Traveling Realms in a Realm Reborn: Character Ports

[Hiro]

One thing I am taking away from this thread specifically right now, which I feel could be elaborated on a bit more:

 

- There is precedence for realm travel and thus, minus our lack of reasoning of how's and why's, it is a perfectly feasible element of a character concept.

 

*Beyond cliche's, sueisms, etc, why is this so frowned upon? I see a lot of people go "RP what you want" in general however here it seems this is one of the few things within realm of possibility that seems to have been labeled taboo.

 

*Can it be done tastefully? How much is too much and even then is this just such a stigma that it's really going to alienate one from the general community? There seems to be a lot of  dislike of such concepts in general, and rather than execution, it seems a popular sentiment that the concept itself is distasteful more than anything. This is to say that the feeling I've gotten here is that no matter how well executed or handled the character is, peoples prejudgement is to avoid interaction or on an OOC level frown upon the use.

 

* All things fair, while there is no solid reasoning as to why certain events that solidfy multiple realms as a thing, it doesn't technically need to be explained. Where does our OOC/meta knowledge actually interfere with any given individuals immersion?

 

- Final Fantasy XIV is technically presented as a realm of possibility and wonders, I see a lot of people delving into realism as a reasoning (myself included a lot), however it seems that events surrounding the game, world, and story is about unprecedented and mold breaking events, circumstances, and sentiments.

 

* I've noted a lot of preference towards realism and conformity, avoidance of mold breaking, etc. How does this preside over in a world described as above?

 

* Wouldn't it seem more accurate to utilize the statement: Unless lore specifically states otherwise it could happen? Multiple occurrences, rareties, etc. I personally feel a lot of people may be restricting themselves based on what is established and detailed lore instead of what has precedence or is acceptable in the meta rather than the world itself. Perhaps this is a branch in another topic direction.

[Dis]

My main character is actually a world-traveler, and a very old one at that.  Despite her age, she's still a novice in many things (physical combat, especially), and a jack-of-all-trades, so she never really focuses on any one thing, except perhaps magic, which she's usually skilled at.  

 

Glioca is a character that I've had for about thirteen, almost fourteen years now, and actually started as a one paragraph NPC in an old game called Dark Ages (NOT DAoC, which is an entirely different game), and when I left the game, I took the concept and name with me, wrote an AU history as to why she left her world, and have been adventuring with her all over the multiverse, from Sci-Fi to High Fantasy.  

 

While she's technically classed as a Power in D&D (where her main profile exists), she exists in a number of places, though she doesn't always have all of her memories, and most often is born or reborn as someone entirely new on a world, though there is still a retention of a few key character traits, even with a new name, and the main personality and ability of the core character lies dormant.  I've played her in a number of MMO's, and generally work to fit her into the lore as it exists, rather than just slapping a name on her and saying 'hey, I world-traveled her over here, so everything about her is totally identical!', because that just isn't the case.  She's been a number of things over the years across the genres I've played her in, and her only true constant is that she's a healer, and will warp whatever technology and magic she can come across to stretch the boundaries of what is currently plausible on a world, because she generally comes to care about its people and usually wants to help them.

 

Further expanding on that, each world is considered, because she's a power, to have a set of rules that have to be followed strictly in order for her to exist on that world: never using too much power at the risk of destroying her own body and banishing her from that world, never giving someone too much knowledge about other worlds lest they think her crazy, and rarely if ever bringing an individual with her from a past world that she has visited, because not everyone is capable of withstanding the method she uses to traverse dimensions and the planes.  

 

On Eorzea, Glioca is primarily a scholar (the scholastic type, not just the class), and healer, who sometimes picks up weapons to learn more.  She has a vast well of knowledge she draws from, which sometimes gives her an advantage in terms of her abilities and skills, but for the most part, she always tries to blend in on whatever world she's on: one part for not making herself seem insane, though it sometimes slips through in conversations and she's viewed as eccentric, which she often played up, and another part so that interactions with her are maintained as something fun and she doesn't really lord over everyone else, unless that's her actual goal, usually only when made angry, or insulted.  She tends to call everyone 'young', and refers to them as 'childlike', even grown adults, which for her part is age, but most tend to see it as one more sign of her eccentricities.  Not ironically, one of the few people she told about her method of travel called her insane, despite acknowledging her skill, and chalked it up to her being a crazy mage.  Which made for some great RP interaction.  

 

The biggest thing that people find implausible about her is usually her body-hopping, that being that she generally finds a body that is recently deceased, houses her soul inside it, and maintains a presence there.  On Eorzea, this is explained as a form of the Echo, which likens her to an Ascian, though she actually isn't, and will only possess generally unimportant deceased, typically a last-of-their-line type of thing, usually from large battles or during times of war.  She spends her time on whatever world she's on attempting to learn as much as she can from it, and experiencing the life there.  Her actual reason more recently is finding a place among the vast realms that she and her family can call home.  

 

All of that being said, I have other characters that fit inside the lore, most of my other characters, in fact, were created in-lore and meant to be entirely lore-friendly.  One or two of my characters work for Glioca doing various tasks, and at least one of them thinks she's a crazy old lady, while the other just avoids her as much as possible, and still another kind of see's her as a mother figure because she took in him and his sister.  

