Raise The Playable Age of Characters

[winterblood 11181]

This is a non-issue

 

My take is this:

 

Characters should be playable when they reach the age of 10 and shouldn't be playable when they are 5

 

My reason:

 

Characters can still experience early development to their stories at this age, and players can still pursue forum narrative posts to help form their characters before they reach this new playable age if they really want to.  Otherwise I just don't think players should continue to play characters as such young ages for multiple reasons; that being few people accurately RP as them anyways (look at child super soldiers or high vocabulary masterminds who can travel across the map and survive with zero supervision)

 

Most interactions with child characters feel incredibly non-serious, or end up just kind of disrupting immersion (and I know I am not the only one to have experienced this) That isn't to say that any other form of light-hearted RP or silly things shouldn't be permitted in role-play, but young child RP is just kind of its own separate niche that I personally feel just doesn't really belong on this server anymore and that no one would be at any devastating loss to have to wait a little bit longer to RP their characters when they are older.

 

With this increase in playable age limit, players can still have a chance in forming their characters on the server with player and event interactions since they can still be very helpful in establishing a story.

 

And for anyone who may argue that this is going to shave off even more precious time from RPing human characters.... not really, they live up to like 120 years old but most human players (for some unknown reason) still like to stop RPing them when they reach the harrowing and decrepit age of 35-40 before they make another human

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

Big. Adolescence is the only time you can begin with roleplay worth doing; apprenticeships, cultural integration, even military service. 

Goo-goo ga-ga RP is lame and that's why nobody does it, so the practical (and common) alternative of people doing boy genius RP is incredibly stale and usually contributes nothing but immersion breaks or meme RP.
((Except for that one time I got grandfathered into my own alchemy rewrite as a 9 year old and did canonical Young Sheldon RP.
That was ok and good actually because I say so and RiftBlade thought it was funny at the time!!))

Likewise, there just seems to be needless OOC entitlement and drama that comes with child roleplay.

I've lost count of the amount of times a literal child character has gone on a crime spree or sought to be as annoying as possible in hostile territory, only for the person roleplaying them to crash out and moral posture at consequences from those who haven't bent over backwards to accomodate their (usually satirical) narrative.
It just forces people into uncomfortable places and is immensely disruptive to existing roleplay.



Whilst we're at it let's also ban characters under 16 from stomping around in platemail and diving into CRP stacked with ST mats and potions, please and thank you.

[Karina 1882]

1 minute ago, The King Of The Moon said:

Big. Adolescence is the only time you can begin with roleplay worth doing; apprenticeships, cultural integration, even military service. 

Goo-goo ga-ga RP is lame and that's why nobody does it, so the practical (and common) alternative of people doing boy genius RP is incredibly stale and usually contributes nothing but immersion breaks or meme RP.

Whilst we're at it let's also ban characters under 16 from stomping around in platemail and diving into CRP stacked with ST mats and potions please and thank you 

how would the empire survive without child soldiers

+1 i think the immersion breaking thought is very fair, it's always a bit irritating. 

[Unwillingly 18097]

dont care didnt read you're probably right take my upvote

[garentoft 9265]

Spoiler

While I generally agree with the take that a lot of (especially) young child RP is either goo-goo-gaa-gaa (not super engaging nor fun) or Young Sheldon ropeplay. I do think there are people who can do decent young child RP without it being too much to either side of this.

Not necessarily for or against raising the character playable age - I do think it would be hard to make work in the current server economy where a major aspect is offering people characters that are not yet born, especially if they'd had to wait ten weeks (2.5 months) to actually start playing. I imagine you'd run into characters being played before they're actually playable, and just sort of being ten years old for ten weeks (not necessarily a problem, depending on how you see it).

[LoTC's Next Top Model 1626]

realistically, i don't think any of the people playing cringe characters at 5-9 would stop being cringe if they had to be 10-14.

this is as performative as a change as "ban all romance rp" in what it would actually do for the server imo (functionally nothing).

i recently (like a year ago at this point. . .) started a new persona, fresh from the stork at age 5, and i had a reasonably good time with the other wave of young roleplayers in the empire at that time, whom all were, in my experience, fairly normal. the exception was people who were playing young characters and did nothing of substance, whose characters then grew into adults who continue doing nothing of substance.

ultimately i think it's a player problem more than a systematic one.

