Dealing with PC reality over NPC reality

[Seriphyn]

This can cover a broad array of topics, but basically, with someone with my particular RP style (abiding by the lore given out by NPC dialogue), how does one negotiate particularly 'player realities' versus what the lore posits?

 

The immediate example that comes up is the number of male miqo'te player characters. The lore says that male miqo'te are extremely rare and hard to come by; indeed, there are as many male Miqo'te NPCs as there are fingers on one hand (NOAH dude, and the Forgotten Springs dudes; haven't done all the job/class quests). Go to Gridania, and all the Keeper NPCs are female. Go to Limsa Lominsa, and all the Seeker NPCs are female. 

 

So how does one rationalize this? My character sort of said (just said IC in fact) that it's just an Adventurer Guild thing...out in the world you'll hardly see them, but within the guilds (Quicksand, Carline Canopy, etc.), they're all over the place just because that's the nature of how adventurers are.

 

Curious to hear ideas not only about that, but any other 'NPC vs PC lore clashes' that people might come up with.

[Ildur]

Player Characters are only a very tiny fraction of the whole Eorzean population. So even if you had a thousand Miqo'te men in a plaza, they are still pretty rare. This is because besides the visible citizens (the in-game NPCs) there are thousands upon thousands of invisible ones that are not despicted because of practicality (thousands of NPCs in the streets would require bigger maps, it would consume more computing resources, etc). Basically, Player Characters are extremely rare as far as the universe is concerned.

 

Specifically, however, that doesn't help the problem of 'why' there are a thousand Miqo'te males in a plaza. The easiest solution is to blame the Calamity: it has changed the face of the world, destroying communities and forcing people to work together more than before. This means traditionally secluded societies or individuals will have to venture out to the world. Male population is still low, but you just get to see more males because they had to come out of 'hiding'.

The same principle can be applied to basically everything (at least that I can think of). Why are there so many paladins? Because the Sultansworn are recruiting more to recover their numbers. White Mages? The Padjal are teaching or taught someone and that person taught a bunch of other people. Summoners? An increase of the beastribes summoning their Primals means more adventurers and people rushing to defeath them. And so on and so forth.

[Dravus]

It can be a pretty tricky situation but generally speaking the canon lore is by far more important and relevant than what we as role-players seek to bring to the table. The lack of rarity for male miqo'te is largely due to game mechanics. It wouldn't make for a popular MMO if people were locked out of a playable race due to an abundance.

 

My advice would be to locate role-players who are willing to see the game world as it is intended to be seen and create meaningful, character driven role-play alongside them. Never let people force you to adhere to 'server lore' or make you feel like you have to cave into their requests to ignore the established canon in order to justify their chosen character concept.

[LiadansWhisper]

Specifically, however, that doesn't help the problem of 'why' there are a thousand Miqo'te males in a plaza. The easiest solution is to blame the Calamity: it has changed the face of the world, destroying communities and forcing people to work together more than before. This means traditionally secluded societies or individuals will have to venture out to the world. Male population is still low, but you just get to see more males because they had to come out of 'hiding'.

 

Completely OT, but now I have a mental image in my head of Bahamut whelping out male Miqo'te by the thousands.

 

Thanks, Ildur!

[Vairemont Malveaux]

Like Ildur said, the player Miqo'te population is a fraction of Eorzea. If you put yourself in you're character's shoes, your daily interactions wouldn't just involve players. NPCs are as much living, breathing people to your PC as any other PC. When you run through Limsa, all the female Miqo'te NPCs there are ambient characters going about their daily lives. Most of them can be presumed to have stable jobs.

 

And like he said, you can easily blame the Calamity for thrusting Eorzea off balance. Additionally, many roleplayers, especially Miqo'te, favor wanderer type characters. This works well with what I was saying earlier. Perhaps it's not as rare as it used to be to run into male Miqo'te, but look at how few of them have stable, rooted home lives in the city, as opposed to the female ones. The males you see are still by and large rovers, which fits the lore quite nicely. For bachelors, anyway. It would still be rare to come across a Miqo'te with children running about.

 

Females of course are given to any lifestyle, not to discount them.

