Closed Put Some Basic Restrictions on What A Playable Character Can Be

[Wes]

This suggestion is to put some basic rules on what a player character can be. The rules I'm proposing are:

• Player characters should be a reasonable size, which is to say they should be able to fit in most RP locations and vehicles. I know we have a few huge ID-SOLs and Trolls out there, and they could be grandfathered in, but we should probably limit characters to being something like 3 meters or smaller, and no smaller than a mini-neko or FARS drone.
• Player characters should be adults. Recent feedback I got is saying it's unclear whether or not it's OK to play kids as your character. I think that kids should probably stay in the realm of NPCs.
• Player characters should be born in YE 01 or later. Put simply, the pre-YE timeline is just not really detailed enough and when we get characters born before then it often creates canon questions and issues. Effectively, this caps new player characters at age 43.

Note these restrictions could be bypassed by GMs for NPCs as required. I'm just talking about people's main characters.

If you agree with this suggestion, please upvote.

 

[Wes]

For most Nekovalkyrja age is more like an odometer than a measure of their development, because they start as adults and don't really grow old either. I got no issues making Nekovalkyrja younglings off-limits for RP, in my experience it's rare to see people play them and the rest of Nekovalkyrja are full adults when they're cloned.

The points of this thread is that there's some things that would help ensure player characters are compatible for our RP:

1. Their past shouldn't go far back that they're going to be forced to essentially make up SARP prehistory
2. They should be able to fit in the places where other characters are (recently we had an issue with this in the Kikyo Sector thread)
3. They should be adults because kids typically can't do basic things like get careers, drive cars, join the Star Army, etc.

 

[Andrew]

Characters need to fit the setting. We don't need Godzilla trying to cram into an escape pod. I think what Wes is trying to get at here is that the characters made need to be acceptable for the setting. I think in the end accepting characters that are outside of acceptability hurts the player in the long run too. If everyone else is participating in some mission task and they can't it is pretty boring for them. As long as it is clearly laid out what the expectations are for a character, then that is the expectations that should be followed.

 

[Noodlewerfer]

To be honest underage characters in combat seems like something that could be RPed around. Other factions don't have to like it, heck you could even have a character stage an IC protest. War is harsh, and different moral views make factions unique.

Size still seems like something that can be RPed around too. Obviously there shouldn't be a gigantic house sized character for regular RP (but again, there could be some special exception if, say, the GM allows the player to play as an AI that controls the ship, and this is why they shouldn't be hard and fast rules), but I could see valid RP opportunities for a character that's too big to fit in some area or too small to use something.

As far as I can tell, most characters on the site already follow these general guidelines except for some exceptions, and that's how it should be IMO. I don't see a need to impose this limitation now. And again like Ame pointed out, what if you want to RP a couple's kids? There's a very diverse selection of plots, not everything needs to be able to use the same machines or be combat-oriented.

 

[Arbitrated]

Characters need to fit the setting. We don't need Godzilla trying to cram into an escape pod. I think what Wes is trying to get at here is that the characters made need to be acceptable for the setting. I think in the end accepting characters that are outside of acceptability hurts the player in the long run too. If everyone else is participating in some mission task and they can't it is pretty boring for them. As long as it is clearly laid out what the expectations are for a character, then that is the expectations that should be followed.

Indeed - this is why so many people are suggesting that these ideas are made as recommendations, rather than rules. A recommendation would still guide a player - and also give any GMs and Character Moderators an actual wiki page to point at - for making a character that is easier to RP with.

Having an official list of recommendations allows you to tell a new player, who wants to make a giant character, "this will cause problems in RP, and you may not be able to do everything you want to do without following these recommendations". There are, in fact, several players who WANT to play a character who is limited in such ways!

As Char said it, a recommendation costs nothing to the site. A rule will force players down a preset path. And, additionally, rules can very quickly add up with each other and make for a frustrating, extremely restrictive character creation process.

 

[Whisper]

There's a lot of good discussion in this thread, but there's been a few comments that have been more overtly accusatory or hostile in tone.

Let's be sure to stay focused on the topic and be kind to each other.

 

[Deleted member 5981]

I know I am new here but I have a compromise. I can see where people want to be free to choose all aspects of their characters but if we all did that it would be chaos. Children in war is a sore topic for some. I propose that if a character would be military they must be the legal age of consent. Now here in Canada that is 17. It may be different elsewhere. If a person wants to create a character younger than that age the character should be a civilian and treated as such. If you have a child would you allow them to go to war at 10 or have sex at that age? In almost 90% percent of cases no. I think that to make a young character the person should seek special approval and have experience in the sarp world before hand now Neshatan your 10 .5 year olds are literally 21 by Yamatai standards. So that could be a difficult area to navigate. I feel that if the rules were implemented that should go by Yamatain years. Meaning the character must be at least 10 in Neshatan. Maybe even consider making the neshatans be at least 16 which is when the culture views them as adults. That would be 32 years for Yamataians. These are ideas. Compromising is kind of key. Also if you create a 10 foot character it is common sense they will not fit in standard buildings people she understand that if they want to play character that are not standard they still have to adhere to the standard physics of the life around them. I believe for new players who do not know or understand the life of sarp there should be limitations. Rules for newcomers like myself would a much more helpful.

 

[Syaoran]

I want to chime in and say a few things quick because it's clear some people don't understand a few things. The reason these are being brought up as 'rules' is because if they are recommendations we can't by the site rules actually stop someone from making a character like this. In other words, there is no grounds to tell someone brand new to the site they can't make Godzilla, or some 10 year old soldier. If we want to be able to filter through people who we think can make these characters -responsibly- then it has to be a rule that you can't unless you get special permission. (I do think that if this rule comes into play the ability to get permission to bypass these on occasion for players who have shown to have a good grasp of the feel of SARP is a good idea)

As for the actual rules:

The first one is reasonable size not height, so I'm sure there are some things we can work with. I admit I don't know much about the Tsumi, but the Separa fit through doors, even if they are super long they can generally move about a standard building with no problems, even if it is uncomfortable for them, so they are 'reasonable'. I feel like the Tsumi could probably get around in a standard build, just would require uncomfortable movement?

As for adult characters if this does go in, firstly we need to make the fact that a YE year is shorter than an IRL way more clear. We also need to make it clear that ages on the wiki are to be considered in YE unless clearly stated otherwise. But also 'adulthood' is different for each species, and as long as that is maintained this is a reasonable rule. Remember this is to be a rule with the ability to get special permission to go out side of it. But we do not want to allow people to flood the site with characters that are not adults. No it hasn't happened yet, but if we wait for it to happen to make it a rule then that's just bad management, and it would be hard to fairly tell the flood of people doing it that they can't.

As for the Pre-YE rule...hmm personally this is a bit of a hard one. I totally get why it's a thing. Like the actual problem we have because of this will still happen in other ways even if this one does become a rule. (At least in my opinion) But there is for sure difficulties that come about being around before documented times, I didn't have it too bad cause the character I made was only BYE6 so nothing really happened in her history before we got to documented stuff. So I would say go with it, but recommend changing it to "No characters before documented times" because some factions do have a history that is documented before YE, so if they're a species from that faction it could be okay cause they could still write about what they did with reference points.

 

[Wes]

It looks like people don't want to restrict the playing of 2-inch-tall, 1000-year-old player or five-year-old player characters the size of buildings to GMs only. This suggestion is therefore closed.