 

Regarding the points Hiro brought up, I've never actually understood the dislike that some people seem to have from world-traveling characters, though I have seen the character concept done, if not wrong, poorly.  If a character brings in too much information from other sources and doesn't find a way to moderate how it is used it, it can create problems during character interactions with them, but again, gives the opportunity for disbelief, or for a character hedging out into the idea that travel is possible from realm to realm.  Fitting Glioca into a world thanks to the lore is one of the most fun parts of bringing her to anywhere she ends up.  There are others that world-travel that I've encountered, and it's great fun running into those characters as both Glioca, and my other characters who express various levels of disbelief about their story.  

 

I find nothing distasteful about a world-traveling character, quite the contrary.  I find it interesting, especially when an individual provides their reasoning for that character being on a particular world.  

 

That said, if others don't want to interact with her because of her history and backstory, that's fine too, and I don't fault them for that.  Everyone has a certain playstyle they avoid, and that's their own choice.  All I ever ask is that people don't dismiss all of my characters just because of one particular character with a specific backstory.  That actually seems to be a larger problem in some communities than others, and I'm thankful I haven't run into that here in the Final Fantasy community.

2016 Edit:  Oh, how very wrong I was about this.  I only hoped it was true.  The reality, sadly, was far different.

[Delilah Scythewood]

*raises hand*

 

Hello, my name is Lili and I'm a character porter.

 

*waits for the chorus of 'Hi Lili' before continuing*

 

This Lilithium I play is very similar to the one I had in WoW. Less piercings, scars, and more maternal, but there are similar personality and background traits.

 

However, in many ways she is very unique to the game. I usually bring over at least one familiar character type or persona to a new game so I have a more comfortable foothold to learn about lore, etc., and then from there I make new characters.

 

That's just me though

[Wild Card]

*Beyond cliche's, sueisms, etc, why is this so frowned upon?

Tbh I don't know. I NEVER give my character any abilities or achievements I didn't actually aquire ingame and since I actively do endgame content, even without world travel my char is a friggin Rambo by now, so the whole "overpowered" argument becomes imo kinda, dunno, weak. 

 

*Can it be done tastefully?

I think it depends on the game and the way you do it. I had a small campaign runnig for a while with a couple of friends. We were playing multiplayer games and kept "transfering" our characters from one game to another. Everytime it happened they lost all their abilities, but kept the memories of the previous worlds (and became rather cynical over time lol). Basically it was a group of travelers, who were trying to get back home, but everytime they were thrown into a new world, they instantly got involved into some shit.

 

As for my FFXIV character, it was transfered from FFXI. The games are similar enough and have pretty much the same races, so it was really easy to transfer her.

In XI my main job was Blue Mage, for those not familiar with the XI lore: Blue Mages in FFXI were also called the Immortal Guards. They were the elite forces of the empire of Aht Urhgan and the protectors of the Empress Nashmeira II. What nobody knew though was that most of them were adventurers, who came to Aht Urhgan seeking their fortune. Lured into a trap deep within Aydeewa Subterane, they were kidnapped and became subjetcs to cruel experiments and brainwashing. The alchemists of Aht Urhgan implanted them the Ahriman lenses, allowing them to absorb the life essence of their defeated enemies and learn their skills. Allowing them to use Blue Magic. Even though the emperial alchemists were the best in what they did, only few people survived the experiments and even less survived what came after.

Absorbing vast amounts of monster essence drove many of them to madness. It took controll over them and eventually horribly deformed their bodies, transforming them into Soul Flayers. The few remaining ones eventually became the Immortal Guards under the command of captain Raubahn. And so did Irie. With the help of her friends she managed to stabilize her condition and keep her sanity. But after a series of events she left the Empire and traveled far away to a distant continent...

She layed down her scimitars and the Immortal Guard attire, put on some old adventurer cloths and after a long journey arrived in Limsa Lominsa. There she enlisted in the Culinarian Guild and tried to stay as far away from fighting as possible. Mostly because she didn't want to get involved into anything similar again, but also because she was becoming unstable. But eventually it was the same reason that made her pick up adventuring again and look for a way to get rid of the Ahriman lenses.

 

But yeah, then again I'm not sure if this counts as "real" world traveling. I think, I did it, because I just loved FFXI lore so much (and Aht Urhgan expansion in particular) that I didn't want to part with my char.

[TheLastCandle]

I prefer to keep my Planescape out of my FFXIV, personally. However, my main is loosely based on a character I've been playing for years and years: a Moon Elf Ranger/Harper Agent I played in both tabletop and on a Neverwinter Nights persistent world.

[Chris Ganale]

I'm just a lazy player and recycle characters in whatever new game I play them in. Tahz is my only FF original. And then I ported him out of it into Pokémon and Gundam Build Fighters, so far.

 

Chao is a special case. She is explicitly an alternate-universe version of another character of the same name, who is a whole other can of worms nobody wants to get into.

[g0ne]

Whenever I play a game with character creation, I make up a new character, no ports, no similarities to any other created character. 

 

So, Eleni is Eleni. She was completely new and original, her personality, her name, her background, everything. 

 

Of course, if there's a directly linked series with character creation, for example, Monster Hunter, the character I made in one can carry over to the next game depending on whether I want it or not. So, the character I made in mh3u will carry over to mh4u.