Trivial: Can we not have every starting character at age 21?

[nikolokolus]

Human only, like more of the railroaded, interactive movie crap we got from Bioware with DA2 and Mass Effect.

 

Pass.

[Nonek]

Obsidian are quite good with this though aren't they? You have the Exile who seems to have had a much fuller and longer life than that befitting a youngster, Courier Six whose long wandering and career doesn't seem consistent with a youth and Michael Thornton who appears to be somewhere around thrirty or so to me (maybe more as a veteran.) Most tellingly though you have the Nameless One's response to Kossah Jai (I think it was) when she calls him lad in passing, where he leans forward and lets her see the long ages of Torment behind his eyes. That seemed to echo my own distaste with that appelation being used so prominently in almost every rpg, indeed in almost every myth following the pattern of the hero with a thousand faces.

[Elerond]

I loved how Darklands handled this issue. It would be nice if Obsidian implements character creation system where you can choose to go world as noob who is eager to learn new things or maybe as old man who has decades of experience from different occupations but don't anymore learn things fast and his physical condition starts to drop. This of course is probably much harder to balance between races thant have different lifespan and using xp level system instead skill development system, but still it could be nice feature.

 

http://darklands.wikispaces.com/age

http://darklands.wikispaces.com/Character+creation

[DCParry]

I would love the option to implement age, but do it sensibly. In the end it should be an aesthetic and narrative choice. Don't try to standardize the aging process with some strange formula or what not. As far as I know, I really didn't lose a point of strength at 40.

[HeedlessHorseman]

I like this idea. I enjoy playing characters who are older than 20.

 

Plus we could have fight scenes like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Wv4e_k0nw

[YourVoiceisAmbrosia]

It's because a lot of RPGs have a big focus on the growth of the main character. It's convenient to have the character be a young adult, because this is a period of time where the character finally begins to see the world for his or herself and emphasis is placed on determining identity, place in the world, etc. and there is a lot of potential for growth. At the same time, however, it's a period where the individual isn't completely naive, oblivious, or innocent, akin to childhood, and is capable of being independent.

 

With characters that are significantly older, there are a few roadblocks here and there. Characters who are older are generally more knowledgeable or, at the very least, experienced and do not have as much potential for growth. That is not to say it's impossible or something to have the main character in RPGs be aged, nor that aged characters can't develop or grow, it's just more of a challenge. It's a bit surreal seeing a 40 year old start off at level 1 and have little to no combat experience or noncombat skills or what have you.

 

For Project Eternity, the main character's age isn't a big deal to me so long as it makes sense thematically. I'd rather not see the main character be 50 or 60 just because you don't see a lot of main characters in RPGs be 50 or 60, but because it makes sense to do so given the nature of the story, the events that unfold, and how the protagonist develops. For example, Planescape Torment made sense in context, because there was a consistent theme of reincarnation, new beginnings, and change.

[Utukka]

It's because a lot of RPGs have a big focus on the growth of the main character. It's convenient to have the character be a young adult, because this is a period of time where the character finally begins to see the world for his or herself and emphasis is placed on determining identity, place in the world, etc. and there is a lot of potential for growth. At the same time, however, it's a period where the individual isn't completely naive, oblivious, or innocent, akin to childhood, and is capable of being independent.

 

With characters that are significantly older, there are a few roadblocks here and there. Characters who are older are generally more knowledgeable or, at the very least, experienced and do not have as much potential for growth. That is not to say it's impossible or something to have the main character in RPGs be aged, nor that aged characters can't develop or grow, it's just more of a challenge. It's a bit surreal seeing a 40 year old start off at level 1 and have little to no combat experience or noncombat skills or what have you.

 

This. What I'd like to see however is this.....1) Don't make me destined, the choosen one, the autoknown hero to be...whatever.

2) Just because I'm "young" doesn't mean they need to treat you like a fool, unskilled etc. Would be nice for an enemy to actually look at you as a serious threat or a potential serious threat for a change.

