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how old will you be? an idea i am trowing out on the table
JMandrake
Member Posts: 139
theres a 90% chance that strike wrote this before!!!
ok here goes.
cloudsbreak time / dreamtime effect.
Lets say for example in cloudsbreak your a 70 year old man, there should be some kind of effect on your character making him more senior citizen, have this option in the character selection.
For example minimum age could be 14 years old the dream could become avaliable to them at puberty. Then their characters would be similar with themselves. Those characters would look young and stuff, but if you select 70 years old your character would probebly look like an older avatar.
Now here is the twitch knowing this, lets say you put in real time months = cloudsbreak year. This would mean that your young character of 14 years old woudl age 12 years each real time year. Now with this in mind if you make a 70 year old character then after one year he woudl be at 82... and lets say after 85 year the system would randomly kill the character in cloudsbreak.. never know he coudl go on and surpass 100 years, but he could also die turning 85. This would create great opportunies for role play, also that you woudln't see young ones leading a house, who wants a 14 year old telling 50 year old men and women how to run a house anyways.
And as the dream is a living thing lets say someone wants to have a child, then go for it but only after 14 months after giving birth to this child will he be able to enter the dream.
I don't know i was just throwing this on the table. Characters could die and the dream can move on, this way it would regulate a few things.
1. keeping characters from dominating the dream or controling the events for too long. For example and no offence but if Valourin / wraith / munchkin / Tux / Ghaz / kage / as examples would never die and would all still be playing i know some still do and i mean no offence, but your work and your devotion has lead you to where you are today, but to be realistic those that still plays are the ones leading the dream. time to pass the torch to the pupils and eager youngens. the US have an election every 4 years to change their president or keep him... after 2 terms the President must take his leave...
2. Someone reaching 9th sphere and is 70 years old then this dreamer woudl have about a year and some change to leave his / her mark, but afterward if the dreamer left his/her legacy or not he would die and be remembered.
Well let me know what you think. It would be indeed something you don't see in other games and this is part of role playing, because everyone dies no one really lives!
all this to say lets have an aging effect on the characters if they are dynamic enough!!!
Comments
Do you mean the young can't advance?
I think it'd be cool if we could decide an age to start off with when a character is made and actually age in some way. Like if you chose to start off as a 15 year old and played for 4 years (let's pretend our 6 months, was 1 year in the game), then they'd age 6 years and look about 21. And this wouldn't be an option to die, but actually come along eventually in so many years, whether you advance or not. Or maybe even if there is no death, aging does actually happen. If it is a fantasy world of some kind, there could easily be people who are over 100.
But there shouldn't be a reason to stop anyone from enjoying roleplays and advancing. If you don't want them to be in the spotlight, find ways to up them.
"For example minimum age could be 14 years old the dream could become avaliable to them at puberty. Then their characters would be similar with themselves. Those characters would look young and stuff, but if you select 70 years old your character would probebly look like an older avatar."
Eh, I don't like the idea of only being able to dream at 14. There have been some little kids that have dreamt and RPed really well. Maybe there shouldn't be a limit to age, I've seen people as young as 5 or 6 and as old as died 20 years ago.
Also, its a dream so you could be 50 or 60 but you could make your avatar have the appearance of a person in their 20's... or vice versa.
Maybe the aging system could be optional... If you want your avatar would age naturally but if you didn't it could look the same age or even age in reverse or skip around. Your "age" could change with the amount of fatique and stress your mind has to put up with. If your character is young but has led a hard life they might look like an old man; if your character is old but young at heart they could look like a young man.
Also, I don't like the idea of people dying because of age. If my character is going to die then I want to decide when. Dying because of age would severely limit people who wanted to RP an old character. If they come in at 60 or 70+ then their character won't last very long and they wont have time to play it. I like the idea of characters dying as long as its RPed and it doesn't just happen because of some algorithm. I've had a few of my characters die before and people seem to like the RPs, but if the system decided when you die you wouldn't have much of a chance to prepare for it and if you didn't want it it you'd be SOL.
Just my 2¢,
-Night
maybe those that select the reveil old age to refelct how old they are on cloudsbreak could become the ones in the illumination categories
Those that woudl be in the freesoul could never age since they do not believe the dream and the waking world can affect each other??
This could be a way to visually distinct those players uh? Maybe have less Illuminated people jumping house to Freesouls or vice versa?
Have the players read a distinct reason why one would not select the old age thingy or why you would want to select it from character creation, and it be a good way to introduce the beliefs from the beginning so when the dreamers enters at least they would know this?
Or aren't we going with those beliefs anymore? I know I know the belief system will not be player based and invented, but what if you use this as an opportunity that once a long time ago those belief were the ones that the dreamers had, and maybe it could be again?
thats what i meant Selika if a freesoul wants to look like someone of 30 years of age then his character will remain this way or look this way no matter his relation to cloudsbreak.
