19 replies to this topic

[Greensuitjacket]

I really enjoyed the thread about how people's Guild Wars 1 characters died. But,
It made me think, does your character have to die?

I noticed a lot of people had plans to explain how their GW1 Character would still be alive 250 years later. During the BWEs I even recreated my main, a necromancer, with roughly the same look as before.

Do you support that?
If so what are your favorite ways to keep your GW1 characters around for GW2.

[Lillium]

Nope! I don't support GW1 characters living through 250 years to GW2! It is biologically and technologically impossible within the setting.

However, if I were to attempt such a thing, it would be through:
A. a very confusing reincarnation into a Sylvari.
B. a very delusional (but different!) person getting visions of my GW1 character's life, and being fully convinced that they are the character. (Could work with any race, but would be mostly humorous with a non-human.)
C. having the character get lost in the mists somewhere where time isn't the same. I suppose the GW1 PC's are that kind of grand that they could wander about them some.  (You went in human, you can ONLY come out human.)

[Crimson Blade]

you could pass them off as a decendant, that would work.

[Caledore]

Lillium, on 06 August 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

Nope! I don't support GW1 characters living through 250 years to GW2! It is biologically and technologically impossible within the setting.

Agreed. You can continue your GW1's character in many ways, such as being a direct descendant, or the inheritor of some sort of legacy (like a scholar learning their magic from a tome written by your GW1 character).

But being the exact same character really stretches the limits of possibility and just comes off as a bit ridiculous (especially since characters have pre-set backgrounds in the storyline of the game). And a GW1 character would know way too much about history since they experienced it first hand. It would make the Durmand Priory's efforts somewhat moot.

Granted, RP is personal, so people can do whatever they want. But personally, I'll be treating anyone who says they are 250+ years old as if they're a crazy loon who just *thinks* they are.

[Rainbrowman]

I don't actually support the idea of being 250 years old... I mean playing as a descendant is far more... interesting IMO.

[Tregarde]

While I generally don't agree with having GW1 characters survive 250 years, I'm not going to tell people they shouldn't RP their character the way they want. If someone has a good RP reason for their original character being alive I'll roll with it. Being "lost in The Mists" is something that could conceivably happen, just please RP that your character skipped a couple centuries of history and is very lost and confused with the world today.

Of course, if you are RPing that your character actually did somehow live through the past couple centuries, then expect my characters to believe yours is delusional. Without irrefutable proof my characters are not just going to take someone's word on something like that. And I'm pretty sure that others here would act the same.

On the flip side, someone playing a character who IS delusional and believes s/he survived for 300+ years could make for some fun RP.

Edited by Tregarde, 06 August 2012 - 11:41 PM.

[EliteZeon]

I am saying they all died... but by doing hundreds of favors for Grenth and taming the Rift, two of them (Necromancer and Assassin) traveled through the Mists searching other worlds (other games) in order to find a way to restore a form of their humanity. Needless to say, they eventually succeeded, and they act as the party leaders.

My other characters are either ghosts that can travel the Underworld and be summoned to the living for some help, cursed and have transformed into monstrosities for my characters to deal with in the future, or have reincarnated and somehow rejoined their original party leader in a form of a instinctive bond.

Roughly ingame, two of my characters are literally two characters from GW1, and two others are reincarnations. The other two characters I plan on making are completely new and more lore friendly.

Oh... and one is a Trickster Demon Black Widow thingy, so I am saying my Ranger's pet Black Widow is the same one that my Necromancer befriended 250 years ago.

Edited by EliteZeon, 07 August 2012 - 05:25 AM.

[Anex Prime]

Lillium, on 06 August 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

Nope! I don't support GW1 characters living through 250 years to GW2! It is biologically and technologically impossible within the setting.

I beg to differ.

[Tregarde]

Anex Prime, on 07 August 2012 - 05:46 AM, said:

~snip~
I beg to differ.

What happened to Shiro Tagachi was unique. I'll just copy the entry from the GW Wiki...

Quote

Originally a loyal if ambitious guardsman and descendant of Kaineng Tah, Shiro Tagachi was noticed by Emperor Angsiyan due to his prowess with weapons and thus invited to join the Imperial Guard as the emperor's favored bodyguard. However, a demon sent by Abaddon had disguised itself as a Fortune Teller and told Shiro he would be killed by the emperor during the Harvest Festival.

