[RP] Ancient characters: how to play them?

Argent Dawn
61

Velen was a Mage before he became a Prophet 25k years ago, so he did switch out proffeesions.

Also I doubt he had much boredom when he travelled the universe for 24400 years, dooming world after world after world😏

62

Brilliant thread/post, always been a peeve of mine how the more ancient races on games such as WoW and ESO tend to draw the least mature rp’ers (not all the time ofc, but alot) amount of ancient elves in Eso and WoW I witnessed going crazy over “hugs” and “cookies” and giggling ect is wild, youd swear they was teenagers not hundreds maybe thousands of years old, hopefully more elves see this thread.

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63

I heard a drachtyr shout :duck: but replace the d with an f in the middle of Stormwind. And I just wonder like “Do you people even bother to try and imagine yourself as an ancient race? You slept for 20k years, why would you even swear through use of a word invented by a people who did not even exist yet when your race was at it’s apex?”.

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64

I do find that characters who should have a lot of dignity and gravitas swearing somewhat deflates them yes.

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65

At the same time I can definitely appreciate an appropriately timed and sparingly used swear though. Someone living for that long would surely have picked up on a lot of interesting ways to cuss someone out and also when to use such words to add to the gravitas instead of taking away from it.

Ancient being using the the duck with an F word once every sentence? Doubtlessly cringe.

Ancient being with an eloquent vocabulary signalling their understanding of the direness of the situation by using F-duck once every blue moon? Hilarious.

Edit: I’ll acknowledge that using that word in particular might be a bit lazy though.

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66

I mean, I am not against ancient characters swearing when the situation calls for it, but, even if you do,atleast be a little more creative than :duck: with an f.

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67

I feel like almost everything has been covered, but the only things I’d emphasise are:

1.) Who were they before coming in contact with wider Azeroth? Not just what they did, but opinions, goals, motivations, etc.
2.) Who were they in the coming of contact with them? Same as above, but chuck in a few years as buffer for this stage.
3.) Who are they now? With the timeskip, dracthyr aside, this’ll be everyone, I guess.
4.) How has 2 and 3 changed them, and their perspectives? How do they continue changing?

And obviously chuck in significant historical events. Fourth War is a great recent example.

Other than that, things we probably associate with shorter lifespans still very much apply. Long-lived characters aren’t going to all, or even most, be wise, long-term oriented, logical over emotional - we see the opposite mostly, but also some nice overlap. Illidan, Tyrande, and Malfurion all help showcase differences in these. Velen is an enjoyable example with his son, Rakeesh, and how he tries to kill the PC. Velen had not seen him for like, 12,000 years - and he knew that he was the one leading the assault to try and destroy O’ros. The result of Rakeesh succeeding would be cataclysmic, but Velen still doesn’t stand against him.

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68

I would add an additional ones that feeds into the ‘secretly ancient’ archetype, but also covers a wide range of ‘secret’ characters.

Don’t slap it on your TRP. Don’t tell anybody, unless situation-appropriate. It’s a secret, right? Try to keep it a secret.

That being said, struggling to keep your secret identity secret RP can be amazing when done well.

This applies to all manner of characters, from dreadlords to undercover SI:7 operatives.

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69

After seeing how the dragons act in Dragonflight I am tempted to play one. After all, they seem barely different from “normal” NPCs.

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70

That would be because they aren’t
they spend the better part of their time locked in stasis
they have comparatively as much life experience most of the shorter lived races do
with that in mind they have even less life experience because all they know is the life of a soldier, up until recently.

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The Dracthyr, yes. Not the dragons Vaelnya are referring to.

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I figured they meant the dracthyr, but that was influenced by me calling them dragonmen, dragon, dragon boys, scaly, dracko and many other variants that isn’t their exact name.

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Hey, I don’t blame you. There’s a surplus of scaly fellas with similar sounding names.

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