I didn't write this before, I am a HUGE fan of IC time = IRL time. It gives me a common frame of reference to work off.
And it's not like everyone will make their avatar reflect their age either. If you want to set an age you roleplay it. Simple as that. I don't like any system that forces characters to die. Ghaz is a bothersome, annoying, evil, manipulative, high powered bastard, and to be honest I wouldn't have it any other way, he had a nice way of keeping everyone all riled up and upset.
Kage Wraith and Valourin have caused soooo damn much controversy it IS funny.
Granted, my character was under the wing of at least 3 of those dreamers, The Striker was one of THE first people initiated by a newly knighted munchkin into DoL. So, I maybe biased.
Yet, GuardDog was one of those big heavy hitters. He was one of the most prominent GK's out there. Guess what? Dreamstrike didn't give a rat's behind. Dreamstrike is the great leveller in this playfield, it is the reaper it is the thing that'll curtail the lives of others.
I don't want characters going quietly into the night! I want them to go down chakrams blazing like the larger then life (anti)hero they are!
To be honest I, and a few others find the concept of dream conception a tad silly. I mean not only would it outright prove the illuminate belief, which we do NOT want, we want both belief systems to be equally credible so people will continue to hammer each other. I suddenly find myself outsphered and outgunned by some punk kid that 2 people I know "had". It's just silly!
If you really dislike those powerful bigwigs, just push to keep dreamstrike in the system. When frictions get heated big loud influential and powerful people become targets, just think of the kennedy assasination.
Because only someone as deranged as me would have a rubber chicken Named Alfredo Sanchez
The avatar seen in the city is not a true living biological entity. That flesh creature is in cloudsbreak. The avatars we see in the city are manifestation of that persons mind. They are how the person perceives themself. They have nothing to do with the cloudbreakian's appearance. A quadrapledic in cloudsbreak would have full use of all her limbs.
It would be more accurate to have the apparent age of the avatar be a reflection of the power of the mind of the person. Perhaps, everyone strarts with the apparent age of 14. As your elements go up, so too does your apparent age. However, Dreamseers can alter their appearance (an art). Teachers and scholars age a bit more rapidly due to the intense mental study of their disciplines. And soulmasterage less rapidly.
Perhaps Gatekeepers, dreamsmiths and fatesenders avatars should have a more musculature look to them, to reflect the "physical" nature of their foci.
Nothing would suck more than to log in to the game and have the server say:
"Sorry, you died of old age last night. Your character has been deleted" and then be redirected to the character creation screen.
If age is a killer on cloudsbreak, well so is life. Shouldn't there be a random chance that the 14 year old is hit buy a bus (or a runaway oxen or whatever)"
Who is gonna play a game that advertises "You can't die in game, but there is a random chance that your character will be deleted".
For most games IC time being greater than OOC time isn't a bother and in fact it helps move the game along. But UL/RC are unique in that the players are the story. So the time they are there is the time that passes. By defination then IC time = OOC time. As far as aging in cloudsbreak vs the city, since the city passes in thought time, it could easily be that a year in the city is 10 minutes in cloudsbreak.
That would be messed up if 10 minutes = one year.
"Well I won't be back for a while, I'm going on a long epic journey." "Ok then take care, see you!" *30 minutes later* "Whelp! I'm back!" "Wow that was a short epic." "SHORT?! I was gone #$@# years through all sorts of hardships!"
I am a huge fan of avatars being highly customizeable there is a lengthy thread talking about the avatar creation process. I really wouldn't like it if they forced all avatars at start to look the same. Then you'd end up with a load of dern clones. I would be seriously niffed if every damn GK looked like an arnold schwartzenager clone. You ever see those games were classes look alike? You get masses of faceless clones. That being said, I like players looking the way they THINK they should look. A good rper will make his rough and tumble scrapper look the part. And that bookish scholar, a good rper will make that person look the part also. And I've seen bookish GK's and scrapper DS's.
Because only someone as deranged as me would have a rubber chicken Named Alfredo Sanchez
I remember reading one of Terry Pratchett's stories about Death's replacement coming to collect an elderly witch, and after he had cut the thread of her life, a beautiful, buxom young maiden-spirit appeared because "this is my true shape, outside of its shell."
If I were playing an elderly character, I would more than likely follow this paradigm because, again quoting Pratchett "Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened." When Dreaming, we often want to be something we're not, Right or Wrong. A peasant girl walks the ramparts of a marble castle in silks, the crippled man runs along a beach, straight hair becomes curly, rheumatism and arthritis are a thing of the past. Unless you're taking your inspiration from Dorian Grey, however which also may be interesting!
So, depending on the character, I will determine age and rp that out as much as I am capable of doing so, but that is all subject to individual. I would, however, like the choice to customise that as well as I am able, but that didn't stop people in UL playing and describing everything feasible. In the end, it's about how creative the character can be, whether they have the visual tools or not.
Just my tuppence.