One Character model, multiple characters?

[Askier]

As I went to work all weak and weary, in my mind there formed a query:

 

Anybody else ever use their main as totally different character? And not as an npc, mind you. I mean a fully realized character?

 

I, personally, do this. During my second event, I had a character, The Doctor, who was pivotal to the plot, never existed as his own character. Instead I just used Askier and dressed up up and cropped his hair. And plenty of people rped with me doing this.

 

Currently, I have another character, a fully realized one, also sharing Askier's model, just with drastically different hair, attire, and face paint.  

 

I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone else does this at all and what your reasons are.

 

Is it cause you don't have much free time to level?

 

Is it cause you have vanity gear you can't get anymore?

 

Is it cause server lock on Balmung?

 

Or do you find this to be an rp cardinal sin and a huge rp no-no?

Thought this could be a fun topic to discuss.

[ZindelloTarantella]

As I went to work all weak and weary, in my mind there formed a query:

 

Anybody else ever use their main as totally different character? And not as an npc, mind you. I mean a fully realized character?

 

I, personally, do this. During my second event, I had a character, The Doctor, who was pivotal to the plot, never existed as his own character. Instead I just used Askier and dressed up up and cropped his hair. And plenty of people rped with me doing this.

 

Currently, I have another character, a fully realized one, also sharing Askier's model, just with drastically different hair, attire, and face paint.  

 

I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone else does this at all and what your reasons are.

 

Is it cause you don't have much free time to level?

 

Is it cause you have vanity gear you can't get anymore?

 

Is it cause server lock on Balmung?

 

Or do you find this to be an rp cardinal sin and a huge rp no-no?

Thought this could be a fun topic to discuss.

 

I wish I had thought of this before I leveled three separate toons...>.>

 

But seriously, this is a good idea. I would not mind a person doing this so long as they told me what costumes to associate with what character and stuck to them. This sort of thing was done in Champs all the time (where you could have multiple costumes that looked NOTHING alike) and I know I didn't mind it there. Again, as long as I know that you're current IC as 'The Doctor' or your regular character, I foresee no problems beyond the occasional need to clarify for people not in the know.

[Arianne Beaudonet]

Arianne is actually a twin, and while I no longer play that twin, it had been suggested to me at one time that I should play both characters on one. The thought was since the twins were such different jobs, that I could associate the job with the character. When I was a White mage/conjurer, I was Arianne. When I was a bard/archer, I was her twin, Arielle. It would have worked since the two were identical twins, the only difference being their attire and hair style.

 

I personally don't see a problem with it. I'm a fairly open minded person and I have seen people pull off some pretty amazing things roleplay-wise. There is always the possibility of people mixing up the two characters, but in the case of identical twins, that is a common reaction and can be hilarious to play out.

 

If I were to bring back Arianne's twin at some point, that's probably the way I would do it so I don't have to level up another character.

 

Great topic!

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I think using one in-game character for multiple RP characters is a good choice for plots that can get away with it.

 

Some *cough* Kage, Natalie, Osric, Askier *cough* might remember a certain plot that got me into RP, where I was just a bad NPC. At that time, I wasn't completely sure if I was going to continue, so the nice tin-can armor that hid my character's face was perfect. It let me use an existing character I had created, without the obligation of trying to make an alt on balmung, and then level it up. Lo and behold, it was fun, and I did end up making an alt for the character for a while, simply to grab the name I wanted. Later, I did the server hop name change and a fantasia to adjust the character model to fit that character, as I wrote off the previous character model through story.

 

While leveling alts is fun, going through some of the story quest all over gain isn't. I enjoy being able to equip a lot of gear for glamor reasons, so it made sense to have one character model for everything. In the event that I need to NPC an alt, it will probably never reach past level 15, if I can get away with crafting an appropriate outfit.

[C'kayah Polaali]

C'kayah sometimes goes by an alias, and I created a character with that name and his model to *be* that alias.

 

I don't actually use them that often, though, because of the mechanics - he's low level, he doesn't have membership in the linkshells C'kayah does, he doesn't have C'kayah's friend's list.

[Mae]

I haven't had a need for it so far in XIV, but I have in other games.

 

In XI, my main (Draenen) has pulled extra duty as her older sister (Malay), a 'random' mercenary (Path/Patheel), and on few occasions... a male Immortal.

-- Mal was the original name of my XI character. When I left XI years ago, I left Mal's story on a "MIA?! Dead?! Gone?!" note. When I came back years later, I decided I wanted to continue as Mal's younger sister. For that, I forced a name change when I moved servers to be with an RP group -- I had a lot of gear, levels, and mission progression behind me, and I just didn't want to have to do it all over again. Anyways, Mal has since been found to be alive and I occasionally play her on Draen, just because I don't feel like grinding up another character and struggling to get another set of Mal's 'signature' gear. Appearance-wise, they look similar enough for people to know they're related, but Mal is athletically trim with motherly attributes while Draen is a bit taller and heavily muscled to the point where she's almost masculine. Also, Mal is a RDM/BLU/DRK, whereas Draen is magically inept and is perma-jobbed as THF.

