Age Boosts - Implemented, not Requested

[Miradus]

Right now there's a preponderance of young characters in our world. Even particularly long-lived ones aren't very old.

This may just be the point of having a younger playerbase who identifies with younger people, but older characters can be interesting as well.

However the stat system seems to be heavily skewed towards < 35 characters. Strength and agility take a particular hit, unless it's just RNG skewing my results.

My suggestion to get a more diverse range of aged characters in the game would be to provide skill boosts in return for starting at a lower age. It wouldn't even have to be major. Simply add a point to each skill (up to branching) for every year after a certain point (say 32). Sure, you may start out with diminished strength and agility, but all your time in the world as a vNPC is reflected in your skillsheet.

There you go. Tear it apart, guys.

[Riev]

And have someone app in with higher skills than me without putting in the work?

I NEVER.

[Miradus]

Ah. Thanks, Riev. I didn't consider the social welfare aspect of it.

Mathematically, from my testing, it takes about 20 fails to get from apprentice to journeyman on some of the basic skills. Combat skills are a whole other banana, I think, as I've never really tracked those.

So if you added one point for every year over 35, your 50 year old character would be starting out at barely journeyman status. I'm not sure that's gamebreaking but not for me to decide.

But I can get to journeyman in about 1-2 days played so once you crunch the numbers and add in Riev's emotional issue with it (which I'm sure would be echoed by others), I'm no longer thinking this is even worth doing.

[BrainySmurf]

...I don't think we have very many 'young' PCs in my experience. Most PCs seem to start between the ages of 25 and 30 in my experience, which is solidly half your lifespan for a human on Zalanthas. I rarely see anyone start less than 20, in order to avoid the str/end/wis penalties. Stat penalties only really come into effect post 40 yr old, so unless you're saying more people should play characters who are 40+, then I don't know what the point of compensation would be.

I think most people start 25-30 not because they associate with that age, but because it's a 'sweet spot', meaning you have full  or nearly full stats (I got a bump at 28 once iirc) but still have enough breathing room between you and 40 that you can enjoy the full coded potential of your character before the spectre of aging gets its grubby paws on you.

While all of my character have tragically died young, however, I believe older characters get boosts to wis. So if you start at 45 years old, presumably you'll have higher wisdom which will make increasing your skills quicker and compensate for some stat denigration in theory.

The final point is more salient, and more opinion based, but I don't think we should have a glut of older PCs for the sake of having old people around. I think characters add a lot more richness to the world if they achieve old age ICly. Your Raleris Winrothols, if you will. Their backstories are things that people actually experienced and participated in, rather than a notepad document someone scripted up for their app. A 45 year old fresh PC is just someone who's been mysteriously forgettable their whole life which is a lot less interesting to me than a youth who grew up, experienced actual IC events and participated, and has that experience to draw on and shape their older personality. I think that explains a lot of the 'younger' PC bias. People want to live their character's life, not backstory the whole thing. But that entire last paragraph is wholly opinion.

[Miradus]

It's a valid opinion.

I like older characters because they're dropped into the game world with some knowledge. I already know how to get to Luir's because I've been there a hundred times in virtual game caravans. I know who Templar TerribleToes is because I watched him execute someone a few years ago.

If you take the longest lived character I know right now,  EDITED BY RAHNEVYN DO NOT MENTION LIVING PCS BY NAME, when you're dropped in out of chargen you don't know her backstory. You don't know anything about her that she doesn't choose to tell you.

So unless you ALSO have an equally long-lived character who has experienced the rise and fall EDITED, your CHARACTER doesn't know anything about them. You the player may have experienced all of that and love seeing the interaction, but your character doesn't.

My goal with older characters is sometimes just having them fit into the world. The same with characters who have interesting defects or health problems, or who are mentally unstable in ways that are detrimental to themselves.

Your opinion matters, Brainy, because you're going to create characters you like which are different than the ones I like to create. It would be a BORING world if it was only populated by the types of characters I like. (Though it would be a DANGEROUS one.)

[Akariel]

Please do not post about currently living characters.

Please do not post about characters who have been around within the last year.

[Miradus]

My apologies to that player then. I didn't think about that before I posted.

[stoicreader]

I would love to play a youth who turns her head at every hunk who walks by but rejects every advancement.

[MeTekillot]

I too enjoy posting non sequiturs. I think we're going to get along.

[MeTekillot]

Also I wholeheartedly support this idea. Who cares if you start out skilled? Balance can eat a dick. It's a roleplaying game about misery, desperation, and struggle.

[Veselka]

I would like for there to be an option to make a middling skilled character with less chance of mastery, at any point in the age spectrum. I hate the damn grind of this game, but I enjoy the RP surrounding middling skilled people.

[Riev]

I, too, like the idea that my skills and background make me "reliable" but not "super uber Spec-Ops Delta Ranger". I like to know my backstab is going to go off, that I'm not going to die to a dujat worm attacking me once, or that when I try to steal someone's dagger that I'm not at 5/100 skill trying to do it.

Though, the time and effort of grinding SOME skills increases comradery at times, so I dunno.