Rules for weapons

[Parth Makeo]

I was thinking about this for a bit since looking at the weapon styles for a majority of the game's endgame and shields.

 

What can and can't you really use as far as weapons? I mean sure some of them are nice but mainly weapons like the purple items (I know they have a general name but I call them purples) seem bright and flashy at times. As the weapons look very high profile, is it safe to just call them "Replicas" when one uses them or is it kind of a big no no to consider it?

 

I bring it up due to my old problem from Warcraft RPing of course and dealing with Legendary weapons (Specifically Dragonwrath back in Cataclysm time when I obtained it). Some people seemed pissy or ticked off at me for using it just for the sake of the model. Even when I told them it's not the staff they continued to bash me just for using it's looks. So is it kind of the same here where people are better off not using their real weapons and go for standard issued ones?

 

P.S: I do plan to use my Relic weapons far later in my character's life.

[Ildur]

I haven't known any RP community that wasn't willing to handwave unique looking weapons as replicas of the original. After all, they are legendary weapons. Most of the time, anyway. Weaponcrafters copying their style for rich men or just for themselves (and the bragging rights) isn't far fetched.

 

There's also a second approach: that special weapon you are holding is actually special, but it isn't the original or what the item name implies it to be. For example, you could have a paladin pretending his Curtana is actually an 'original' sword made of elemental ice crystals that he calls Bob. Just as long as you don't claim to be using the Curtana, you should be fine. Or a 'secret copy of the original with all its power intanct that a Wizard created somewhere'. That would be awful, too.

 

I don't personally like using those OOCly high profile weapon models in-character, but I can't think of any good reason for why I don't.

[Dat Oni]

I once got asked ICly about the Veil of Wiyu I use. My response was a sort of offshoot of the replica excuse; I stated the observer had merely confused the intricacies of the ornate design for that of the Veil. As for the little light? Why not have a reading light on your tome?

 

And it glows because it's a magic bloody Tome, not because it's a Zenith.

[Nebbs]

I supose firstly it should not be "the" legendary weapon from the in game story. I could be some other epic weapon from your own story, and after all in RPing if that weaves into your character and their experiance all the better.

 

Second I would say less is more in terms of RP. While it is nice to wear the top end gear it can be both common looking (everyone has it) and over the top visually. So with the introduction of glamor I would suggest finding the style and look for the character and the weapon(s) that suit and going with that. All my main job/relic sets are glamored to a less epic RP look.

 

On the Relic Weapon - My Bard story has her inheriting her Farther's bow and I was going to use the relic for that. But she has still to get there. I may still do that or find a better look. In the meantime she has been using a mundane looking shortbow, and now the top Malestrom GC bow glamored over the relic.

[LandStander]

Personally I think its better taste to just use another weapon. The thing I really like about this game is that there are some really really nice weapons out there. Honestly I don't think the relics look that great (besides Curtana). The replica is always a safer route to go, but its always easier to just not touch it. You can still have a weapon that is dear and special to you, without saying that its a famous relic weapon. 

 

The axe Denn uses is just her fathers old weapon. Its strong and sturdy and it has sentimental value to her and that is what makes it special to her. You can have something that was forged by a friend, a gift from an ex-lover, a family heirloom, honestly whatever you want. Can even give it a name, they do say that all good weapons have a name :3!

[ArmachiA]

I wouldn't use the relic in your RP at all. There are SOME relics that say there are multiple, but most there is only one.. plus making one would be nigh impossible for anyone without the Echo. Running around stating you have the most legendary weapon ever is like running around in a Camelot MMO stating you own Excalibur.

 

Replica's are fine, I see people say their relic is a replica all the time and that's totally realistic. Even stating what Denn said above and saying it's some kind of special weapon to you or whatever. There are a lot of ways around it. Do people actually come up to others and go "Is that a relic!?" ICly? I'm not even sure my characters would know what one looks like

[Ignacius]

I was thinking about this for a bit since looking at the weapon styles for a majority of the game's endgame and shields.

 

What can and can't you really use as far as weapons? I mean sure some of them are nice but mainly weapons like the purple items (I know they have a general name but I call them purples) seem bright and flashy at times. As the weapons look very high profile, is it safe to just call them "Replicas" when one uses them or is it kind of a big no no to consider it?

 

I bring it up due to my old problem from Warcraft RPing of course and dealing with Legendary weapons (Specifically Dragonwrath back in Cataclysm time when I obtained it). Some people seemed pissy or ticked off at me for using it just for the sake of the model. Even when I told them it's not the staff they continued to bash me just for using it's looks. So is it kind of the same here where people are better off not using their real weapons and go for standard issued ones?

