passer-by anyway? Why would he/she shout it from the rooftops? Play your character as you see fit, but don't expect everyone's character to react favorably to it.

[LandStander]

I don't RP fight. If there has to be battle between a character of mine and a character of someone else's, then it gets written up in forum RP, at least in FFXIV, because we have no dueling or deathmatch function.

 

Yes, I'm one of "those" RPers that tries to involve gameplay systems as much as possible and I absolutely loathe emote "fighting." If we need to have a good, gripping, edge-of-your-seat battle, I'm going to write it up as a ficlet after talking with the person OOC and determining the outcome.

 

My reason for wanting to roleplay the jobs is based around my character's roleplay. Aeriyn is a scientist. She studies magic. Her life's work is to create a universal aetherial theory, a method for explaining how all magic, aether, crystals and the various things work, and the various things that happen as a result of these things (including primals, deities, Hydaelyn and Zodiark). So yes, the actual, lore-specific difference between a conjurer and a white mage, a thaumaturge and a black mage, an arcanist and a summoner or scholar... these are big differences in power, in capability and in the methodologies they use to do what they do.

 

If I just ignored all of that then Aeriyn's roleplay would be far, far less interesting and that would be terrible. She's a black mage, which fortunately there's considerable lore support for this because during the BLM storyline you encounter a whole mess of other black mages, none of whom actually have the Gem of Shatotto. I don't RP Aeriyn as if she has the gem, because that's leaning dangerously close to Super Speshul Snowflake territory. The gem is known to her, as it's part of black mage lore, but she doesn't know where it is. Probably that crazy lala still has it. But Aeri being a black mage ICly, and being taught the arts of the Nymian scholar by Rinah, these things are kind of extremely important to her personal storyline. Disregarding them would be silly.

 

I think I am failing to grasp what you are saying here. Are you saying that you would not be able to RP any of this out if the character herself was not a Black Mage? Because if so, then I think I will have to disagree with you on that.

 

I hope you understand that I am not saying that I am against people RPing whatever job they are. I just don't understand why people feel like they need to RP their characters as being the best job in that class. Very very rarely I ever bump into someone who says that they are a pugilist, or a gladiator, or a conjurer, its usually they are a monk, a paladin, or a white mage.

 

Edit: After reading a few more of these posts I thought I would chime in that its a bit unfair to attack someones character because they would be skeptical of someone who claimed to be a white mage when lore kind of tells them to be skeptical. I don't really play any characters who know much about magic (except for one) so I have never had to deal with being skeptical about IC jobs. The only skepticism I have is Denn doesn't trust magic in any form because of the whole white magic causing the umbral era thing and most of the time she will outright refuse magical healing because in her mind she thinks that receiving it too often would do too much harm to the world.

[Kieron Lohengrin]

It all depends on an individual basis. You'll have character concepts plausible within the game lore and ethos, but on the flipside you'll also come across very poorly written characters and RP.

 

On the topic of WHM specifically, the worst player character I've been unfortunate enough to encounter claimed to be a white mage... while at the same time being possessed by an evil demon from the Void. And cartoonishly addicted to wangst and deliberate self-harm.

 

Squick and flippancy on serious mental health issues aside, that simply doesn't seem like the kind of person either the padjal or the elementals would ever teach succor to. So again, it boils down to whether the individual roleplayer is just acting out the same old tired melodrama they do in every MMO, or if the established lore and mindset of the job is being taken seriously.

[Naunet]

There is absolutely nothing "meta-game-ingly" about saying, "Hey, this is probably going to be a problem since the in-character Lore says it can't happen."  There is nothing "meta-game-ingly" about a character who has grown up in the Twelveswood, who knows because she was taught this by her trainers and her society that White Mages no longer exist because the magic was forbidden centuries before.  This isn't "meta-game-ing."

 

The moment you step over the line and tell me how my character should behave because you want acceptance for something that has no support in the Lore of this damn game is the moment I lose my temper and you lose the rest of your credibility.

 

It sounded a lot to me that you were letting your OOC refusal to acknowledge WHM players as possible to affect your character's potential acceptance (or, rather, lack of acceptance) of a white mage character. What if your character and the white mage went on some adventure during which something happened, or multiple somethings happened or who knows what that made it beyond clear that said character was a white mage? Would your character still deny it?

