Ageing

[Pseudonym]

Just curious...

Had an interesting OOC chat with another player last night about characters ageing. She said a player's ageing process was outside of the regular RL-Layo time conversion. This was so or otherwise every character would be retiring of old-age during their mid-levels. I worked out if a character starts at age 18-20 and levels at 'normal' progression rates (say they would get to level 20 in about 12-18 months RL) or approx by the late 30s of their characters lives. That seemed about right to me? I suppose my question is do we ignore the ageing process for our characters?

My apologies if this is already discussed elsewhere ... i'm lazy and it's easier to just ask than to look through past forum threads!

[Polak76]

Hehehe...you're a mind reader Pseudo.
I was just discussing this same topic with Dezza an hour ago.
The result was still uncertain.

I'll be interested in the feed-back here.

Cheers,
Polak76

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Well... Myself, I've been aging Pyyran at about the appropriate rate for RL-to-Layo time conversion. Let me just check exactly how old he should be... It's been sixteen years, and he started out right on his 18th birthday, as I recall, so, wow. He's 34. I've been playing him as being "about, but just a bit over" 30, but wow. That's older than I thought.

I've been trying to represent his age properly; honestly, his current age and advancement fit very well with my original plan of when he was to make the shift to Duelist.

I actually had his description updated a month or so ago to properly reflect his aging and development as a character.

So... I guess I, at least, am giving a go at aging my character who actually ages at a noticable rate, though it's understandable why many who've had their characters for two and three years, realtime, don't want them to be doddering about in their 60s.

[Pseudonym]

Stephen_Zuckerman - 10/9/2006  12:59 PM

... though it's understandable why many who've had their characters for two and three years, realtime, don't want them to be doddering about in their 60s.

I understand that completely, I am just asking the question out of curiosity - will there potentially be issues arising when there is a lack of consistency between RL/Layo time conversions? Is the answer that we play their ageing as we see fit?

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Oh, it's entirely possible (and in fact, likely) that there will be some issues arising when Pyyran gets into his fifties, while Frills is still a fresh 28 (just to pull an example out of my hat).

But then, aren't there similar difficulties when a character who's been adventuring for YEARS, actively, gets shot past in a couple of months by some fellow who knows how to farm XP? Admittedly, not aging your character isn't exactly an exploit, but... Well, drat. I just don't have a better example. *Laughs.*

Myself, I'm planning on retiring Pyyran to a life of teaching a fencing school and taking on apprentices in alchemy once he gets to a point at which I'm satisfied letting him go. He'll probably be in his early fifties at that point, and level 18 or so, but I have a definate point I'm shooting for in terms of character development.

The answer really is that the stubbornest will win on this one, or we'll just have to live with inconsistency.

[Polak76]

Yeah, I agree. It's hard to measure since people can fly past you at obscene levels but you've been around longer in game time.

Therefore I'll use it as a guide only.  I'm not really worried how people age their characters.  I just needed some guide to work out the age of one of my old characters off-spring.

Should have him posted real soon.

Cheers,
Polak76

[Acacea]

I think not wanting characters to age is understandable. Preventing them from doing so and pretending they don't is completely illogical to me. It is the wrong way to handle it. Here's why.

To clarify, I mean that in Layonara's history there have been large events that anyone can measure time by. If three characters were around for Bloodstone's return, and one of them is pretending she's 19 and the other 23, while the other is 100 some years old... please tell me how you can stretch this in roleplay. If you were there for an event, then you have dated yourself, so how can you fudge this and have anything make sense in history and roleplay? You can't.

I really wish that instead of everyone deciding that their characters run on different clocks and that events happened 6 months ago for one person and 12 years ago for another, people would instead find excuses to stretch why their characters are still doing what they do at whatever age they are.

I understand that we immediately think "oh god, we should not be adventuring at 70, it's not realistic!"

But finding a reason for your character's good health is a MUCH smaller stretch, and on a much more individual level, than trying to play Time Machine for events that actually have dates down to the day in Layonara's history.

As I have said on other threads regarding this topic, I think everyone ignores the perfect excuse. Every time you die you are remade at the bindstone, why should that not screw up the aging process? I'm not suggesting that it gets rid of it completely, but it is certainly harder on the soul than on the lifespan.

Anyone can work out any RL to Layo date very quickly using this. So I don't understand why the trouble.

Yes, my issue is and always is consistency with the lore already in place. Why throw it out the window...not just once but for every single active character, in a thousand different ways?

If someone insists that their character is only 19 when they are 46, I will be happy to adjust my personal memory of them to reflect that, which means editing them out of every event and experience that happened in all of that missed time.