Fearing for his life and confused by Emperor Angsiyan's odd behavior during the festival, Shiro slew his master in the middle of the Harvest ritual. Afterwards, a ritualist sounded the alarm, summoning the guards posted outside the temple. Tagachi killed most of the soldiers, and may have defeated the two remaining warriors, the Luxon champion Archemorus and the Kurzick Saint Viktor, if not for the intercession of the assassin Vizu, who crippled Shiro and allowed the two champions to deliver the killing blow.

Shiro's death triggered the Jade Wind, by releasing the energies of the Harvest Ritual. After his death, the Oracle of the Mists sought to turn Shiro into an Envoy as punishment, but he refused, and since then they have been attempting to bring him into their fold to ferry the newly dead through the Mists. For two hundred years after his demise, he had been content to lurk at the fringes of the netherworld. However, Shiro eventually accepted the task of becoming an Envoy and somehow learned to use his new power in the creation of an army, unleashing first the Afflicted and later the Shiro'ken upon Cantha, as the former guardsman sought a way to return to life. After slaying Master Togo, Shiro's plan was successful, and he returned to life, but was eventually defeated again by the player characters. After his second death, the other Envoys took Shiro's soul to the worst prison in the afterlife.

Clearly not something that is going to happen every day.

[Zechs]

Sure! You were frozen in a giant block of ice for 250 years until you were discovered by a water attuned elementalist and a warrior.

[Yui San]

I actually thought about keeping my 3 favourite chars alive. My monk, my ele and my necro. And only the Necro actually is over 250 years old. I created her back in 2005 and back then I made up some story in which she was the victim of a blood sucking monster (I think I didn't call it a vampire). The bite of that creature made her age really slowly, so I just decided for GW2 that it made her age veeery slowly, so that she is still alive in GW2.

For my Monk and my Ele, they will still be alive although not 250 years old. Since the thought of GW1 chars being alive in part 2 after 250 years is kinda silly I just added some silly story. After all the great battles were over my monk finally could go away from the constant nagging of noob warriors and other rushers. She returned to cantha where she had a peaceful life baking cookies and picking flowers. Suddenly the "time travel cyclon" from (one of my favourite childhood games) Crusader of Centy appeared (don't ask me why, it just did) and took her away. Since the cyclon was weakend making the transfer from a 16 bit game to a new 3D game it was spinning around aimlessly all over Tyria. After some time it ended up in the Ascalon settlement where my Ele lived. She was sitting there outside the settlement at the beach, minding her own business, as suddenly that cyclon appeared and my monk saw my ele (they were good friends) sitting there at the beach. My ele wanted to help her friend and for whatever reason she thought Chain Lightning might be a good idea to get her out of that weird cyclon. Since friendly fire isn't possible in GW she actually hit the cyclon. The energy of the lightning spell powered the cyclon so much that it carried both of them away 250 year to the future. End of story. :-/

[Greensuitjacket]

Zechs, on 07 August 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

Sure! You were frozen in a giant block of ice for 250 years until you were discovered by a water attuned elementalist and a warrior.

Love it in a totally *original way

[Altus_Arcus]

my necro has been using an asuran thaumaturgic crystal to transfer his soul from one body to the next. each time he dies, the next person to touch the crystal is trapped in the crystal, and upon death, they switch places again.

naturally i have created a slightly more indepth story, but dont feel quite right posting it here and amking people read through it...eh, wtf

Spoiler

The last day dawns on the kingdom of Ascalon....

2.5 years later, driven from Ascalon by the Charr and Jericho the necromancer and his fellow Ascalonians arrived in Kryta, it was there that he found an ancient leather bound Orrian text, an integral piece a puzzle he would later solve with Blimm's help. Taking the text he continued on his way to help Justicar Hablion push back the undead.

1 year later, during the final assault on the Unseen One's fortress on the Ring of Fire Isles he discovered another text, this one Mursaat, detailing the way to force a soul from a persons body, he took this text too.