 

That's what I'm talking about. That your OOC feelings might lead to a rather unbelievable continual of refusal of that aspect of someone else's character. I'm sorry I made you angry, especially as I've always held you in a high regard and hate that I've ruined how you may think of me.

 

I'll just leave this thread, sorry.

[ArmachiA]

Her OOC feelings on the subject, which is what she knows about lore, can also be her IC feelings on the subject because of what her character knows about White Mages, though. They can go hand in hand.

 

Because if what I know, Oocly, about WHMs, my character would also know if she hung around Gridania a lot. Armi would know the lore behind WHMs, Armi would understand this means there are no non-padjal WHMs, because -I- know this. Armi would, then, be extremely skeptical of anyone proclaiming to be a WHM because of the lore provided. Period. If she has heard the same lore I have, which she has, she would come to the same conclusion as me; WHMs are nonexistant. Because that is the truth of that world.

 

Loki, on the other hand, wouldn't have heard anything about WHMs besides the end of the era stuff and really wouldn't care one way or another.

 

Liaden is absolutely correct here, her character is allowed to be skeptical of yours if your running around saying your a WHM, because it seems like Liaden's character is big into the CNJ part of the game and would know the lore. period. It's actually metagame-y of YOU to say she should be accepting, instead of trying to convince her your character is telling the truth.

[Ildur]

 

But we have people in this thread saying, "I'm just going to pretend the Lore doesn't exist because I don't like it."

 

Do not oversimplify the posture and, more importantly, do not confuse correlation with causation. We are not choosing to ignore this bit of lore "because we don't like it", but because it's inconsistent with the gameplay and incoherent with the genre. I can make a White Mage, you can make a White Mage, anyone can make a White Mage. We all get specific skills unique to each Job. Mechanically, we all can be White Mages. The lore has no business telling us that we can't be White Mages because we can. Gameplay is our empirical demostration of it. I reject (this bit of) lore because it is not coherent . And because of this incoherency I don't like it.

 

Is my dislike of the lore correlated to my rejection? Yes. Is my dislike of the lore cause of my rejection? No. And what is the correlation between my dislike and my rejection? Their common cause: that it makes no sense.

 

It's actually metagame-y of YOU to say she should be accepting' date=' instead of trying to convince her your character is telling the truth.[/quote']

 

I have no idea what you are reading on Naunet's post that makes you think she's demanding acceptance on an In-character level from the beginning. What I got from her post was the following:

The acceptance she is 'demanding' is in the hypothetical case of being given proof. Which would be akin to asking people to accept that she is a Biochemist (spoilers: she might not be one.) after showing them a proof of some sort. The specifics of this proof aren't particularly important. The important thing is if there is such a thing as 'enough proof' for the character to accept that Eric Generic is a . And what Naunet was sad about was that she felt Liadan was rejecting any possibility of potential proof, not because it was the in character thing to do, but because of the OOC knowledge she has about the White Mage lore. You know, as in: "My characters does not accept your proof because the lore says you cannot be ." instead of "My character does not accept your proof because of her background."

Which is, incidentally, what she just said in her last post. So I just repeated what she said and this last paragraph is kind of redundant.

 

I'm sure that makes me real clever, somehow.

[ArmachiA]

It's her choice though. If her character never accepts people proclaiming to be WHM, regardless of reason, it needs to be accepted. If she isn't actively trying to stop you from rping and is only disagreeing icly, regardless if her reason is ooc, it's really up to her if her character accepts proof or not and not anyone else.

[LiadansWhisper]

 

 

It sounded a lot to me that you were letting your OOC refusal to acknowledge WHM players as possible to affect your character's potential acceptance (or, rather, lack of acceptance) of a white mage character. What if your character and the white mage went on some adventure during which something happened, or multiple somethings happened or who knows what that made it beyond clear that said character was a white mage? Would your character still deny it?

 

She might.  It honestly depends.  Liadan is extremely stubborn.  She might even take severe offense - after all, she's Forestborn, and if the WHM in question isn't Padjal or Gridanian at all, there's the idea that perhaps the magic was "stolen" and why are the Padjal giving this information to dirty outsiders (yes, my character is xenophobic).  It would depend on a number of factors, including how it was presented to her, who it was that presented it to her, what happened when it was presented, as well as where she was at the time and what her mindset was.  In short - I can't say definitively that she'd never accept it, but I can say that it would be very, very difficult to convince her.  And even if you did, you'd have to convince her that you were a person who should have knowledge of such power - which would be even more difficult for her to accept if you weren't native Gridanian.