[Meizter]

I thas been a long time since I have posted anything here, but I did have an urge to comment on this discussion

Time is a facinating subject and something we must be aware of. However given how things are I do think that we have to stretch our imaginations and let some things slide. A prime example of how time is tricky is when you take a boat.

Let's say you sail from Leilon to Raven's Watch, now that takes us a "load time" i.e. a few seconds (let's say 5 for sake of simplicity), which in layo time is 1 minute and 15 secs.

Likewise we can traverse entire continents in a matter of hours, again something unfeasible, but still something that happens.

What I'm saying here is that I think one should not put too much energy into time, it is a very arbitrary thing there and in my opinion not something fixed.

I personally never really cared much for time, for short timespans, like within a week, I have referred as RL time, something which I believe many have, and something which is simple yet effective, and for me at least does not spoil immersion. I think it is quite allowable to call yesterday RL for yesterday Layo, instead of keeping track of how many days Layo time passed since you were last online. I guess the deeper meaning of this is that sometimes we must forfeit realism to accomodate simplicity and accessability in a system.

About ageing I will not say there is a right or wrong way, but what you feel is right. someone living to be 100 years in an medieval world and someone crossing a continent in hours is equally unfeasible. There can be a number of reasons imagined why someone becomes so old in a fantasy setting, the bindstones as Acacea mentioned are a prime example, what about healing could that perhaps not also have some effect.

As for my own char I don't have a clue how old he is, if asked he would probably say somewhere in his late 20'ies, although he is most likely 50+, but I don't see people at that age with an average CON score adventuring, so I stretch things to accomodate this, and I don't think this is "bad" it's where we take these "leaps of faith" and just go with it, instead of insert realism into something that I doubt can be fit into something realistic, meaning we let the fun of playing and having a good time preceede realism. The danger of D&D and of most roleplay often is that you try to impose realism on it, which do not always make it better, it is a game of fantasy and why not let the fantastic have it's corners in areas like time.

In any case I don't think this is something you can ever find a definite method for, I play to have a good time, not to keep maticioulsy track of time.

[Acacea]

I simply fail how someone can even try to say "oh but it wouldn't make sense" when it makes so much less sense to change everything for everyone. Deciding that your character can still adventure at age 200 is fine for me, I wouldn't ask anyone to forcefully retire their characters when we only have so much time to play. Just find reasons for -your- character, instead of changing what actually affects all characters.

As I said I am willing to let people forget they were around for x event that happened at x time in order to be 'younger,' if they are also willing to be edited out of history to do so.



(Edit- As a side note, I think the smaller the time increments, the easier it is to set aside. We can fudge those a lot more easily than THIS HAPPENED IN 1387 AND I WAS THERE... BUT I'M ONLY TEN if you know what I mean. I'm not trying to put anybody down or argue just to argue, I just hate when the things chosen are arbitrary and make no logical sense and are inconsistent, even for a fantasy setting.)

[Rayenoir]

Acacea - 10/9/2006  2:43 AM

As I have said on other threads regarding this topic, I think everyone ignores the perfect excuse. Every time you die you are remade at the bindstone, why should that not screw up the aging process? I'm not suggesting that it gets rid of it completely, but it is certainly harder on the soul than on the lifespan.

I like this idea.  I think it's a good approach.

[Nehetsrev]

I have to agree with Acacea on this one.  I would rather preserve the integrity of Layonaran history as a whole than 'fudge it up' by saying my characters haven't aged at the same progression as Layonaran time.  So what if your hero lives to adventure into their 100th or 200th year?  Many legendary figures in RL have lived a far longer time than that if different theological texts are to be believed.  Methusala for instance lived 1000+ years.  There are a few folks even today that are running marathons and triathalons and such who are in their 80's and 90's because they've made an effort to stay in excellent physical shape all their lives.  I would think any character who adventures must be in fairly good shape compared to the average person in RL, look at how much walking/running they have to do to travel to all the places they go, and that's not even taking into account the physical workout they must get when in combat.

My longest played character has only aged about 7 years of Layonaran time since I started playing her back in April 2006, so she hasn't even hit her 30's yet.  I don't think I'm likely to play any of my characters for more than 5 years RL time. Five years of RL time is a little less than 82 years Layonaran time, putting a character that starts at age 18 up to the age of about 100.  For Elves and other longer lived races, that's really not too bad, and even for humans if you think of your character as being an exception to the general populace in terms of physcial condition and aging, it isn't too bad either - in a Fantasy setting.

[Doc-Holiday]

It's difficult to embrace aging as my most beloved character Weston Pendrot was 53 at dragon calling... which makes him over 100 years old now and quite crusty...

I do try to slow him down more than he was and play it as though he's alive by the virtue of his sorcerous powers but again he should be quite dead.

