Aging Up Your Character

[Melody]

This is something Brio and I were discussing yesterday, and we figured we'd present this question to the community.

 

How do you handle your character's aging process?

 

During the character creation process we're provided a way to choose their specific birth date, but do you stick to that day every year? Do you disregard the calender date entirely and age them up at certain key points in their own unique timeline? Do you age them up at all?

 

Discuss!

[Enla]

I'll time skip for the sake of convenience, but that usually only happens when I'm with a set group of friends and we've all agreed upon it. If it's a character that normally does impromptu RP within the community I'll go on a day by day basis, in that one day in world is one day in our world. However I've skipped around six years before, because it was more convenient. Hell I even skipped twenty once because I wanted to see what the children of our characters were like and it gave way to whole new RP opportunities. That said, again, I really only am willing to do it with private - never going to go outside of a singular group of people - RP. With public RP I feel it just gets too messy if you skip more than, say, a month at a time - because a lot of people won't agree to it and then you have everyone on a different timescape. <-- even more so than usual.

[Faye]

I try to age my characters in real time but often forget to (whoops). I also try to go by the birth dates I selected in character creation, but I usually forget those, too, barring the character I gave my own birth date for ease (whoops again).

[Erik Mynhier]

I know there has been no definitive statement made, but imo, the devs have eluded to the year passing to be tied to expansions. Something they have already stated will be once a year. So to my thinking, and this is my own personal opinion mind you, Erik ages in real time. I started back in game during beta and he was 33, at his birthday (in August) on the day of the 2.0 launch, he became 34. On his up coming birthday, he will be 35. And so on until the game ends or I murder him.

[Val]

I know there has been no definitive statement made, but imo, the devs have eluded to the year passing to be tied to expansions. Something they have already stated will be once a year. So to my thinking, and this is my own personal opinion mind you, Erik ages in real time. I started back in game during beta and he was 33, at his birthday (in August) on the day of the 2.0 launch, he became 34. On his up coming birthday, he will be 35. And so on until the game ends or I murder him.

 

Pretty much this for me. All of my characters will just age up a year based on their individual birthdays!

[Kinono]

That day is Kino's birthday, and I respect it's real-life calendar equivalent. She has gone up in age twice since the start of ARR.

[Desu Nee]

Real time, like mostly everyone, really.

[Mae]

While in my RP group we may occasionally time-skip, time bubble, or suspend time for various reasons (had to break early, event ran long, complications, for example), I keep pace IC with Real World passage of time. 

 

SE has a very strange sense of time that sometimes contradicts itself. For example in XI... according to the devs there, even though there are events/holidays/festivals that by their own lore happen only once a year (and game has been going on for over twelve years now), the rest of the events of the game are occurring over the course of a SINGLE year. I've heard that in XIV, the events of everything that's happened in MSQ from the start of 2.0 to what's going on now has occurred in just a few months (could be wrong, it's just what I heard...), and there's rumors that when the expansion hits SE is going to time-skip us several months into the future. If we're only advancing time according to SE's whim schedule, it sort of negates the purpose of choosing a Naming Day during character creation (strictly speaking as a mechanic and not an RP point).

 

Also the in-game days only last a real-world hour -- three in-game weeks pass on the in-game clock in a single real-world day. It's a sort of kick back to XI, I think, where some mechanics, quests, crafting, and the like relied on the moon phases and elemental alignments of days and the only other option would be having to wait RL days/weeks/months for an opportunity to do something (NM only pops during the Waning Moon, don't fight Garuda on Windsday, don't try to fight Gnoles when the moon is more than 60% because of their healing abilities, need to wait for X-day with Y-moonphase during Z-weather to HQ a craft...). Could be wrong on that and other games did/do it, but the few other MMO's I've played the in-game time reflected whatever timezone the server was located in.

 

Of course, some people could argue that Hydaelyn is either a REALLY small planet that does do a rotation in one hour (at that size, though, we probably wouldn't have much gravity or an atmosphere...) or that it just spins that fast (... I think we'd get flattened or tossed out into space at those rates...), but then there wouldn't be a reason for some races (Miqo'te) to develop clans with nocturnal/diurnal traits. Tidal effects, growth patterns/capabilities of vegetation would suffer... a lot of stuff that I don't think can just be handwaved with 'aether makes it possible' because if I remember correctly, Eorzea is unique because of the high aether saturation. Other parts of the world would likely suffer horribly.

 

Aaaanyways... I'm tired and rambling...

 

Kara was seventeen when 2.0 started, she turned eighteen last June (ICly, no-one knows when exactly her birthday is, they just celebrate it around the first day of summer. Character-creation mechanics-wise, it's the 19th of Third Umbral), she'll turn nineteen this June. So-on and so-forth. All my others, save the Gardener, age alongside passage of time in the Real World.

