Birthdays

[Hymwen]

Hi! Does Zalanthians celebrate birthdays at all? Do they even keep accurate track of their age?

[Jherlen]

Depends on background.

A noble, templar, literate merchant family member and people at the upper echelons of society might know their birthdate to the exact year, month, and day.

Your average city commoner might know what month, possibly what part of that month he was born in. "I know I turn a year around the middle of Ascending Sun, reckon I've had about twenty or so."

And so on. As social standing went down, I imagine estimates would become less and less exact. What's another year to the starving rinther trying to find food?

Tribals might have totally different customs regarding age, and knowledge there would vary.

[Hymwen]

Ok, thanks.

[WarriorPoet]

Funny story.

I was once nearly killed because I refused to tell someone my exact age. The character was very young, 17 or 18 I believe, and upon coming to join up with a group, he was told he looked pretty young, almost too young. Exactkly how old was he?

Well, the character was an orphan, whose first memories were scratching for food in the alleys of Nak. So... he didn't know. I replied with "Ohhh, not more than twenty moons, I suppose. Never was exactly sure..."

The cat doing the interviewing gets pissy, like "NO. I want to know -exactly- how old you are." I had the impression that if it would have been a little less bitch-ass, the guy would have OOC'd "Just type score, man. Your age is right there! Damn!"  :lol: I continued to refuse, however, and the interviewer guy got pissed off, telling me if I didn't know my own age, I was too dumb to hire on. Hah!

-WP lost another kitty this morning.

[Rindan]

I tend to play very low class people.  Generally, I don't have my character's know their age.  If you ask them they will shrug and make a vague guess.  Personally, I think this is perfectly reasonable.  In a place without calanders or extreme seasons or weather variation, I don't think that it would be that uncommon to not know your age.  That goes double and triple for 'rinthers.

[Bluefae]

WP, you lost a kitty?  Ach, that's awful - the last time I had a cat, I bawled my eyes out when she died.   :cry:

Hymwen, funny you should ask this question.  I've actually come close to posting it a time or two, but never have for some reason or other.  In my rather limited experience, I've yet to come across a definitive answer to this, either IG or OOG.  This goes along with the general theme of "cultural grey areas", intentional or not ("Do the peoples of Zalanthas have an afterlife belief?" would be another, albeit more weighty, example.).  I have been struck, both IC and OOC by a seeming lack of ritual in the day-to-day experience of most commoners (They may not have marriage per se, but they would likely commemorate a joining of mates -somehow-, for instance.).  So, I say have fun making something up that fits for your character, and thereby adding to the rich texture of our shared universe.

Jherlen - Krath, I miss playing with you.  

[My 2 sids]

Just to be clear there is no connection between having calanders and being literate.  Entire civilizations have existed without written communication.  It doesn't mean the civilization would be dumb or uneducated... simply oral-based.

Personally it would make sense for a culture like the one in game to have calanders and celebrate birthdays.

[Marauder Moe]

I've never seen any calendars in-game, though.  I do believe that it's possible that each city's templarate announces the date each morning, though (and it'd be cool if this was scripted into certain NPCs, actually.  I'll idea it later).  

Commoners not knowing their exact birthdays, or celebrating them if they do, feels like a very Armageddon thing to me.

From a Zalanthan point of view, someone who's family gives them a whole party every year is extremely spoiled.  Common children are usually lucky if their parents dont sell them off as slaves.  Also, there don't seem to be any regular holidays that happen the same time every year.  I don't think there's an anual "Tuluk Liberation Day" or "Might Dragon-Morphin Power Highlord Tektolnes Day".  Some organizations to have age requirements for recruiting, but I think it'd be more realistic if it was just a superficial examination.  Make the decision based upon whether or not the person looks old enough to do the job.  Maybe check for hair. :wink:

Years just don't seem that important, though.