 

P.S: I do plan to use my Relic weapons far later in my character's life.

 

Wait, people in WoW were yelling at you for using a legendary weapon as an RP model even though you didn't say it was the weapon itself?

 

WoW?  The one game where I've ever seen someone playing a time-traveling dragon courtesan played straight and be taken seriously?

 

What, were you playing on WRA?  I know those people can be Nazis, but that just mesmerizes me!  If anything, it was being able to get away with anything that sometimes made me facepalm in WoW RP.

[Parth Makeo]

Wait, people in WoW were yelling at you for using a legendary weapon as an RP model even though you didn't say it was the weapon itself?

 

WoW?  The one game where I've ever seen someone playing a time-traveling dragon courtesan played straight and be taken seriously?

 

What, were you playing on WRA?  I know those people can be Nazis, but that just mesmerizes me!  If anything, it was being able to get away with anything that sometimes made me facepalm in WoW RP.

Yep....

The staff was a gift from her tutor from like thousands of years ago. I even described it as just being heavily decorated and the horns were made from white wood. So overtime it began to look like that giant staff head through adding more items....

I was no dragon. I was just a Night Elf Mage who had been roaming Azeroth for a thousand years looking for my purpose while also making stories and songs along the way (BARD! I CALLED IT! > : D).

 

It was a sad day when they all shunned me or ignored my attempts to be civil in someone's rp because of said weapon. But then again I was one of the best mages on Alliance side raiding at that time before I moved late Mists when my guild half disbanded. So I reside my character on Velen as a Troll instead for the future of raiding.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/velen/Parthmakeyo/simple

 

And to answer back everyone else:

Yes I know it's best to use any other wep model and for the moment I doubt i can even use the Curtana in RP...but i gotta find a good weapon model for the weapon her father abandoned when it comes time to it. 

Still i enjoyed reading everyone's take on this subject. It was all interesting and insightful.

[FreelanceWizard]

Personally, I think you should use the weapon model that you like.

 

The key thing is to have a narrative explanation for it and have it not actually be the relic (the only exception I personally know of is the Stardust Rod, because Shatotto apparently made quite a few of those). A replica of the Curtana, a sword forged by your father that just happens to look like it, an Allagan relic you found in your adventuring that coincidentally appears similar to it in some cases -- all of those are viable approaches to it, IMO.

[Ignacius]

Wait, people in WoW were yelling at you for using a legendary weapon as an RP model even though you didn't say it was the weapon itself?

 

WoW?  The one game where I've ever seen someone playing a time-traveling dragon courtesan played straight and be taken seriously?

 

What, were you playing on WRA?  I know those people can be Nazis, but that just mesmerizes me!  If anything, it was being able to get away with anything that sometimes made me facepalm in WoW RP.

Yep....

The staff was a gift from her tutor from like thousands of years ago. I even described it as just being heavily decorated and the horns were made from white wood. So overtime it began to look like that giant staff head through adding more items....

I was no dragon. I was just a Night Elf Mage who had been roaming Azeroth for a thousand years looking for my purpose while also making stories and songs along the way (BARD! I CALLED IT! > : D).

 

It was a sad day when they all shunned me or ignored my attempts to be civil in someone's rp because of said weapon. But then again I was one of the best mages on Alliance side raiding at that time before I moved late Mists when my guild half disbanded. So I reside my character on Velen as a Troll instead for the future of raiding.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/velen/Parthmakeyo/simple

 

And to answer back everyone else:

Yes I know it's best to use any other wep model and for the moment I doubt i can even use the Curtana in RP...but i gotta find a good weapon model for the weapon her father abandoned when it comes time to it. 

Still i enjoyed reading everyone's take on this subject. It was all interesting and insightful.

 

Sounds like WRA Hordeside RP, really, if I had to guess your server.  My Alliance went Emerald Dream, Thorium Brotherhood, then Moon Guard where I now reside.  Still the best RP community in WoW if you stay far, FAR away from Goldshire.  My Horde were on Steamwheedle Cartel, which is a barrens for RP.  Finally, after everyone said that Wyrmrest Accord was the best Horde server for RP, I swapped my characters over.

 

I'm usually fine... usually.  However, WRA is easily the most frustrating server to RP on.  Oddly, it's not because it's full of bad roleplayers, but because it seems to have attracted a lot of insufferable pricks.  RP gets stopped every few minutes because someone is throwing an OOC tantrum.  Roleplaying on there for a few minutes with my brother netted me at least two people berating us because we were winning a fight in a bar (and I literally think that's exactly what they told us, from what I could understand of their ramblings >.<).

