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Retconning


Aldotsk

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Due to some lore questions that were answered. Do you feel that your character requires a lot of Retcon or fix entire part of your character?

 

As of right now, there are still unanswered parts that I've not received from some of the questions I've posted in FFXIV official forums. So I am still not sure how many parts I'd have to retcon within my character/alts.

 

But I am kind of glad that I don't have to retcon 50-100% of my characters since I've been building them as I've been reading lores and timelines to match with them.

 

Some ideas are dropped because lores explain that it doesn't work, so it is understandable. I think everyone should at least have their chance to always fix their character and retcon something differently rather than deleting/change character because they did something wrong.

 

Never said first submit on your essay will be considered your final grade to your paper anyways.

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I usually think that most characters who end up writing their characters way too deep in past or present in the lore or the game itself end up making major mistakes. I won't deny that upcoming 2.4 story through 3.0 Heavensward will make me end up retconning a lot of stuff especially when they are introducing Dravanians. (This is one reason I haven't written any of Anelia's past stuff yet in details because I wanted to know about northern Aldenard lores before I start scribbling down and someone comes up to me and say "you did something wrong")

 

In every MMORPG games, they give basic lores but they make it so hard for roleplayers to write their character to the full potential because not all lores were fully explained enough. 1.0 did explain, sure. But I think it was still limited regardless.

 

Though I have no problem on retconning and rewriting people, I'll have to let people know that I am changing my character.

 

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I don't have any issue with people retconning parts of characters when the devs have clobbered them with lore drops. We often play in grey areas of lore, and so adjustments often have to be made when the devs fill those areas in. That said, IMO, one should generally try to avoid areas that are likely to get sketched out in the future to avoid getting clobbered. Even when people are okay with retcons, they can be quite jarring.

 

In terms of the lore panel answers, none of them affect my characters. The whole "there are other ways to get White Magic" opens up a new potential avenue for RP (or, one might say, validates a position I've held on Jobs), but I'm going to hold off on pursuing that until we know more. I did have to make a minor adjustment to L'yhta's background when we found out about the low literacy rate of Eorzea, but that wasn't anything particularly problematic as it didn't change her present state, only her past.

 

I do feel a bit bad for pureblood Garlean defectors who've decided to play highly trained mages, however... the devs did more or less obliterate those characters with a single answer.

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I tend to have my character evolve in the sphere of known lore. Everything I add myself ends up being strict flavor.

 

Berrod exists tied only to confirmed things. As more lore is released on certain areas, I may explore them and add elements from from them onto Berrod's story. It's a lot of fun that way because it allows for development in all directions, not just forward. For example, learning about Highlanders shaving their eyebrows to intimidate has led to me exploring if and why Berrod would do such a thing. If something happened to be revealed about Ala Mhigo next week, I'd take a look at it and see if and how it factors into Berrod's story and write up something from there.

 

Writing a character completely from start to current seems like it would be ideal, but leaving little gaps in their own story where there are gaps in the lore can be a ton of fun and extremely practical -- ESPECIALLY when lore reveals help fill in those gaps. It's what I plan to do with my guy, with the exception of my flavor stuff (which are just the properties of his chakras anyway). 

 

That way, there'll be no need for a retcon unless SE themselves decide to retcon something, a la the elemental proficiencies of THM/CNJ.

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I do feel a bit bad for pureblood Garlean defectors who've decided to play highly trained mages, however... the devs did more or less obliterate those characters with a single answer.

 

Oh yeah, definitely. This was such an interesting play for many Garlean roleplayers but now it's been flushed down. But I think these people can use magiteks or gunblades to support their game I guess.

 

I am also sure they did this on purpose to let players know that Garleans are unplayable races and will remain that way. (After all, they were originally antagonists from 1.0!)

 

Even for those who wanted to be XYZ class or XYZ race had to be retconned because they don't really exist. Which is a shame.

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I either made good educated guesses or was just lucky, but nothing the Lore panel said effected Erik. The only danger I face Lore wise is the dye I cast in regards to DRK, but we shall see if my luck holds.

 

To be honest, most of my recon usually comes from players wanting to do a mixed rp, only to bale suddenly from the game.

