How do you age your character?

[Max Dirks]

I've been considering revamping Dirks, but I can't decide on his age. I've had him at 24 since I started, but that isn't entirely accurate. In other parts of my lore, I have decades passing. With liquid time, I suppose everything is possible. So I was wondering, how do you guys determine your character's ages? How do you record the passage of time? And how do you adjust to play with characters who have all aged at different times?

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I've tended to age Maddy one year for every two or three I'm here myself, and will probably stop when she hits 31 or 32.

[Logan]

I've done so many methods, from utilizing the liquid time to aging him generally along my own age line.

It really just depends on how I feel I wanna run with him at the time.

For Dirks, I'd say it is time he aged some, but maybe instead of just following an age line you could age him drastically by 5-7 years to get a real character development piece in.

Just a thought.

[Ashla]

I measure the amount of time Ashla may have had before the level. Taking over Eiskalt then losing it again could have happened over a year, so I levelled her up after that and added a year of age.

[Alydia Ettermire]

I don't pay much attention for my elves, but Karu usually ages one year per six months of real time. I'm not sure how I'll agree Taische yet.

[Cards of Fate]

Vince went up one year in one level, but that was a lot of traveling. I'd probably just say fuck it and flip a coin to see if you age and then roll a dice to see how many years

[Flames of Hyperion]

For my main plotline, I tend to have a timeline of events to which I write. In practice this means that Nanashi, Kayu, and co. have aged barely six months since the end of the FQ...

[Max Dirks]

I guess my primary concern is how to deal with other players who haven't aged their characters.

Say I write a story where Dirks meets Nanashi when he is 24 and Nanashi is 26. Then I advance Dirks' age to 40 whereas Flames only advances Nanashi 6 months. Do I cite to some brooding magic or relativity, or do we just ignore ages and time past all together?

[Alydia Ettermire]

Just ignore it. It's the most practical thing to do.

[Flames of Hyperion]

Unless there's a plot-centric reason for so much time to have passed between their meetings (for example, a common adversary has spent decades plotting revenge), I can't think of a practical course of action other than ignoring, or rather simply not bringing to the reader's attention, the discrepancy. Ah, liquid time.

Conversely, if it's absolutely plot-centric, then we should collaborate on some explanation. Magic acting to suppress the effects of ageing is one that I've often heard / seen used. A limited form of time travel, for example a temporary distortion caused by the Tap or some other concentrated source of arcane power, is another I've fallen back on once or twice in the past. By this stage, I'd want the reason to be relatively plausible, but on the other hand I don't think one has to think too hard about justifying it - this is a fantasy world, after all, and it isn't as if we're trying to make things work via real world logic.

[Philomel]

Philomel ages once every half a year maybe. Every couple of levels.

When I look at characters who do not age their own, then I think ... huh okay, your characters do all of that within a year?
I have a timeline with Phi's age and I keep track of Leaf's on it too.

[hoytti]

Sorish tends to jump ten years a level. This is mainly due to the fact that Sorish's Species live to be 1000 years old. Heck I might just start jumping a hundred years around level five.

[Medeia]

In my case, it depends on the character, what sort of creature he or she might be, and what would be most practical. I have a character set in feudal area Japan that ages slowly because a lot of things happened to her when she was young. I also have an Antediluvian character that is incredibly fluid time-wise. To her, after having lived for thousands of years, a year passes by quickly. It's all relative. I try to match how quickly I progress a story as to when in their life the things I choose to tell occurred.

Concerning interaction with other characters, it can depend on a variety of different factors. I try to always agree with the person I'm writing with before we begin as to when in their timeline this is happening and vice verse, especially if I will be writing with them more than once. Most often, however, I tend to ignore discrepancies unless it directly affects the story. It's easier, and if it isn't mentioned, it usually doesn't come up.

[Hysteria]

Talen was doing one for one, but I slowed that down. I'm going to jump back a few years with a new plot (if I ever finish writing it) and he'll be back to his pre - Ixian knights age.