-- Path was/is a scenario/filler character. Draen was occupied elsewhere with a different plotline for a while, so I made up a merc to run with the main group until Draen ICly got back. Only thing the two shared was job/skillsets -- Path was a small, skinny thing with a long black ponytail and wore a Mirke. She ended up persisting through the original need, and has made a few appearances since.

-- The male Immortal is for storytelling. Typically I ghost him, but sometimes there are scenarios where a physical presence is needed.

 

A secondary character of mine, Merior, was made in the expectation to play double-duty as both The Mirror ('Mirror' was already taken) and The Farseer. In actuality these two are the same person, just at different points of their life. They are identical save for natural aging (Mirror is early 20's while Farseer is mid 40's) and Mirror wears black/brown and uses a flute while Farseer wears white, carries a dagger actually called 'Farseer', and uses a harp.

 

Nyiia (Nyiiaia) and Niiya (Niiya-Jiiya) were originally Tarutaru twins that I DID create and attempt to level separately. They were actually a bit of a downtime gag. I picked a male and female model that, when wearing a hat, gave the illusion of being identical. I was very sneaky when it came to getting them both pearled ("Hey, um... so, I changed my mind on Nyiia's appearance and deleted her... can you repearl me?"), made sure they had the same gear despite being two different jobs (Nyiia was a ninja, Niiya was a samurai), and decorated their rooms the same (EXPENSIVE!). The RP group encountered Nyiia first and her hat was knocked off, so for the first couple weeks the group thought they were dealing with a single, particularly absent-minded Taru girl who hid blond pigtails under a hat. From there on, I would switch back and forth between the two at random. Someone finally noticed OOCly the different names after about three weeks, and after that I would just pick at random between the two and ghost the other, RPing them as identical twins. A week or so later, someone knocked off Niiya's hat and "... You're a BOY?!" shenanigans ensued. After that, it wasn't really worth keeping both around and the RP group began to move out of the twin's encountering range, so I deleted one at random. Future interactions with the twins, I'll decide at random which is 'really' sitting there.

 

In World of Warcraft, I did it for a short time before Wrath of the Lich King was released. During the Second Plague and Scourge Invasion events, my main character doubled as an estranged family member who was a Death Knight. Amarilli was taller/normal sized (Dreizhen was SHORT), had shorter, curlier, and slightly darker hair, and was all stitched up like some weird living ragdoll. After WotLK landed and the Death Knight job became available, Amarilli was made as her own model.

[Jancis]

Agreed I think it's a role play yes-yes.

 

You also have a character that can travel and get to places. I know that can go along with leveling, per say, but this game holds a lot of attunements where the phrase 'level up' doesn't give it enough credit to the time sink for areas, mounts, pets, jobs, etc.

 

I would definitely play along with that and enjoy it. A name does not ruin my immersion whatsoever. Power of Imagination Activate!

[Roen]

AWAY WITH YOU SINNER!

 

 

It does not break my immersion, I can ignore the names floating above the character's head easily enough. But I do need to see a different look, else it would be a struggle. I roleplayed with your Doctor more than once, not once did I think that it was Askier. You dressed him up differently, the mask and such, immersion was easy.

 

For myself though, I leveled up alts. (one still has yet to finish the story though... >.> ) Because each character is completely unique for me. Roen is completely different from Raelisanne even though they are both Midlanders, and Brynn is a Highlander to boot. I might be the lesser RPer for this, but I need my own characters to fit how I picture them in my mind, and for that I would have to fantasia them completely every time.

[Dat Oni]

Koporo has a set of Warwolf gear and an skull eyepatch for those times I need to RP him as a...Well, a bad guy mook.

 

It works well.

[FreelanceWizard]

I've seen people do this before and I think it works well if you change your appearance substantially and make it clear to everyone OOC that it's a different character. On that basis, it seems to work better in private scenes rather than public ones, as in public you might constantly have to send people tells telling them you're a different character, as opposed to your normal character in disguise.

 

Personally, I either use low level alts or I use the character creator to snap screenshots of what the NPC looks like. I provide a link to those on my OneDrive to the participants, then I narrate their actions in the appropriate channel using a "narration" indicator (for me, the pilcrow, or paragraph mark: ¶), so that end result looks like:

 

L'yhta Mahre: ¶ The captain sputters, looking quickly from side to side. "N-now, sirrah, l-let's not be /too/ hasty..."

 

Again, that typically works best for private plot scenes, but I've done it in more public areas from time to time with success.

[Verad]

I use NPCs quite interchangeably, and consider them to be largely disposable. When I was running events for the Ransacked Rug, there were at least four crucial NPCs that stuck around through the duration of the plot, and were often in the same scene. Attempting to level alts for them would have been a nightmare. It was far simpler for me to just describe them and their actions, as I would during a tabletop game, then to take the time and commitment necessary to level that many alts.

 

I would consider leveling an alt for the sake of specific representation if and only if a particular NPC is kept around for so long, and regarded as important enough by other players, that it becomes a full-fledged character in its own right to be played outside the course of the storyline for which it was made.

 

So in short, I don't consider characters that have specific models to be NPCs. They're characters. NPCs only get the visual representation afforded by verbal description, and I use that all the time.