Starting Older Characters

[Cameron (Pavus)]

Title: Starting Older Characters

Summary: Adding in a wider range of ages when creating a character. 17, 20 and 25 are all quite young, so why not some higher ages?

Details: Our realms are generally populated by much younger characters. This isn't inherently bad, but we do miss out on some diversity. Age penalties are all but gone, and when creating a character, you get to choose lower skills with a young age, or an older character who is much more experienced. There isn't a downside. Need there be? Make their skills suffer with age depending on age, giving incentive to start at a younger age, or make it the same. I would not be opposed to even having disadvantages, but age seems to very much be an RP system in Battlemaster now - and we should take advantage of that.

Benefits: A more age diverse noble populace. The game, if I'm being a big sceptic, will likely be gone by the time we have any new and old characters, so why not add this as an RP feature sooner than later?

Possible Downsides/Exploits: With age comes influence, and it would undermine the history of characters who have been around a long time.

[Chenier]

I don't really see the benefit to allowing people to start old. At most, instead of a drop-down menu of 3 choices, we could have a fill-in box where people can manually put in an age of, so, 16-30 (or keep it 17-25). I think older ages are kind of a vanity reward, I wouldn't want to see people start characters at 100 years old, especially now that there's no penalty for it.

Also regarding that, since there's no longer any drawbacks to creating old characters, I'd have all starting characters have the "young" skill set. Choosing experienced used to mean "more reward now, less time to enjoy it", but that's no longer the case.

[Bluelake]

As a fan of roleplay, I'd love to see older chars starting new. I'd make a few myself. Can't honour/prestige be the vanity reward, or maybe add a new line stat, "years in service" or "years after knighting" or "years since leaving home"?

[Zakky]

I don't really see the downside of allowing people to play as an older character. After all this is a RP game.

[Andrew]

I think it'd be more fun to play a kid, but that's just me. Trying to get people to take you seriously, and being able to be a complete goof, in a SMA, because you're like 7, sounds way more fun than being an old guy.

[JeVondair]

Didn't we use to be able to select our age range like young, middle-age, old or something? Or am i confusing it with M&F?

[Andrew]

Still can, the question here is to expand it to include an even older option.