[ThrainSil]

While I like the aging thing all I can think of is even more elves will be all over the place. (dwarven laughter in backround)

[Eorendil]

This is my one real difficulty with the more hardcore online RP worlds... if you do it hardcore your character ages rather rapidly regardless of how little or how often you play. Compare that to a PnP game where time is halted between sessions. Then again, travel time and other things can be more heavily weighted in a PnP game and so aging occurs on a much more natural scale, relative to the events and actions of the characters.
  If you stick strictly to age lengths and Layo time.. and assuming you use a random death time you could still get a couple years RL play time, maybe more, out of a human character without stretching things too much. Heroes, especially fantasy heroes, by their very nature are often well removed from the common man in some fashion. That's not to say that some might not die early or be more average than others. There are average heroes, after all, but it tends to be the circumstances of their heroism that sets them apart..
  Lets take paladins for example.. While they lead dangerous lives they are very active and most are probably very fit or at least see regular exercise. Add into that the fact that they are immune to disease... Disease can weaken the body and mind prematurely.. imagine never being sick from the age of 17 or 19 on, whatever the age of indoctrination was.  At age 40 there is still a lot left to do.. A paladin or warrior might take on a more leadership based role but even at 40 he may be very formidable on the battlefield.
  my ramblings... aging is always hard to deal with. No one wants their hero or character to die before they have their chance to really leave their mark on the world. For shorter lived races it could feel like being under a stop watch... Ready.... Set... GO! *patter of feet* *egg timer goes off* and.... DEATH! *chuckles*

[EdTheKet]

Characters are not outside of time. If you started out at 18 in let's say 1387 when the dark cloud circled the world, and you were also there when Drezneb and Eon were defeated in 1399, you will have aged 12 years. There is no way around that.

Of course it would be nice (or at least I think it would be nice ), if age gave rise to a deterioration of your stats, but we can't do that. However, as time goes by your character does age. As there's nothing we can do really to physically affect your char, it remains as he was created at age 18. However, your character has probably been healed (by potions, magic, whatever) so often, that it may have slowed it down or something. And there's of course the bindstone thing, which I can easily argue for that it would hasten the ageing process so I'm more in favor of the healing magic/potion thing.

So, even when playing a human, you have a couple of RL years to play your character, and wouldn't it be fun to evolve him into an old man? Teach those young upstarts some respect for the elderly (who can swing a mace quite hard and well, thank you ).

[EdTheKet]

Oh, and in addition, don't fret about the short things, like when you had a conversation in game for a good amount of hours which if you convert it must have been a week Layo-time. It kind of evens out with things like travelling across the globe (which really takes more time than your load screen).

[Eorendil]

I got to thinking last night. Something people forget very easily (not directed at you).. In the the middle ages when people died so early it was largely due to the conditions they lived in, mixed with disease, lack of what we now call medical care, etc. People didn't get old enogh to be all wrinkled and stooped over at age 35 or age 40. They simply didn't live long enough for that.. I would argue that a character.. human, lets say, could be effective even into what we now call middle age.. and live even up into their 70s, 80s or even 90s.. While a warrior, rogue or some others may severely decrease in effectiveness into and after middle age, a wizard relies on his brain which could serve him for much longer than his body. A cleric could also continue to serve and be role played for quite some time. Now, at some point you'd want them to stay in the temple or take duties other than the battlefield but the same happens with warriors, rogues, paladin, etc.. just a bit earlier.
  So, since there are approximately 15 years every RL year.. unless the clock jumps forward significantly during campaigns and whatnot I think you could squeeze 4+ RL years out of a human as far as life expectancy and fun aging RP goes, assuming no large jumps of internal game time and assuming she didn't lose all her soul strands first.  
  my rambling thoughts....

[Faldred]

It all comes down to simply "making sense", I think.  Taking Zug as an example, as a relative late-comer to the campaign, if the clock keeps ticking at it's current rate, he'll have aged from 23 at the Dragon's call to about 35-38 at the start of V3 -- with a life expectancy of about 100 years (per LORE), I see no reason why he couldn't be an effective warrior for at least another RL year to eighteen months or so.  After that, however, it would make sense to move him to retirement unless there was a compelling in-game reason to explain how he could still be a mighty warrior past age 60 or so.



Of course, even retired from adventuring, Zug could still be able to be a craftsman for many years beyond that, though he would require buying most, if not all, of his supplies from the current adventuring class.

[Force_of_Will_]

If characters aged then most of the non-elven long timers would be dust.

[laurabunny]

I don't suppose there's any way to implement the age-related ability scores and penalties, is there? That could be interesting.  And while I really have no idea, I suspect it would be devilishly tricky if not outright impossible to manage.