 

That's what I'm talking about. That your OOC feelings might lead to a rather unbelievable continual of refusal of that aspect of someone else's character.

 

My character is allowed to have opinions.  People can (and actually have) abjectly refuse to believe something they've seen with their own eyes, if it violates their sense of reality - what is and is not, what can be and cannot be.

 

But seriously, what "might be" is kind of a spurious reason to accuse me of meta-gaming.  If you really had such a high opinion of me, I don't know why you'd jump to the conclusion that because my character has this opinion, I'd cheat and ignore RP.  Which is what meta-gaming is - it's cheating. And it's a really sore point with me for someone to call me a meta-gamer because I used to sanction players who cheated.  Repeatedly.  I've even ejected them from games before, because it was against the rules.  And I absolutely despise cheating of any sort.

 

I'm sorry I made you angry, especially as I've always held you in a high regard and hate that I've ruined how you may think of me.

 

Well, I'm pretty hurt that you think I'm a cheater, but in the grand scheme of things, this is just people on the internet.  I'm not that broken up by it - and you shouldn't be broken up by the fact that I got mad at you.  I'm just a random person on the internet and in the end, my opinion doesn't matter much at all.  Besides, I find it basically impossible to hold a grudge.

 

 

 

Do not oversimplify the posture and, more importantly, do not confuse correlation with causation. We are not choosing to ignore this bit of lore "because we don't like it", but because it's inconsistent with the gameplay and incoherent with the genre. I can make a White Mage, you can make a White Mage, anyone can make a White Mage. We all get specific skills unique to each Job. Mechanically, we all can be White Mages. The lore has no business telling us that we can't be White Mages because we can. Gameplay is our empirical demostration of it. I reject (this bit of) lore because it is not coherent . And because of this incoherency I don't like it.

 

Is my dislike of the lore correlated to my rejection? Yes. Is my dislike of the lore cause of my rejection? No. And what is the correlation between my dislike and my rejection? Their common cause: that it makes no sense.

Okay...but you're still saying, "I'm ignoring the Lore because I don't agree with it."  Which is essentially the same thing, just reworded a bit.  You don't like or agree with (take your pick) something in Lore.  Your reasoning for disliking/disagreeing with the Lore is really neither here nor there - the end result is the same.  In your opinion, the Lore doesn't make sense.  Because of this, you are ignoring it.  But, that's still your opinion.  And you're still ignoring Lore because you don't like it.

 

 

 

 

I have no idea what you are reading on Naunet's post that makes you think she's demanding acceptance on an In-character level from the beginning. What I got from her post was the following:

The acceptance she is 'demanding' is in the hypothetical case of being given proof. Which would be akin to asking people to accept that she is a Biochemist (spoilers: she might not be one.) after showing them a proof of some sort. The specifics of this proof aren't particularly important. The important thing is if there is such a thing as 'enough proof' for the character to accept that Eric Generic is a . And what Naunet was sad about was that she felt Liadan was rejecting any possibility of potential proof, not because it was the in character thing to do, but because of the OOC knowledge she has about the White Mage lore. You know, as in: "My characters does not accept your proof because the lore says you cannot be ." instead of "My character does not accept your proof because of her background."

Which is, incidentally, what she just said in her last post. So I just repeated what she said and this last paragraph is kind of redundant.

 

I'm sure that makes me real clever, somehow.

 

As Arma pointed out, my character is allowed to have opinions.  That they match up with my OOC feelings is less deliberate choice than a result of actually looking into the Lore and seeing what knowledge would be available for a character of the social strata and background that Liadan is.  I shouldn't have to qualify my post with, "Oh, but the reason why my character would think you are insane is her background" when I would hope you would...you know...infer that from what is on her Wiki and what I've said previously.  

 

But hey!  Assume the worst about me.  That's cool, too.

 

It's her choice though. If her character never accepts people proclaiming to be WHM, regardless of reason, it needs to be accepted. If she isn't actively trying to stop you from rping and is only disagreeing icly, regardless if her reason is ooc, it's really up to her if her character accepts proof or not and not anyone else.

 

Pretty much.  And no, I don't really want to stop anyone from RPing.  I just dread actually running into someone claiming (loudly) to be a WHM.  Normally conflict-based RP ends up with people angry with me OOCly, and that's stress I don't need at the moment.