[ansemaru]

There are a couple other male Miqo'te NPCs, for the record- there's a fairly minor Seeker named A'aba Tia who can be found in the Waking Sands prior to the Titan boss fight, as well as the ACN guildmaster. Other than them, though, the only male Miqo'te NPCs that do show up are G'raha and the three Seekers of the U tribe- unless, of course, you count the Coeurlclaw King from the Quarrymill region FATEs. (Minor though he is, he's the only example of a male Keeper of the Moon who actually shows up as any type of NPC.)

[allgivenover]

Very few of the entirety of the male Miqo'te PC population are roleplayers. The way I see it, PC players that are not roleplayers pretty much don't exist in in my character's perception at all, thus even though male Miqo'te remains a fairly popular roleplayer choice the sum of all npc males and PC roleplayer males still makes male Miqo'te fairly rare to come by.

[C'kayah Polaali]

Well, with Seekers specifically, there are a lot of Tias. Not all of them would stay back home on the farm. With the chaos over Eorzea over the last ten years, going out and adventuring is an excellent way to "open up a new hunting area", so to speak.

 

And then there's all the Nunhs running around. While I recognize that there are relatively few roleplayers playing adventuring Nunhs, I just handwave them by rationalizing that they've been replaced and simply haven't admitted it.

 

Keepers, on the other hand? I don't know. I do know that Keepers in the Shroud were probably hit pretty hard by the Calamity, so you're seeing (as Ildur mentions) a bunch of them because they simply had to come out.

[allgivenover]

I'm honestly not sure why a Nunh would go adventuring at all. 

 

However, there's plenty of room for civilian, non-adventurer Nunh RP.

[Vairemont Malveaux]

You'd think Keeper males would be even more compelled to stay at home, since there isn't a male hierarchy dictating their role like there is in Seeker tribes. I would venture to guess that Keeper males would be just as rare as Seeker males, and the family Matriarchs would rather the males stay home and take care of the family. Do all the cooking and whatnot.

 

At that point it's more speculation.

[Seriphyn]

I forgot about 'the Calamity' plot device...which is derp because I actually had my character say to the person he was roleplaying with that it was the Calamity.

 

To diversify the topic a bit, how do people interpret the Lightning Strikes event? I see a few people RP in the Lightning and Snow outfits, which don't really fit in the Eorzean aesthetic framework. My character goes "That's a funny outfit, is it Garlean?", but I wonder what else it can be interpreted as?

[111]

I forgot about 'the Calamity' plot device...which is derp because I actually had my character say to the person he was roleplaying with that it was the Calamity.

 

To diversify the topic a bit, how do people interpret the Lightning Strikes event? I see a few people RP in the Lightning and Snow outfits, which don't really fit in the Eorzean aesthetic framework. My character goes "That's a funny outfit, is it Garlean?", but I wonder what else it can be interpreted as?

 

I honestly treat it as Canon, because it's such a small thing, and it will gone soon. "I got this skirt from a world hopping, grumpy, pink haired lady" isn't too much more crazy sounding than, "I ventured into the eye of a vortex and slew a primal god of wind to make this sweet ass couch". FFXIV is kind off a silly world, I think the people in it have to learn to accept a lot of crazy things.

[allgivenover]

I ignore the lightning stuff, unless other RPers bring it up, then I just have Li say he's heard of it but knows nothing beyond that.

 

 

The thing about the Lighting event is that it being canon or not has no relevance to the lore at all really.

[allgivenover]

You'd think Keeper males would be even more compelled to stay at home, since there isn't a male hierarchy dictating their role like there is in Seeker tribes. I would venture to guess that Keeper males would be just as rare as Seeker males, and the family Matriarchs would rather the males stay home and take care of the family. Do all the cooking and whatnot.

 

At that point it's more speculation.

 

The statement that Miqo'te males are rare is in fact only found /under/ the Keeper of the Moon heading. It was only after ARR launched that we were able to confirm for sure that Seeker males were rare.

 

It's very easy for Keeper males to be out and about in the world. Keepers are loners by nature, do not have a hierarchy that determines breeding status, and have recently been forced to move into the cities, along with many other refugees. It's possible that breeding males are forced to stay home, under matriarchal rule, but that's why I killed Li's tribe off. I don't want to be in a messy situation when we finally get more lore.

[Ildur]

Remember there's this FATE in the Shroud that directly contradicts lore (once again) and has a male Keeper take over the Coeurlclaw Poachers. Apparently Squee has this big problem where they can't keep Miqo'te lore consistent with the game.