 

You find a few sane people and RP, it's fine there.  But I've never heard so many interruptions for lore-nazying, combat arguments, people drilling other people's MRPs EVEN IF THEY'RE NOT ROLEPLAYING WITH THEM!  It's ridiculous.  Eventually I ended up playing more of my Alliance just because even if it wasn't me getting yelled at constantly, it really ruins the experience when people can't learn to take the money and run in random RP.

 

As to the point, I just say use whatever weapon you want for RP purposes as long as it's not the actual "legendary weapon" itself.  Second, I'd recommend you focus as little on the weapon as possible.  I generally make sure people know my characters are equally dangerous with a pool cue as they are with Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker.  Then people don't care what kind of weapon you're hauling.

[Gar]

I'm tempted to go into the point that most relics aren't unique, but that's really not the point so I won't ramble. 

 

I just wanted to agree with Freelance in that you should just use whatever model you like. We're limited to what we can use. We yank what people can use for the game and use it for the world we immerse ourselves in. I might even go as far to say that someone assuming something about your character based on something they can see on your model is dangerous grounds.

 

If someone comes waddling up and making a fuss about Curtana ICly or OOCly, you can just tell them its not Curtana, and if they continue after that then congratulations! You found an easy method of finding out who you probably don't wanna hang around with.

[Eva]

I'm going to make a few statements here, then kind of go back and contradict myself, in a way.  But please bear with me anyway!

 

One thing to realize is that weapons in XIV are generally played up for the sake of the game... often pretty substantially so.  They define the class.  They are named.  They have a 'special snowflake' story attached to them.  And they are generally identical based on class (e.g. relic, zenith, atma, animus) - or various nuances of the same flavor.  If this is RPed than there's a good chance someone else out there is RPing the very same thing.  I think most RPers want to avoid coming across being Mary Sue, and I think RPing the weapons as they are based on the game's story tends to work against that endeavor.  As others have suggested, deviating from it a bit to make something a bit more unique for yourself is probably a more ideal solution.

 

Another thing is that historically weapons are not generally regarded as much more than tools.  Yes there might be a fondness from a fighter for his chosen tool of the trade, maybe even giving it a name or a certain amount of regard.  But in the end it's a thing, and like most things it can break, be lost, misplaced, be replaced by another, etc.  And I think realistic RP will sort of mimic this.  Named weapons were more often a thing for kings and nobles and such, where the weapons were often seen more as a symbol than as an instrument to be used in the more literal sense.  This isn't to say it's wrong.  Our alt has a weapon he's named, and some of that creative license needs to be employed with its use.  Sure it looks like the same Bravura that everyone else wields, but he's spoken about it at times and more often descriptors in emotes are used.  It ignores the entire Curious Gorge story, relic story, etc.  He thinks it's super-special.  But nobody else is expected to.  To anyone else it would look like a big axe with some etchings carved into the haft and a figure molded into the axehead's design.  Fancy maybe, but still ordinary.

 

I kind of kept up with this mentality in FFXI before upgrading a relic weapon (pre-2010 when it was like years of effort and was a pretty major accomplishment - or in hindsight a bit of a colossal waste of time).  I had wanted to somehow find a way to incorporate this in RP.  Unfortunately, it came around the endpoint of RP in FFXI on our server though (most of us were getting stoked about XIV which was just around the bend at that point) so there wasn't any real substantial RP pertaining to this.  In lieu of that, the character in XI loosely translates to Eva's father's character, so we've left the weapon intact - unnamed - but it's too big for her and after the father character passed on it became a wall decoration since it was such a pretty weapon.  So that's been kind of our nod to that without anything being godmody or naming a weapon or anything.

 

So I guess what I'm saying is that folks should just RP whatever they want, but it may be worthwhile to try and think outside the box and either leave the weapon to be an ordinary thing, or otherwise find a way to mold it to fit some other story, or if you're adamant on clinging to XIV's items at least realize that your character may not be the only one doing this and make certain allowances for other characters with similar parallel stories for their own weapons.

 

There also should be no expectation upon other RPers that your character's weapon is somehow more than the sum of its parts or what would be available to other RPers - I think that's probably the most important thing.  If you're having to send /tells to people or make people understand that your thingamajig is somehow better or more special than their thingamajigs, that's a pretty telltale sign that something is wrong with your approach.

 

If it matters at all - for Eva (apart from the bit I already mentioned about her father's wall decoration) I've never really given any special focus to any of her weapons or linked them to any special storyline, and that's worked pretty well for our purposes.