[Ritley_stilllazy]

WP, you lost a kitty?  Ach, that's awful - the last time I had a cat, I bawled my eyes out when she died.   :cry:

Hymwen, funny you should ask this question.  I've actually come close to posting it a time or two, but never have for some reason or other.  In my rather limited experience, I've yet to come across a definitive answer to this, either IG or OOG.  This goes along with the general theme of "cultural grey areas", intentional or not ("Do the peoples of Zalanthas have an afterlife belief?" would be another, albeit more weighty, example.).  I have been struck, both IC and OOC by a seeming lack of ritual in the day-to-day experience of most commoners (They may not have marriage per se, but they would likely commemorate a joining of mates -somehow-, for instance.).  So, I say have fun making something up that fits for your character, and thereby adding to the rich texture of our shared universe.

Jherlen - Krath, I miss playing with you.  

Ooooh, and you didn't miss playing with me did you!  :evil:

[Ritley]

P.S: I was just joking, about the post towards Bluefae heh.

My views on this are similar to Jherlen's. I believe that poor people have so much on their mind they wouldn't bother celebrating their birthday. However I'm not even sure Nobles would. I think it is less important to them, than it is here. Most cases I bet they are not even told their birth day... heh

[Jherlen]

However I'm not even sure Nobles would. I think it is less important to them, than it is here. Most cases I bet they are not even told their birth day... heh

Nobility and the family members of the great merchant houses are both literate and educated.

In many instances, marriages between members of these houses are done via contracts specifically geared towards producing children.

So in my mind, it makes sense that most noble/merchant Houses would have documents detailing parentage and the family tree of the House, and when you're already keeping such records, adding simple things like dates of birth (and death) seems to make sense.

I think nobility and the merchant families would know when they were born. Whether they celebrate a birthday like we might is a different debate, but I'm fairly certain they'd know.

[Cale_Knight]

In my mind:

A noble might use a birthday as an excuse to to throw a party.

A merchant family member might make a note of it and shrug it off.

A commoner probably wouldn't ever think about it without being prompted to by some outside comment, and even then wouldn't know much more than a very generic "reckon I seen 28 years or so in my day."

[Angela Christine]

I think that most people would know the year and season of their birth, if not the actual day.  It isn't hard to remember "I was born durring low sun of the year of Whira's Anger."  Text years might even be easier to remember than strings of numbers.  Most PCs don't know the year of their birth, because the players weren't really there when their PC was born, and there aren't any non-virtual friends or family to remember for you.  The only way to figure out your birthday is to find the year chart and work backwards from your age, which is a bother.



Some groups might have an annual birthday party in which everyone in the group celebrates their birthday.  Something like the summer soltice, and everyone considers themselves a year older on that date.  That way you know how many years old you are, even if you don't know your actual birthday.  There are lots of ways to keep track.



Angela Christine

[bloodfromstone]

I have had IG friends who celebrated birthdays. It didn't seem like an OOC concept to me. Given the harshness of Zalanthas, a celebration of another year lived is very believable.

[flurry]

I think that most people would know the year and season of their birth, if not the actual day.  It isn't hard to remember "I was born durring low sun of the year of Whira's Anger."  Text years might even be easier to remember than strings of numbers.  Most PCs don't know the year of their birth, because the players weren't really there when their PC was born, and there aren't any non-virtual friends or family to remember for you.  The only way to figure out your birthday is to find the year chart and work backwards from your age, which is a bother.

Yep.  I agree wholeheartedly with AC.   The years have numbers and names, so I don't think it would be unusual at all to know the year of your birth.

Also, because of the way the Zalanthan calendar is set up, Zalanthans have their birthday on the same day of the week every year.   So that's another thing that would help to remember.   Born on the second Detal of Low Sun?  Well, every year your birthday is the second Detal of Low Sun.   Zalanthans (at least the ones with jobs) seem to be able to keep their days of the week straight, so I think this would help.

On a slight tangent, because of this feature of the calendar (that we OOCly don't have on our Gregorian calendar), Zalanthans might tend to identify more with the day of the week of their birth (since it falls that day every year).   Kind of like we do with our Zodiac.   "Oh, you were born on Abid?   Well - no wonder you're so stubborn..."   That kind of thing.