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The lore for this world is on the light side, and has been well stated, many characters live within the "Grey" areas.  I try to live within established lore, or at least within established lore and "feel of the game", as much as possible.  There are some points that I've worried about Aya's story working out correctly (such as with the timing of the invasion of Ala Mhigo, and the closing of Ishgard's gates), but I believe so far I've been able to avoid having to make any significant adjustments :)

 

That said, adjustments to stay lore relevant seem like a good idea.  I don't have any good idea about what to do for someone whose entire character concept is endangered by changing lore, except I would try to make as small of changes as possible.

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To be honest, most of my recon usually comes from players wanting to do a mixed rp, only to bale suddenly from the game.

 

I'm not a fan of retcons because it's like losing a bit of what made up the character' s personality but I recently decided to retcon someone out of Seiko's life because of such reasons.

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I tend to keep as much lore out of my character's history as possible, and develop them from there. That way if a retcon is needed, I don't have to do a huge overhaul on my character. Chika's history is simple; heir to the tribe from the point of birth, her mother was matriarch and her father was a breeding male, had a strict abusive childhood, forced to work in a brothel.

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I'm not sure what to do about Vincent's age now. I've always RPd him to have just barely turned 18 years old, and to be new to the "harsh life" as an adult and outside of the safe house walls. Claiming to be 18 always made it so that other RPers treaded him as a kid still, and I liked that. It's what I want for him.

 

But the latest lore interview revealed that Elezen have longer life spans, and that their different ages last longer. So to be a 18 years elezen I'd likely have to look like a RL 10 years old kid, which I can't...

 

So, to physically look like a 18 years old, IC he should be older... maybe in his twenties? And even then, they did not explain how fast elezen's minds age. Would a 10-yo-looking Elezen have the maturity of a 18-yo person? Or would their maturity come slower than ours does? Also, I am afraid that if I start to say I am in my mid-twenties, people will start treating me like an adult, which I don't want...

 

I'm really conflicted about all this.

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Retconning is fine. Do it freely and as necessary. In an effort to avoid doing so, I tend to avoid making characters that interact very heavily with the metaphysics of the setting. I rarely play magic-users until I know very well what the rules for magic are in any RP environment, especially MMOs, because I know I will get something wrong that will have to be fixed later.

 

But the notion of "deleting/changing" the character when there's some critical lore error - who says this? Is there anybody who actually advocates this? "Sorry, you got some unanswered area wrong, reroll?"

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But the notion of "deleting/changing" the character when there's some critical lore error - who says this? Is there anybody who actually advocates this? "Sorry, you got some unanswered area wrong, reroll?"

I would say "I do!" but sometime tells me Verad wouldn't believe me :-]

 

I think there are people that adopt this attitude, but only to be trolls.

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Honestly, if I got a major lore point seriously wrong and that point of lore were key to the character concept, I'd probably throw the character away and start over -- not that I'm advocating others do this, of course! If, for instance, I wrote a character who was a high mage for a powerful Ishgardian house acting as a diplomat to the rest of Eorzea on that house's behalf, and we were to find out in 3.0 that no such things could possibly exist (for instance, mages are all part of the church, Thaumaturgy is banned, or spellcasters aren't allowed any political power), I'd probably ditch the character entirely.

 

That said, I generally try to keep speculative bits minimal, vague, or easily removed so I don't have to worry about this. I like to think I have enough experience to guess where devs are likely to clobber and where they aren't. :)

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I don't know. In the event something like that turns out to be completely wrong, I think trying to dig out could lead to more interesting RP. If your Ishardian High Sorcerer ends up becoming impossible... Why not heel-turn the character? He was a lying liar from Liesville the entire time.

 

Your secret Garlean-spy was a double agent the whole time and was trying to dig up enough evidence before turning the cell over to the Flames/Adders/Maels.

 

Your White Mage isn't actually channeling Succor - they might have just thought they were, and it was just conjury (because who would have ever been healed enough by conjurers and the few white mages to even have a comparison?) or perhaps they were selling snake oil, trying to bring prestige onto themselves by riding on the coat tails of the actually powerful.

 

Throwing away a character is just a waste of a potential story no one saw coming.