 

The Gardener is the exception because... I don't know how old she is, honestly. I like to leave it ambigious with her, I guess? About the only thing I'm dead-set on with her is that she's somewhere between "old enough to have a five-year-old offspring somewhere" to "old enough to have grandchildren about to enter adulthood".

[Steel Wolf]

I assume that the calendar of our year and Eorzea's match up, more or less, despite the hyperactive day/night cycle represented in-game. As such, Steel is only one year older.

 

Source: The holiday events that follow our own yearly shuffle.

[Brynhilde]

I age Bryn in real time. She was 38 when ARR launched, she's now 40.

 

I feel like ageing her allows me to have her reflect on the events of the last year-or-so with greater gravity and accuracy.

[Brio]

Mae's post was a great read. We figured we would run with the real-world calander to age up our characters, we were just curious about the general opinion of the community.

[Clover]

I don't age my characters in real time. That'd make no sense, considering I can be stuck in the same scene for weeks or even months.

I might only age them if I consider that the story moved forward to that point, but the story has not, so both Clover and K'mih are the same age than the day they were created (18 and 16).

[Berrod Armstrong]

I tend to age my characters up based on patch/expansion time bubbles. The next time I review Berrod's age will likely be at Heavensward, given that some mention of the year is made. 

 

For example, I started him as 23 in ARR, and he'll remain 23 until there's something that says 'x' years have passed since blah blah, or 'the year is now 15XX'. If this ever poses a danger of clashing with people who use other aging methods, I resort to something vague such as 'the young adult'.

[Warren Castille]

Comic book time. I "celebrate" Warren's name-day in game, but I don't bother counting the years until SE gives a hard look at it. If 2018 comes around and SE then says "It's been a year since Praetorium" then yes, Warren will have had five or six name-days in that year.

 

It's easier to not stress over it. Then again, I'm the lazy type who never even defined a hard age for him.

[Coatleque]

Crofte ages with the MSQ timeline.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I think I'm in line with the three Highlanders above me.

 

I set an eorzean year for Franz's birth, and then struggle to recalculate his age if asked OOCly. IC, we don't even know if most common people know what year they were born. For this sake, I usually just say "he's about 40". Vague enough to not have to deal with actual details, but close enough to work for a character who doesn't actually know his birthday. He makes general assumptions on when it would need to be, based of life events he does remember.

[Stormwind]

I'm with Warren on this one. I've given Alexander a round-about age, but haven't really paid to much attention to it. If SE ever comes out and says how much time has passed, I'll move that sliding scale up as necessary.

[FreelanceWizard]

I play a little fast and loose with it, more or less how Warren handles it. I do iterate L'yhta's age on her nameday, but if SE says only one year has passed when 3.0 drops, I'll just make adjustments to her as necessary to maintain continuity (for instance, I can easily adjust when she left her tribe).

 

Comic book time: it's not just for the X-Men any more.

[Tiergan]

I age my characters by real life year, but rewind the clock if SE is all "HEY SO EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE EXPAC TOTALLY TOOK ONE YEAR OK."

 

They did have an in-game memorial moment for the year anniversary of the Calamity during the summer so I wonder if to SE a year has passed.

[C'kayah Polaali]

I age my characters like fine bourbon, in oak casks!

 

Seriously, I do it by calendar year. It's not perfect, but it works.

[Caspar]

I try not to think about it too much >_< Time passes in weird ways in rp and scenes can be interrupted or paused.

 

If there was any particular rule I would follow, I probably would age the character one year per real world year.

[Gegenji]

I actually aged Chachan DOWN early on in his story, which led to this whole thing about him lying (terribly) about his age!

 

As for aging him up, I think most folks have mentioned how I'd do it. Celebrate his Nameday if folks want to make an event out of it (which the little guy would love)... and then tick him up unless given lore says otherwise. I would figure Heavensward will at least either have an appropriate passing of time to match an expansion... but who knows.

 

Fortunately, Chachan has only been around for a couple months so far, so I haven't quite had to worry about the passing of years yet. Just lamenting the time-based rewards I have either yet to get or are unable to get. :blush:

[Verad]

I roll a d100 every month and if it is below a certain number, he dies of old age. This number increases every year.

 

The clock is ticking.

[Marisa]

I roll a d100 every month and if it is below a certain number, he dies of old age. This number increases every year.

 

The clock is ticking.

 

That's pretty hardcore. I always roll like a 2, so I'd be a dozen characters in by now...

[Chillsmack]

It'd be great if SE gave us an up-to-date timeline. As much as the protagonist does in the MSQ so far I would hope this hasn't all happened within the span of a year lol although I'll admit that until we do get an official date Doendraga will be unaging like a vampire/Nicholas Cage