I'd Rather Not Be In Your Family...

[Kram_]

So i regularly scoot about the forums, hither and tither, especially the character introductions page and their is DEFENITLY a common theme there. What is that you might ask? Why, did or missing family members of course! Nearly every character I've seen thus far has either had every member of their family die, go missing or become unaccounted for.

Long story short, i suggest no one here has children, cause who knows how long you'll last before you come up dead or missing xP

 

[Ben_2025]

Is there a general point to this thread? Yes, many characters choose to have no parents to liberate their characters in a moral sense or to allow for personal vendettas and such. Even my character, Kai, has no parents, but that is due to the fact that at the time I felt that Yanar could come into the world without "parents" and so he has none. There are many reasons why one would want to have no parents and equally there are characters who find it essential to their own development.

This post doesn't really have any point other than to point out a common trend in characters, I suggest this is closed for the sole reason that it serves no real purpose.

 

[Kram_]

It's a thread poking fun at this fact, plus it's in the general forums, and at least related to the server.

 

[MonMarty]

So i regularly scoot about the forums, hither and tither, especially the character introductions page and their is DEFENITLY a common theme there. What is that you might ask? Why, did or missing family members of course! Nearly every character I've seen thus far has either had every member of their family die, go missing or become unaccounted for.

Long story short, i suggest no one here has children, cause who knows how long you'll last before you come up dead or missing xP

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My roleplay character has a living father, brother, sister and 12 cousins : D


Also Ben_2025 He has a good point, nearly everyone's family is half dead. He isn't the only person who came to this conclusion a long time ago.

 

[FCCarnilord]

There are many reasons why one would want to have no parents and equally there are characters who find it essential to their own development.

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The main reason is because we come from Never-land and we never had parents. Just pirates and peter pan

 

[Kram_]

The main reason is because we come from Never-land and we never had parents. Just pirates and peter pan

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Oooh don't say that, that goes to weird places of never land they didn't show in the childrens movies D;

 

[Imboring56]

In the medieval era, people had a short life-span in general terms of aging. Add diseases, common injuries, shipwrecking, raiders, etc. That is what makes it deadly and keeps their lives short.

 

[Kestenator]

Well, my character Fredrik, he is 56. That would make his parents atleast 75. Considering that this is the medieval times, most people have short lifespans like ImBoring said.

 

[HydraLana]

My character has many, many siblings and living parents but I have noticed the enormous amount of dead or missing relatives too. It's weird.:S

 

[EyebrowsJ]

Mine may or may not be alive. The story in my introduction is a lie made up by Galen himself so he doesn't feel so bad about what actually happened.

 

[Ben_2025]

MonMarty Oh don't get me wrong, I know that there is a disproportionate amount of characters with an absent parental history, I just wanted to get across the point that there are a number of reasons for having a character built this way. As well as this, the point about absent parents has been made numerous times before and I feel that to people that legitimately felt having no parents would develop their character this statement is both knocking them and placing a stigma that their character's background is in a way wrong.

I understand that pointing this out is a reasonable action, after all it is just stating fact, but we aim to encourage new role players and stigmatizing certain aspects of character creation can often put off players as they feel that it is too difficultly to enter into the role playing community. By this I mean that if someone stated that there were a large proportion of human characters compared to other races and joked about this, someone who wanted to create a character may feel pressured to not become a human.

I value the opinion in itself and personally agree with the fact there are a strangely large number of "orphans", but it would be unwise to not take into account the pressures that stigmas cause on the community in the future if certain traits are beginning to become taboo.

Lastly, I apologize for being so abrupt with my remark, but I felt it was in the interest of new community members to demonstrate that we as role players appreciate the importance of fair treatment. Just because they are new, does not mean we should pressure them in certain ways. I do however concede that your statement is correct and this could become something to look into, but I felt that publicly denouncing these types of characters could lead to problems in the future.

Just my opinion.

 

[nclytmt]

What did you expect, really? nearly every RP character ever has an overly dramatic past, this often includes neglect as a child, dead parents, experiencing war/hostage drama and so on, this is probably done to make their character as unique as possible, however it obviously fails if everyone else has done just the same, lol.

But seriously, go on DA and search "OC" I guarantee you will come across a cringeworthy example of this

 

[Kram_]

I miss DA so muuuuch! D: And yeah, it does tend to happen often x3
As for denouncing, their was literally no reason to, it's a thread poking fun at a trope. "i'd rather not be a fish" is the equivalent, because of how many fisherman their are on the server. The idea that it would detract folks from using it seems silly, as most folks would look at a previous character sheet or two to get their bearings and notice such a thing.

