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How old are your characters?

Discussion in 'Roleplay Talk' started by JaeFeathered, Aug 8, 2012.

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    JaeFeathered Member

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    Most RPGs I see now only have characters between the ages of 15 and 25, even if it doesn't make sense. For example, nobody wants to make a 50-60 year old when they're making a doctor, or a Hogwarts Headmaster/Headmistress. At the oldest, people tend to be about 35 or 40. I like to balance stuff out, so I enjoy making 10-12 year olds as well as much older characters. For example, I've had a 56 year old male character for about five years now, and I just made a 94 year old woman. What's the oldest or youngest you've ever made your characters? Would you ever consider switching it up?
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    Desertpuma Crafty Crew Member; Ronin @ Crusaders Citadel

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    I generally keep my characters in the 25-45 age range..
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    Lorreign did I put on deodorant this morning?

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    Mine tend to stay in the 20's and 30's range.
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    Lily Lilac I'm really resistant to change, guys....

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    My current oldest character doesn't remember how old he is. Immortal elves FTW! (He's definitely over a a few centuries though and looks more like 40's range XD). I play a lot of fantasy games with long-lived species, so my oldest characters have been pretty up there. I feel like this is more a thread about age appearances (ie: does you vampire/elf/immortal/whatever looks like Channing Tatum or Ian McKellen?) and honestly I don't remember the last time I played someone who was above middle age (60+). I do enjoy playing kids, though. My youngest character was around 8 or 9.
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    Selly Selly Belly Bean

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    Youngest is 7 and the oldest 42 that are active at the moment. I did play someone 71 but she didn't have many threads. The lack of integration usually is the problem when you get into extreme age ranges. For instance, if its a vampire than you can be timeless and still have interaction because you move like a young person. But when you're past your fifties, you have more health issues. You're less likely to be looking for a mate because you should be at that point where you settled down with someone. And then living arrangements. Do you live in a retirement community? Do you live in a home? Are you rich enough to support yourself and you're some old dying patriarch? The higher in age, the more likely your character is to be limited and how people in their teens don't care to interact with you unless you're a relative. Younger characters are limited too. As a seven year old, she's not going to clubs, bars, or even starting threads in restaurants. Open threads are usually in places she can be like outside of her house, school or somewhere with her parents. And unless you plan for a reason to be with someone so young, it's hard to thread with them.

    Twenties is a prime age really because you have access to just about anything as well as independence. While if a site is school based, lots of people play teenagers and rarely the adults teaching them. And they tend to stay young teachers because everyone else is a teen.
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    luckofthefry Lord of the Flies

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    I personally stay within the 20-40 age range. The youngest I've created is 22, the oldest might've been 45, but I generally like to stay between the 25-29 age range. I just think it's an easier range to deal with because they can interact with a great deal of characters and since most of the RPGs I've played on, they're all TV show based, so that age range works the best for me. I usually try to never go younger than 20, cause it just doesn't work out for me unless it's the offspring/sibling of one of my characters.
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    Elenitsa a seadog looking for new crewmates

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    My youngest and oldest were NPCs, 11 and 60. But we have on the site characters who are in their 50s... one in their 70s.
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    Riv Member

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    Well, my character that I just recently ended (he died from an accident) was 41. I play his daughter who I started with when she was five and now she's just turned thirteen. On another board I play a sixteen year old girl (HP RPG, she started as fourteen though) and then on a third RPG, I play a 24 year old woman and a 20 year old woman. In their cases, their ages are actually not that "young and ripe" for the time period.

    I actually have a thing for playing older characters. I think they're more interesting usually because they're more experienced and grounded from those experiences. Also, you can make them as dark and complex as you want and it doesn't seem weird. By older, I mean 30's-40's. I say this only because I'm always struck by how weird it is when someone's playing a six year old and the child is dark and complex and speaking like she's fifty. It's just....weird to me.
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    Dumbledore's Panties And the mist upon the hill

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    The age of my characters range from very young to very old. I love playing children and elderly people especially. My oldest character at the moment is forty-something. The oldest I played was an old man around eighty or ninety, playing him was so much fun, and he was a headmaster. The youngest was a three year old girl (well, before I gave her to someone else to play). But those are the humans because non-human ages sometimes translate differently.