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I guess the issue for me is that I may not want to do a face heel turn (or, depending on the character, a heel face turn; this is Ish-"It's Called Witchdrop For a Reason"-gard we're hypothesizing about, after all :) ). If I were really into the character concept, having to alter it dramatically in a way that turns the character into a bad guy, a liar, or a fraud might not sit well with me. Sure, it opens up RP possibilities, but they may not be possibilities I want to explore.

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I guess the issue for me is that I may not want to do a face heel turn (or, depending on the character, a heel face turn; this is Ish-"It's Called Witchdrop For a Reason"-gard we're hypothesizing about, after all :) ). If I were really into the character concept, having to alter it dramatically in a way that turns the character into a bad guy, a liar, or a fraud might not sit well with me. Sure, it opens up RP possibilities, but they may not be possibilities I want to explore.

 

Well, true.

 

I'm just the type to knock over the Jenga tower before putting it back in the box. It was going to fall apart anyway, might as well have some fun with it first!

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Some people end up playing like DnD and force themselves to recreate their character as if they fill out a new sheet to reroll their character because the character died in the game or campaign. I remember doing this for WoW private servers ( thank god I didn't pay for this) and regular WoW server. Luckily I refused to do it for FFXI and people were okay with it. Though I was considering to reroll anyways because there was someone in linkshell that was shame naming with racism OOCly and I didn't want to play as that character or be part of that linkshell in Sylph. 

 

But yeah , sometimes people end up rerolling if their character ends up getting really messy that you can't do anything to change it. It's like you filled up that paper all over the place in pen ink and it's hard to even use white out.

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Honestly, if I got a major lore point seriously wrong and that point of lore were key to the character concept, I'd probably throw the character away and start over -- not that I'm advocating others do this, of course! If, for instance, I wrote a character who was a high mage for a powerful Ishgardian house acting as a diplomat to the rest of Eorzea on that house's behalf, and we were to find out in 3.0 that no such things could possibly exist (for instance, mages are all part of the church, Thaumaturgy is banned, or spellcasters aren't allowed any political power), I'd probably ditch the character entirely.

 

That said, I generally try to keep speculative bits minimal, vague, or easily removed so I don't have to worry about this. I like to think I have enough experience to guess where devs are likely to clobber and where they aren't. :)

 

I don't know. In the event something like that turns out to be completely wrong, I think trying to dig out could lead to more interesting RP. If your Ishardian High Sorcerer ends up becoming impossible... Why not heel-turn the character? He was a lying liar from Liesville the entire time.

 

Your secret Garlean-spy was a double agent the whole time and was trying to dig up enough evidence before turning the cell over to the Flames/Adders/Maels.

 

Your White Mage isn't actually channeling Succor - they might have just thought they were, and it was just conjury (because who would have ever been healed enough by conjurers and the few white mages to even have a comparison?) or perhaps they were selling snake oil, trying to bring prestige onto themselves by riding on the coat tails of the actually powerful.

 

Throwing away a character is just a waste of a potential story no one saw coming.

 

I guess the issue for me is that I may not want to do a face heel turn (or, depending on the character, a heel face turn; this is Ish-"It's Called Witchdrop For a Reason"-gard we're hypothesizing about, after all :) ). If I were really into the character concept, having to alter it dramatically in a way that turns the character into a bad guy, a liar, or a fraud might not sit well with me. Sure, it opens up RP possibilities, but they may not be possibilities I want to explore.

 

Totally agreed with Freelance here.  Sadly this is what happened to me with my character concept.  I was very interested in it because it appealed to me greatly, however upon learning that it would be impossible to do I did scrap the entire character mid-way through his storyline.  Just the only difference is that I didn't restart because my motivation suffered a crippling blow that I couldn't recover from.

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The lore for this world is on the light side, and has been well stated, many characters live within the "Grey" areas. 

 

I feel like this whole conundrum gets avoided if you just stick to known lore and not tryhard with really out there characters.

 

Pretty much what Aya said.

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Knowing Ishgard reveals were all but a sure thing in the coming patches I purposely held back on pushing my characters current storyline/whatever you wanna call it.

 

I always find it funny when people run away with stuff the game gives little to no information on with their characters and then either have to backpedal to the point of losing weeks/months of RP or keep RPing a then non-canon thing despite it.

 

I'm waiting for more information on Othard/Doma/the Far East to come out down the road to show how silly it is for all of these people with japanese-y names to be running around claiming to be from there.

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