 

Anyway. On the topic of Lighting: it's a canon and it does have an effect on lore: it stablishes that travel between FF dimensions is possible, or at least travel between two specific ones. The effects this have on roleplay, however, are quite limited to the creation of characters who hail from that particular FF dimension and nothing more. Everyone else can just treat it as gossip, rumors, and journalists trying to make quick money with outrageous stories about a foreigner fighting voidsent and Garlean machinery.

The armor pieces and weapons can be justified in any way, really. I like to think the outfit was designed by the Weaver's Guild (for whatever reason) and some people just bought it. Each player will justify their outfit however they think is best, but that's my 'default' take on the matter. You can do something similar with the weapons, though the axe made of solid ice might be a bit hard to justify. Maybe it's a magicked piece of those blue aether structures west of the Moraby Drydocks.

[FreelanceWizard]

(...)it stablishes that travel between FF dimensions is possible, or at least travel between two specific ones.

 

Interestingly, the XI crossover event that just happened confirms it further; Shantotto states she came from another dimension.

 

As for the armor and weapons, I've always liked the "it's a replica" explanation, but then, weird magicked items are also par for the FF course, so I think almost any lore-compatible plausible explanation works.

[Tiergan]

If you consider yourself a stickler for the lore, then you sort of have to take the Lightning/Shantotto events as they are and consider dimension-hopping canon. Otherwise you're just picking and choosing what you like and don't like.

 

As for the rarity of male miqo'te - I tend to go with everyone else in the "Calamity forced all the male miqo' out of hiding" option, but it also isn't something I think about too often because I feel like it was just a lack of forethought on SE's part.

 

I mean, the lore also states that miqo'te as a whole are supposed to be sort of 'few in number' in Eorzea, but it definitely doesn't feel that way most of the time. <_<;a

[allgivenover]

I'm mistaken with my typing. It's not that it has no effect on lore, it has no effect on the story of Eorzean things, it just confirms dimension hopping is canon. Which, if someone wants to roleplay a dimension hopped character, is fine with me. I just don't see the reason for it.

 

Edit: It has no effect on the story of Eorzean things /so far/. SE hasn't used the dimension hopping for anything but cameos, it could become something greater eventually. I just don't know.

[Dravus]

If you consider yourself a stickler for the lore, then you sort of have to take the Lightning/Shantotto events as they are and consider dimension-hopping canon. Otherwise you're just picking and choosing what you like and don't like.

 

 

Yeah. That's a pretty dangerous trap to fall into, too. Sure, there's going to be stuff that people dislike and find to be silly but in the vast majority of cases - unless it's explicitly stated to be simple game mechanics - then most of what we see in terms of flavour text and various events in-game is to be taken as canon.

 

Of course, there's ways around that. You can simply choose to not touch upon the aspects of the lore that you don't favour by not incorporating them into your role-play unless it arises as a reasonable plot device. You can generally get away with a friendly OOC message informing role-play partners that it isn't a theme that you're looking to explore.

[Fulcrum]

I'm mistaken with my typing. It's not that it has no effect on lore, it has no effect on the story of Eorzean things, it just confirms dimension hopping is canon. Which, if someone wants to roleplay a dimension hopped character, is fine with me. I just don't see the reason for it.

 

Edit: It has no effect on the story of Eorzean things /so far/. SE hasn't used the dimension hopping for anything but cameos, it could become something greater eventually. I just don't know.

There is another instance of dimension hopping that is canon that will have greater impact than these, as it's not a cross-promotional thing.

 

During the end montage for the Hildebrand quests,

Gilgamesh shows up. He'll probably be in the next round of Hildebrand quests, whenever we get those; and Gilgamesh has always been the same Gilgamesh, so I don't think that will change here. Yoshida did state in the fifth Producer's Letter that he was being brought into the storyline of the game in a meaningful way, so it's probably a safe bet that there's something lasting there.

 

So yes, Lightning's event doesn't ultimately impact Eorzea's fate, because it's a lead up to Lightning Returns, and I suspect she'll stop whatever was allowing Chaos to bleed in through the Void (I haven't played it, plus I wouldn't spoiler it if I had). Shantotto may or may not be back later, but I don't think there's going to be anything that really changes the face of Eorzea from XI aside from allowing XI players justifications for them porting their characters from XI to XIV. The Hildebrand quests, on the other hand, are a part of Eorzea's ongoing story, so that dimension hopper will lead to some sort of impact on the story.