 

Couple examples from history

Alexander the Great (20)

Hannibal (26)

 

Modern day examples in Sports

Sidney Crosby

Tom Brady(used to be young and successful, now old and successful)

Edited November 3, 2012 by Utukka

[Karkarov]

Well if they do player age it needs to be complete player choice.

 

That said... It would be rather silly to be a new starting adventurer when you are 40 something or older as a human. How many 40 something firemen you know who just started on the job a month ago? Know any 40 something beat cops who just went through the academy in the last year? When was the last time you met a 40+ year old who had just joined the military?

 

I am willing to bet the answers are zero, no, and never.

 

I am not saying everyone needs to be 18-21, but there is a reason most video games that involve the "leveling" concept start you out as a younger person. Because it makes sense. Also game rules don't allow you to play the "wise old man with a bad situation" your years and years of working off jobs equate to jack crap because skill points, stats, feats, spells, all that stuff is based on level, not age (save stats which are modified by it sometimes). What I am saying is you could RP a 40 something year old who due to bad times had to become a rogue in 2nd ed D&D, but you would still be level 1 and regardless of your RP being "I spent my life previously as a cook" you still won't have the skill points to be any better at cooking than a level 1 20 year old who picked it up from mom.

[eselle28]

There are some interesting suggestings for age mechanics here, but I'd be perfectly happy if Project Eternity just refrained from forcing an age on the character. Given the "victim of circumstance" plot, it seems like keeping the plot age-neutral would be a realistic expectation.

 

I didn't used to mind playing very young adventurers...when I was in my 20s and my characters were only a little bit younger than I was. Now that I'm in my 30s, I enjoy being able to come up with characters who are adult women, not young girls seeing the world for the first time. It's not that one is better or worse than the other, it's just something that's more interesting to me at the moment, perhaps because it's closer to my own experience or perhaps because I've played and read about so many young adventurers that other things now seem more original.

 

As for fitting in with the leveling mechanics, I think there's plenty of room for a game to let players decide how much they want to make their roleplaying fit the mechanics. Some players won't feel comfortable making character who's still Level 1 in middle age, and they should be able to make appropriately young characters. Some others are fine ignoring the fact that their character doesn't fit the leveling mechanics very well as long as he doesn't keep running into NPCs who call him a child. Other players, like me, are happy to come up with backgrounds to accomodate them. Maybe my character was once very skilled but suffered a convenient head injury. Maybe my she's a grandmaster at needlework and childbearing (or blacksmithing and stall mucking), but hasn't had the opportunity to do anything very close to the class roles in the game. Maybe she's a magic user whose family never found her a proper teacher.

 

The point is, if the game is already going to be quite open as far as the identity of the character is concerned, I don't see any reason to force the youth issue - especially since, as Uttuka rightly points out, there's no particular reason that people in a medieval world would be contemptuous of a young adventurer. A group of people carrying heavy weaponry is intimidating regardless of whether they're teenagers or greybeards.

[jezz555]

The reason most games start you off young is that your supposed to get your character as a clean slate and if he is only lvl 1 at age 40 or something people are going to wonder why their guy was just farting around for 40 years until he finally decided to get some fighter training. So approximately 20 is the youngest he could be, to be fresh but still have some combat ability. I think I mentioned this in another thread but I would really like it if your character physically aged throughout the story and this was reflected in your portrait or dialogue or something.Therefore if your guy started out as a clean slate at 20, you could end the game at like 60 or something and really feel like you were playing through your guys life and like you had grown up along with him and really accomplished something when you finally reached the end of the game.

[HeedlessHorseman]

I remember reading something which said the game starts with the main character witnessing something horrific. That could be what spurs the protagonist into adventuring. Before that they could be almost any regular person, like a farmer or a noble.