    To be honest, I don't try to mix up the ages or anything of that sort, I just play what I want to play! =) But I have a thing for playing children, old men, or middle-aged fathers so usually you see me playing those!
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    Jareth Machiavellian Prince

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    It's as if life stops after you're 25. I love older characters, they've got interesting things to overcome in their lives, too, and I love exploring that.

    I want to write experiences of life that are different from my own and for that reason, I'll play any age. To give you an idea I'd play a child of the age 6 to an elderly person at the age of 80 as long as they are the sort of character that I want to play at that moment. However, I do not usually play characters around my age, which is late teens or early twenties, because as I said above, I enjoy writing different experiences of life and I already know what being a young adult is like in general because I am one.

    Right now, I have one man in his forties and two in their thirties. I usually play late twenties and up (and sometimes, early adolescence, such as twelve). Out of all my characters, my youngest was about twelve and my eldest, excluding Tolkien elves, was a father of three in his late forties. I also had a mother of three in her late forties, too.

    I'm always open to new character ideas that are differently aged to my current ones. Like right now in the Idea Library inside my mind, I have an idea for a young child, one of a middle-aged man, and another of an elderly man.
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    Dumbledore's Panties And the mist upon the hill

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    Sorry for derailing but this had to be done xD

    "You can LIVE AND GROW OLD!!!"
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    Kajouka Thunder Rumbling, Castles Crumbling

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    My youngest character right now is 15, almost 16, and he's king... FUN! My oldest character is 53, mother of seven, wife of a councilor, a princess and great-aunt of the king.

    All my others fall in between. I would probably say early 20s to early 30s is my more popular range.
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    Vicky Member

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    Mine are usually 29-40 these days, with the exception of one character who’s 3,000 and another who’s 90+ (but she’s an immortal claiming to be 29).

    I have the hardest time playing younger characters now. >.> The youngest I’ve ever played was a six year old version of a character, but that was for a cameo thread. Aside from that thread, it’d probably be back when I was a teenager and into playing teens. XD
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    sellaphix formerly dinn

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    Caliope Member

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    My characters are or have been aged between the ages of 19 and 36. I probably will be more likely to play a character older than that but I don't think I'd play one younger than 16 to be honest especially on the sites I currently play on.
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    mPlattenum New Member

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    I have all different ages, depending on how I design the character initially. If they're wise and knowledgable, I usually make them older. If I want them to be more naive and reckless, I make them younger. I also like building up a character, so starting at a fairly young age is fun.
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    RMWKaya Member

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    I've had old/elderly side characters (NPCs who I RPed around my character a lot) but they did tend to fall into the generic ideas of people that age or the 'wise elder' type.

    And I had a character with kids so I probably did a par level job of writing them, since I'm not around kids much.

    So my tendency to RP characters within a certain age range: it reflects the age range of people I interact with on a regular basis. I think the oldest I could comfortably write would be the average age of my professors at university, and even that's pretty young as far as the human age spectrum goes.
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    stainsofpeach One Day at a Time

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    I gravitate towards the 25-35 age range for most of my characters. The oldest of my regulars is 55 although I couldn't find a way to get him into my current game. My oldest character there is 49. Youngest: 15 (14 when I started playing her).
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    The Domster Hatty, Des, and Elijah's love interest

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    Same here. My regulars though usually tap out at around 30 for right now. I have had characters in their 60s and 70s though and a guest character around 17 or 18.
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    lightning bird Saboteur

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    Mine usually range from late teens to mid thirties, I think my oldest character whom I don't even play at the moment sadly, is 35.

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