 

3 minutes ago, garentoft said:

Not necessarily for or against raising the character playable age - I do think it would be hard to make work in the current server economy where a major aspect is offering people characters that are not yet born, especially if they'd had to wait ten weeks (2.5 months) to actually start playing. I imagine you'd run into characters being played before they're actually playable, and just sort of being ten years old for ten weeks.

this is also a very good point. it would just slog down a /ton/ of rp for no particular benefit, because the good roleplayer you got will probably be a good five year old and a good ten year old, but the pvp goon who has never --'d an emote in their life will troll just as much at 5 and 10 and 15 and 20 and 25 and 30 and 35 and etc.

[winterblood 11181]

1 minute ago, garentoft said:

  Reveal hidden contents

While I generally agree with the take that a lot of (especially) young child RP is either goo-goo-gaa-gaa (not super engaging nor fun) or Young Sheldon ropeplay. I do think there are people who can do decent young child RP without it being too much to either side of this.

Not necessarily for or against raising the character playable age - I do think it would be hard to make work in the current server economy where a major aspect is offering people characters that are not yet born, especially if they'd had to wait ten weeks (2.5 months) to actually start playing. I imagine you'd run into characters being played before they're actually playable, and just sort of being ten years old for ten weeks.

 

Just because it is a norm doesn't mean it shouldn't be incapable of change.  Not all server community traditions are beneficial for the server's narrative or overall experience, and its rule-changes as these that work toward improving everything.  If players don't want to wait 2.5 months before they RP their next character, why are they making and taking such offers in extreme advance?

 

It's not like these players are robbed of a character to play in this time-frame, I would hope they would be encouraged to just stay on their current characters instead of stagnating themselves for so long.  Kind of a case of they are only hurting themselves with this.

 

I don't think its really in any enforceable rules to stop people, either, from RPing a 10 year old for 3 months... but im ngl that is just a weird thing for someone to do because they want to RP this character that badly

[garentoft 9265]

21 minutes ago, winterblood said:

 

Just because it is a norm doesn't mean it shouldn't be incapable of change.  Not all server community traditions are beneficial for the server's narrative or overall experience, and its rule-changes as these that work toward improving everything.  If players don't want to wait 2.5 months before they RP their next character, why are they making and taking such offers in extreme advance?

 

It's not like these players are robbed of a character to play in this time-frame, I would hope they would be encouraged to just stay on their current characters instead of stagnating themselves for so long.  Kind of a case of they are only hurting themselves with this.

 

I don't think its really in any enforceable rules to stop people, either, from RPing a 10 year old for 3 months... but im ngl that is just a weird thing for someone to do because they want to RP this character that badly

Agree that not all server community traditions are beneficial for the server! If the average lotcer is capable of meaningfully distinguishing the RP of a five year old to a ten year old, I would rather see people play ten year olds for ten weeks if it makes roleplay quality better and more immersive

[Lirinya 4021]

while i def play characters from the age of 5, i cant bring myself to actively rp with them until theyre at least 12 if not 16. 

 

i like the adventure, learning and discovery side of things but have for sure seen far too many cringe characters.

 

so, yes. please.

[tasty_cheesecake 2298]

u can offer someone an unborn character and just timewarp it to age 10 who ******* cares just say "yeah so we had that kid 4-8 weeks ago but we announced it now :)"

[_AzureLexi 766]

I played my current main from like, 6 years old. I think I maybe had one meaningful RP on her before she was 10, and almost exclusively RP'd with other child chars for 30min stints, or bumming around her family.

 

I'd have no qualms with this. 9-12 is when child chars actually develop some sense of personality.

 

Edit: Also what Cheesecake said. Just people timeskip it if the character hasn't been an NPC for enough years already

[Borin 7645]

 

[Beardicuss 486]

I support this for the only reason I would not have to deal with people insisting I start playing the child the second they turn five 

[Geckonawa 561]

But, think of all the five-year-old super soldiers with plate armor and longswords. THINK OF THE CHILDREN. 

[Travisty 1020]

don’t think changing that age is all that necessary imo, just play your persona when you feel like playing it. raising it doesn’t change if someones gonna be an annoying ahh kid or a child with Shakespeare esque vocab. people are just gonna run around without an age set for a little longer than they alr do with this one