After the war in kryta he came to be the assistant of an Asura genius by the name of Blimm. during this time he learned how to create thaumaturgic crystals, studying the two texts he had found in his journeys he discovered he could transfer his essence into one of these crystals, by modifying the magics in the mursaat text. Upon reading the Orrian text, which contained a magical dead man's switch he devised a plan for everlasting life. Casting the DMS spell so that it would trigger the transfer to the crystal was tricky, but he accomplished it none the less. rigging the crystal to transfer to a new host(the next one to touch it with bare skin) was much simpler.

Being an old man who enjoyed his morning strolls at this point (rather than skulking in dungeons all day) he was accosted one morning by a young white mantle holdout. unable to hold his own due to his advanced age, Jericho was struck down, his soul locked into the crystal he wore as a necklace. seeing the necklace, with its large precious the bandit grabbed it, triggering the spell that stole his life and gave it to his victim.

A small cult grew up around the resurrected Jericho. Though none knew how it happened, they knew the great hero of the krytan civil war had returned changed from his time with Blimm. A young man, who was only a kid during the resurrection, figured it out and passed this knowledge to the other cultists. Thus it came to be that when the current host became deathly ill or old, one of the young cultists would stay by his side and take the crystal should the host die, knowingly sacrificing his life so that the great hero would live.

and live jericho did, 250 years later he still lives on, currently possessing a young street rat...

[Roan Rivers]

I personally don't support it.  Kinda seems dumb in my honest opinion.  Sorry for those who take it personally.

While ya, my ranger killed the Lich, saved Cantha, Killed a god, and defeated the destroyers, I wanted him to live on, but I knew it was time for him to end.

I have this chart in my head, that if you save the world any more then 1-3 times, you start losing epicness and just start becoming stupid.  Think of it like anime.  Naruto, Bleach, heck Fairy Tail in a dozen cases, the main character just won't die or won't stay dead.  Now they have won against impossible odds and defeated so many stupidly powerful people, that nobody cares anymore.  I used to Like Naruto but fights started getting too over the top and Naruto won basically the same way every time, with "Willpower"...

Now imagine your GW2 character becoming like Naruto.  Lich can't kill him, Shiro can't kill him, Abadon can't kill him, the Great Destroyer can't kill him, time itself can't kill him...  What do you want from your character?  Let go!  xD  Let him retire and marry that assassin chick henchman and have many little assassin babies, then have your character die of old age and given a king's funeral with epic Gladiator music!

Sigh...  I can't stop you if you really really wanna find some bullshiz reason to live 250 more years, and I won't, it's your story not mine.  But I would recomend starting anew.  new personalities, new friendships, new life!  New outlook on the world, new enthusiasm, new everything!

Edited by Roan Rivers, 15 August 2012 - 02:00 AM.

[Theobold]

My main (at least) is a descendant of my main in Guild Wars. I don't know if I will ever bring him up in Role Play considering it was so long ago though.

[Midnight_Tea]

As a writer, let me just say this as my canned answer to a lot of roleplay questions like this.

It's about about the concept; it's about the execution.


It's not whether the idea is realistic. It's whether the story is compelling. If suspension of disbelief is stretched too much, that does in fact damage the potential for it to be compelling. So yes, this needs to be handled with some care. Lillium here has the right idea:

Lillium, on 06 August 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

Nope! I don't support GW1 characters living through 250 years to GW2! It is biologically and technologically impossible within the setting.

However, if I were to attempt such a thing, it would be through:
A. a very confusing reincarnation into a Sylvari.
B. a very delusional (but different!) person getting visions of my GW1 character's life, and being fully convinced that they are the character. (Could work with any race, but would be mostly humorous with a non-human.)
C. having the character get lost in the mists somewhere where time isn't the same. I suppose the GW1 PC's are that kind of grand that they could wander about them some.  (You went in human, you can ONLY come out human.)

I'd definitely got with A here. Just the concept has me salivating a bit because it's taking full advantage of the sylvari's racial mysticism.


More to the point, what does it add to the story by having your character survive in some capacity? If it's just because you couldn't let go of them, then you might just want to let it go. People die. You will someday die. This setting as you know it may even someday die if ArenaNet lets success derail them.

But if you have a storyline in mind where your character has to deal with a "fish out of water" narrative, or potential angst as they reflect on how everything they loved is gone or changed beyond recognition -- that could be an interesting story. Once again, consider using a sylvari as your vehicle here since "fish out of water" is already part of their race story. Having their body be so drastically different could even drive the point home!