[^Rayne^]

I would love it if a range in the age could be implemented at least on a basic level. I don't agree with folks that say it would be odd for a 40 year old to suddenly engage in a life of adventuring. Actually with the plot twist they've mentioned already the event may be dramatic enough that it wouldn't matter what age the character was they would want to break from their quiet life and react. A major event could make someone want to become something more than what they were before. If they at least implement some choices at the start in terms of a character's background and age before the event in character creation the player would see character react to them in ways that feel honest.

 

I would love to play a 40 year old and have characters refer to me as old man or sir or whatever. It would be great to run across some young adventuring party that thinks because your a bit over the hill you should be easy to defeat only to catch them off-guard by your butt kicking abilities. It would be fun to see how possible romance characters view a relationship with someone 10+ years on them and how that might shape dialog options. There are many ways these interactions could make for fun role-playing.

 

In character creation players that are older could select attributes like; has teenage children, wife/husband, and excellent wood-carving abilities and then when the even at the start of the game begins their kids are kidnapped and their spouse killed. If something like that happened to me as a player at the start of the game I would certainly be motivated to become skilled in some form of combat and do what I could to repay those responsible.

 

Honestly, I don't think these sorts of themes with age in mind have been explored enough in RPG's. Perhaps this project will allow for some of this. A lot of us gamers are climbing into our mid to late 30's these days and would appreciate choices like this that we could relate to.

[JayDGee]

I could see them sidestepping age and just having it as part of character ascetic. I'm reasonable sure player character will be customisable. So greying hair seems quite likely.

[Darth Trethon]

Character creation gets tricky when the character has a predetermined age....it kind of leaves it up to you to create a character that looks the age. Beyond that I don't see why you're asking for 21 specifically because if you despise 20 is one year really going to make a difference? It'd be more reasonable if you were asking for 25 or 30 or something but +1?

[curryinahurry]

I loved how Darklands handled this issue. It would be nice if Obsidian implements character creation system where you can choose to go world as noob who is eager to learn new things or maybe as old man who has decades of experience from different occupations but don't anymore learn things fast and his physical condition starts to drop. This of course is probably much harder to balance between races thant have different lifespan and using xp level system instead skill development system, but still it could be nice feature.

 

http://darklands.wikispaces.com/age

http://darklands.wik...racter creation

 

I think the devs could come up with some narrative conceit for there being a prime range of adventuring age regardless of lifespan (let's face it, most people who are going to play elves are going to want young & pretty and other races could have lifespans similar to humans).

 

The one thing they could do is put a cap on the starting age at around 40 to avoid issues regarding decrepitude. They could also start people at older ages with initial penalties to stamina or reduced skill acquisition rate to offset any initial benefits.

 

Either way, there's no real reason to not have a wide range of starting ages which, combined with backgrounds or cultural traits that the devs have discussed will only add to player immersion and replay-ability.

[Jojobobo]

Maybe you could have an age scale in the game, where on one end your character is young (higher attributes due to fitness, less skill points due to lack of worldly experience) and on the other they are old (lower attributes yet more skill points). Might be fun to play an oldy.

 

On a related note, different races should have different age ranges or a different starting age if that were to be fixed (which I think is something curryinahurry was touching on). In Arcanum for example a young mature half-orc was supposed to be aged 10 originally as orcs just grew up faster (where for elves this age was 200) - but this had to be taken out of the game due to the character being able to engage in sexy times and the uproar it would have likely caused.

[Theobeau]

A couple of thoughts on this topic.

 

As I get on in the years, I find myself more interested in role playing characters who are more than the stero-typical callow youth wanting to go out in search of adventure blah blah blah. However, given OBS' and the lead devs track records, this is not something that I worry about with PE.

 

However when it comes age itself OBS could make it an purely aesthetic choice;

give us a range of starting ages, have a few older default portraits for the character/inventory screen and give the option of adding a grey tinge to our avatar's locks. That latter is a little less important as it won't project that well in the 2d isometric display anyway!