Don't start fights.

 

[SilverAlbatross]

Lots of people were orphaned in medieval times, due to conquests and raids gone wrong.

 

[Pandru]

0_0 Gonna come up with a completely normal character now.

 

[Sir_Sherburne]

I agree, though all these opinions are right. In my rp I have adopted parents missing later in rp found. But yeah most rp parents die as said from raids and etc, But some stories have parents alive which is quite rare.

 

[Mecharic]

In defense of Mr. Paloin, he was an orphan from birth and had both a mother (the Orphanage Hostess) and father (his Master, who taught him Merchant Work) figure. And yes, his wife is dead... and one of his children... but this is a dangerous world! People are supposed to die haha.

 

[BulbousDevourer]

While it's true what people say about the medieval times being dangerous, that doesn't mean every living person on the planet had dead or missing family. I think I've seen maybe two RP characters that still had at the very least MOST of their family still alive.

 

[Billy_Rage]

In my defence My character if he is accepted still have parents. But once they gave him to rogues to save the heir to the throne then sold to bandits he lost trace of his original nation. So to his knowledge they are still alive but Eloraid is unwilling to go check.

 

[Mattium_]

While it's true what people say about the medieval times being dangerous, that doesn't mean every living person on the planet had dead or missing family. I think I've seen maybe two RP characters that still had at the very least MOST of their family still alive.

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In the Medieval days, it was quite common for people to have dead parents. It was rare to even live to the age of 50, due to disease, murder, Bad hygiene, and not to mention that our nutrition was terrible back then.

 

[Cruallassar]

My character's parents and siblings are (for now) quite alive, just not in Aloria. I will be changing this slightly when I update my rp character, but hey, they LIVE!

 

[Cruallassar]

My character's parents and siblings are (for now) quite alive, just not in Aloria. I will be changing this slightly when I update my rp character, but hey, they LIVE!

 

[Golemlord]

So i regularly scoot about the forums, hither and tither, especially the character introductions page and their is DEFENITLY a common theme there. What is that you might ask? Why, did or missing family members of course! Nearly every character I've seen thus far has either had every member of their family die, go missing or become unaccounted for.

Long story short, i suggest no one here has children, cause who knows how long you'll last before you come up dead or missing xP

Click to shrink...

So a couple people have already stated the basic idea of some of my points, but here goes:

1. A lot of people seem to compare these things to our real world. Sure, in modern reality it is rare that someone has their parents die until they are AT LEAST 40-50 years old, and that number is ever rising due to our advanced medicine. However, as Mattium_ kindly stated, there were so many reasons for death, especially murder. Let's think of it from a practical in-game perspective. If two factions go to war, most of the fighters on each side are likely adults. It doesn't make sense in roleplay for a 6 year old to go to war. As such, after a war it is very common for there to be a much higher amount of children that have lost one or both of their parents (since massive has an equal rights sort of society regarding gender that traditional medieval times didn't have). And then consider how many wars we have ingame. It is actually incredibly likely that many people are orphans, or have lost one of their parents.
2. From a non-practical perspective, and simply in originality in story, I do agree that I do a very minor facepalm whenever I see "Parents killed by vampires". However, at least everyone is beginning to incorporate evil vampires into their roleplay! Because a couple months ago if you walked the streets saying vampires were bad, you would be the one getting hunted.
3. This is a generalization, as there are many skilled roleplayers with killed parents, but it is not uncommon for a beginning roleplayer to do this to their character. They are learning, and the "dead parents I need to avenge them" type of persona is not hard to roleplay, and very good for beginners. I know my first character had his father killed by baddies when he was young, and then his entire life story was about setting out to find them. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as they will typically either spice it up more or go in a different direction. It's all part of the process of learning to roleplay, and, not to seem harsh, I think we should help to guide them instead of (at least I took it this way) mock them in general forums.

 

[Ddafad]

I have to admit. The whole dead or missing parents thing has become a rather large cliche, in many peoples role-play characters. But this is not going unheard, a lot of the role-play staff are starting to tell people, not to use the dead/missing parents in their character introductions.

 

[ravenwolfthorn]

So glad that my mother is "unknown" only because my character didn't go home for two days before running away to Regalia. And, well, she sorta killed her dad, so I suppose that's a bit close the cliche. But hey! Her siblings are alive (as far as she's aware ._. ).