And yes, as others in this thread have and will say: Seriously consider your audience's suspension of disbelief before going ahead with this.

Edited by Midnight_Tea, 15 August 2012 - 02:18 AM.

[Krathos]

Honestly, it is nothing short of bad role-play to drag your character from Gw1, to 250 years in the future of Gw2, for the simple fact that your to attached to them. As said before, people die, characters, die. There have been various examples of people giving more logical and reasonable situations such as being a descendant.If you are so attached to your character that you must  pluck them from their world and cut and paste a reason for them to have lived 250 years into the future, then you might want to take a look at how you role-play and reassess how you're going about it.

Edited by Krathos, 17 August 2012 - 07:26 AM.

[Dime_407]

I'm a writer, not a roleplayer... well more of not a roleplayer in MMOs, and really more of an extensive storyborder than writer these days.
But the point is this actually applies to one of my characters.

We're migrating names over from Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2, and I had one character who was making the tradition to charr. He started out as cat somewhere else anyway, so it was only approrpiate. The trouble is how does one take a very human sounding name and make it make sense as a charr. Here's what I came up with...

Quote

Ryan Galen: A male charr guardian of the Iron Legion, Ryan Galen was sired by a mad man. While not a traitor to his kind, Ryan’s sire was a magic user who practiced the foolish mysticism of looking into the mists unprotected. Led by the unstable visions he gained as demons gnawed at his sanity, the father named his son after a great hero in the belief that his son was the hero reborn. While questionable, it would have been a mark of pride if only the hero in question wasn’t human.

Ryan grew up trying to shake the stigma of this burden, only to have it reinforced repeated as he grew up. Most blatant was his aptitude with the magic of preservation, a trait shared by his namesake. More subtle was his tendency to act the part of the hero to his warband, a collection of unconnected events that eventually landed him with the surname Gallentforge. The crowning glory is that while Ryan sees these coincidences forcing him in into some prophesied role as a battle, he sees it as a battle against ignorance.

Born from the visions of a madman, he believed that understanding the truth behind coincidence is what will clear his future. As such Ryan learns and evaluates the truths and traditions of various cultures, including that of humanity. The end result is a charr who knows the humans’ scriptures of their gods better than most of their priest. Such things do little to earn him respect in the legion, but Ryan Galen Gallentforge continues with the faith that the truth will lift his lifelong burden.

There's other ways I could have worked it out; Rylent Gallentforge does have a nice charr ring to it. But that looses the entire point of preserving his actual name when Rylent is something I only resort to using in well established games where Ryan Galen is already taken. So I developed a reincarnation story with a less than sane father, with the character himself resistant to the very idea that he's the reincarnation of some human hero. Which works out since Ryan needs some "I was born with this burden" to feel right.

And personally I think reincarnation works well as long as most memories stay mostly buried. I mean what point is there to the Hall of Heroes if not to reincarnate the world's greatest heroes at it's greatest hour of need? I'm pretty sure Balthazar would prefer to have some of them amounst his Eternals rather than milling about in golden halls for all eternity.

Edited by Dime_407, 17 August 2012 - 08:27 PM.

[Midnight_Tea]

Dime_407 just nailed it. It's not about whether a certain story idea is good or not, it's all about the writer. A good writer can make a horrible-sounding concept into something awesome. A bad writer can be given perfectly good material and they'll waste it making a bad Hollywood movie plot.

I happen to like their charr story. Also, that's a neat point about the Hall of Heroes.


EDIT: Also, don't forget: Anyone who's played through Factions already has a character whom survived death for heroic destiny reasons. Was kind of cheesy then too, but it has lore precedent.

Edited by Midnight_Tea, 17 August 2012 - 09:37 PM.

[birdeye]

In the way my character died thread(or what ever the actual topic was)  My main gw1 character went though an asura portal but it glitched during transportation and it is not known whether he is dead or stuck in a time space pocket(or whatever you want to call it).  While I like the originality of the premise, I don't see myself bringing him back as one of gw2 characters.  Instead like so many others I will have him be the forefather of my gw2 human characters.

While I'm not opposed to someone who wants to roleplay there character as someone who is nearly ancient there has to be a good premise and story about how/why the character are still alive.