 

Or make it have a small but interesting impact on character creation by borrowing from FO's idea of character traits that have +ve and -ve. As someone mentioned earlier, perhaps younger characters have more physical strength but a little less skill points or vice versa. One problem with this approach is that age doesn't necessarily wisdom; quite a few older people lack wisdom and maturity while young people, though difficult life circumstances can have wisdom well beyond their years; and youth doesn't equal strength.

 

As an aside, the OP's post has led great series of thread on this interesting side topic!

[AlphaShard]

Well I hated Fables aging mechanic that made you an Old man just a few hours into the game.

[Jojobobo]

I don't think older characters should have more "wisdom", wisdom is something abstract and not really related to character capabilities (well, unless they make wisdom an attribute of course). More skill points would be the way to go, as it's hard to argue against the fact that an older character simply has had more time to learn things than a younger character irrespective of how wise they are or not.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Jojobobo

[Thangorodrim]

If they pursue the concept of skills then I think a range of increasing skills at the price of decreasing strength and possibly constitution would make for an interesting game play mechanism that wouldn't have a severe impact on play balance or starting balance. For example, you could start the game at 16 with standard abilities and a certain pool of skill points (5 for example). If you want to increase your age you would lose 1 strength for every 7 years and 1 constitution for every 14 but gain 2 skill points for every 7 years. They could limit this progression to a max age of 37 for instance (allowing you to sacrifice 3 ST and 1 Con for 6 extra ability points at the max). For a mage or rogue who aren't as strength based but are far weaker in combat usually, this might give them an interesting option to buff their characters a little. Even a fighter might be willing to take the 1 ST hit for 2 extra skills for more of a finesse player (as opposed to the brute force type player). I think the mechanism could work as long as the main character's back story doesn't depend on their age. This would also give multi-classing an interesting dynamic since you could require multi-classed characters to start at the first age increment up (due to the increased training time in 2 professions) ... anyway, that is where my thinking goes

[Nanakamado]

I think there should be rather full customized age or no age at all.

I really like playing sort of munchkin (yeah, yeah I know cheats are for loosers) save game edited characters when I have already finished game few times.

As far as I understand, that would be probably impossible to add possibility to crate an older and already experienced one in character creation in the begining of the game, I think it would be nice to have at least some not destroying balance perks, like beeing master gunsmith or so (and I'm saying about something that realy makes difference for character and player).

And of course age related NPCs reactions are for me something indispensible.

With those we could really roleplay our character.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Nanakamado

[Nonek]

Old Oliver Cromwell is a good advertisement for the protagonist being swept up by circumstance later in life, the Lord Protector was a simple farmer and gentleman for the first forty years of his life before experiencing a religious conversion and forging a career in politics. This led into his fighting for parliament, gaining great renown as old Ironsides and eventually freeing England of the decadent Stewarts, and arguably making the first steps away from the divine rights of the monarchy into the future of rule by the people for the people.

 

Others who experienced their greatest hour outside of youth:

 

Winston Churchill 65 at the dawn of World War Two.

Caesar 48 at the battle of Alesia.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington 46 at Waterloo.

 

These three gentlemen had fairly successful careers before these dates but these were undoubtedly their greatest hours.

[Jojobobo]

People are only talking about strength and constitution decreasing with age, maybe different races should have different attributes that get reduced with age. So for the dwarves as they age their dexterity decreases - they become stiffer, less agile on their feet; the aumaua might lose intelligence as they age due to dementia like effects, etc. It would be one of those touches that would help make the races more separate in feel. Even if changing PC age isn't an option, different kinds of age degeneration might be fun lore wise.

[Nonek]

I don't know about strength decreasing due to age, I can lift more now than i've ever lifted. Dexterity I can see however, can't match the pace of my youth on the rugger field.

[Aldereth]

If it doesn't affect the plot, don't put it in. I doubt anyone would care too much about this. If however, this is a come of age story or mid life crisis or a coming out of retirement story then by all means enforce a certain age restriction.