[Clover]

My opinion on the subject is...

I agree with Naunet that the White Mage lore was a dumb move from SE, and I wish it wasn't like that. However, lore is lore, and I'm not here to rewrite it to my own convenience, adding what I like and removing what I don't like. If everyone did that, it'd be chaotic ^^;

 

I personally want to respect and follow the lore, so I will also ignore any mentions of this or that player being a White Mage. Sorry to whoever this might offend, but that sounds as good as claiming to be The One, The Chosen, and The Only.

 

 

Edit: If the whole RPC community came to a general consensus of rewriting that part of the lore, however, I'd follow with it.

[Tiergan]

Wow - this topic got really hostile incredibly abruptly.

 

Can we all just agree that everyone's allowed to have their opinions and their characters are allowed to have their opinions and if anyone disagrees OOC, they can just find polite, reasonable ways to RP around each other?

 

This topic was about sharing each other's RP policies towards the jobs.  It wasn't about telling the other person that their RP policy is wrong and why.  Just be excellent to each other, folks.

[Norna]

Actually, it is because of the White Mage lore that the character in my avatar no longer exists (she was destined to be a Twelveswood White Mage, but as I continued to play that story-line, I figured that it wouldn't work and scrapped her).

 

But I've been thinking about this, and I wonder; would it be possible for White Mages of other continents to exist? Presumably, elementals aren't isolated just to Eorzea (even Padjal could maybe exist beyond the continent?). If those elementals and Padjal forgave the previous destruction more easily, they could have eventually started teaching new White Mages.

 

The reason I'm asking is because my new character comes from a sunken isle, which in turn was populated by people from Ilsabard who fled the Empire (the isle itself was inhospitable, but a Padjal reduced himself into Anima and worked with the elementals that had come with them to make the isle livable by making pillars of aetheric energy. When Bahamut's aether dispersed it twisted the pillars, causing the isle to sink and the survivors to scatter).

 

They had common history of survival with their elementals which meant that the elementals were a bit more lenient, which in turn made the Padjali White Mages more lenient (they still didn't teach White Magic if you had left the isle and returned prior to learning it, or if your parents were temporarily away while they gave birth to you and returned. Ascians and Archons were their boogeymen, the first for obvious reasons and the other because it would attract the attention of the first, and the worst possible outcome would be to have a spy/possessed White Mage pupil).

 

What I'm asking is if my character explained their White Mage status (as she became a "Renaissance Woman" by virtue of the isle's societal rules when you don't show a talent for a particular area of expertise) as a "I came from an isle where we taught white magic to a select few" would that be plausible? Or should I, despite the isle's origins and demise with white magic and elemental harmony, ignore white magic in that society altogether?

[Agarthane]

Your only real option, if you want to play a true Whitemage... is to simply break lore. Not the worst crime in the world, you're free to play as you please.

 

HOWEVER..

 

Roleplayers game in MMO's because it's easier to create a sense of immersion. Immersion demands a certain amount of adherence to the rules that govern your setting. Herein lies the impasse, because anyone with even the slightest bit of knowledge about the mages isn't going to buy a non-Padjal claiming to be one and it's not fair to those who DO take the setting seriously and extend actual effort to play within it's rules to be forced to toss out everything they'd learned or read to make an impossible character plausible.

 

That's what makes the Whitemage situation unique among MMO's in general. It's the only class/job I've ever seen where the lore is written in such a way that it, currently, cannot be role-played without being lore-breaking. It's locked down to *that* degree.

 

Example time... lets say you were a WoW player and your characters background stated that you were one of the small group that faced and defeated the Lich King, and killed Deathwing AND killed Garrosh, three end of expansion bosses. Most role-players wouldn't appreciate that and might consider it obnoxious... but its something that would actually be *possible* within the setting.

 

I repeat... being one of the worlds elite who played a crucial role in defeated *three* world threatening, nigh unstoppable adversaries and their respective legions, being the savior of an entire setting several times over, is more plausible than your character being a Whitemage.

[FreelanceWizard]

Okay.

 

It's clear there's a lot of passion on both sides of the issue, and that it's a complicated issue involving a lot of different perspectives and policies. That said, I think the posts here are going the wrong direction in tone, so I'm locking the thread before it gets any more acrimonious. I think all sides have made their thoughts clear at this point.

 

EDIT: I hate that my first official act other than bopping spammers on the head is locking a thread.