 

[Xha'li Moui]

You'd think Keeper males would be even more compelled to stay at home, since there isn't a male hierarchy dictating their role like there is in Seeker tribes. I would venture to guess that Keeper males would be just as rare as Seeker males, and the family Matriarchs would rather the males stay home and take care of the family. Do all the cooking and whatnot.

 

At that point it's more speculation.

 

The statement that Miqo'te males are rare is in fact only found /under/ the Keeper of the Moon heading. It was only after ARR launched that we were able to confirm for sure that Seeker males were rare.

 

It's very easy for Keeper males to be out and about in the world. Keepers are loners by nature, do not have a hierarchy that determines breeding status, and have recently been forced to move into the cities, along with many other refugees. It's possible that breeding males are forced to stay home, under matriarchal rule, but that's why I killed Li's tribe off. I don't want to be in a messy situation when we finally get more lore.

 

You killed a whole tribe just to avoid dealing with aligning the lore you established for them with canon?  With my Li I had get forced out do to his village's matriarch, and most of the elders, being extremely anti-magic, something that the Calamity only amplified.  On the subject of so many maleqo'te, like the other Li I just pretend non-roleplayer PCs don't exist.

[ansemaru]

I'm mostly just handwaving "Miqo'te men are extremely rare" when it comes to RP. It's contradicted enough by the general player population and the RP community population that maintaining the assumption that male Miqo'tes are rare seems extremely silly.

 

But there are a few fairly simple justifications that I'd be more than willing to go along with, if I were forced to justify why reality doesn't reflect lore. For example, there could have been a major population boom among Miqo'te anywhere from ten to twenty years before the Calamity. The overall population of Miqo'te increased due to availability of resources, and more and more young ones have been leaving their tribes or clans to live life in the city-states or as adventurers. For reasons both related to intra-tribe cultural stability and gene pool diversity, as well as simply availability of resources post-Calamity, it would stand to reason that a large number of young adult Miqo'te have recently been encouraged or made to leave their more insular tribe or clan settlements in order to live in the big city or to become adventurers.

[111]

To me the Miqo'te male thing is fairly simple. Unless a male is strong enough to become the Nuhn, he has to sit there his whole life as a tia, never getting any of that hot hot miqo'te booty. As most people who have gone through puberty know, it would be daunting prospect for a young hot (because what male miqo'te isn't hot?) male (or woman) to waste his best years waiting for the current Nuhn to get old or die.

 

So they head out into the world, where their is plenty of love for young hot males, and the prospect of becoming stronger, eventually returning and being a Nuhn. Females have no such pressure pushing them out to become adventurers, besides the normal ones (dissatisfaction with tribal life, love of adventure, need to explorer, etc etc.).

 

I think this explains why there are so many male miqo'te running about, and also why they're often perched all over the city in their underwear.

[Norna]

About Dimension Hopping: We have Dissidia, which alludes to there being a multitude of universes/worlds which are heavily influenced by crystals/aether/mist/lifestream/mako/whatnot. We have Kingdom Hearts, which suggests that there are worlds that have much the same things, but in different ways (YRP being fairies, yet still best friends).

 

My theory is that the more similar a world is to another, the easier it is for dimension rifts to open between them, either through design or accident (so Shantotto's threat of coming back would probably be credible, while Lightning, by virtue of messing with time-space, is being tossed around without rhyme nor reason). Space and Time seems to often get messed up in Final Fantasy worlds, leading to this sort of thing (even to the lesser extent of Final Fantasy XIII-2 that happened within one world), and also lets dead/undead/dream characters in on the "fun" as well.

 

With Louisoix sending adventurers forward in time, I think we can regard such crossover events canon to a certain extent. Or at the very least, but impossible.

 

Come to think of it, except Vana'diel, Ivalice would be pretty close to Hydaelyn by my theory.

[ansemaru]

If we're going by similarities, Ivalice is absolutely one of the closest FF worlds to Hydaelyn. The number of actually recycled monster models, the visual/aesthetic similarities (thanks, Akihiko Yoshida!) and spoilers regarding elements of cosmology certainly imply it heavily enough.

 

But we shouldn't discount connections to the world of FFV (once again, spoilers for 2.1 content). Hydaelyn has a lot of potential connections to the worlds of other games, and only time will tell if anything comes of it.