I want to roleplay, but there's so much lore to study! Where to start?

Razzle · December 2017

I'm not new to roleplaying, just new to this particular setting.
There's so much lore to read, I don't know where to begin!
It doesn't help that I have trouble reading long paragraphs without my brain skipping words over and over again (dyslexia?).

Just for reference, I'm a horkval bard.
I'm trying to read up on horkvals in the wiki, and that's helped a little bit....I want to know more about the horkvals' culture, their alliances (I assume they don't get along with Grooks and pondering if they worship or honor Aegis?) and the like however, and since I just started I don't think I can walk to where they are since I'm still a newbie.

As for the bard part....uh....I'll worry about that after race.

I also like the idea of playing this character as gender-less (or I suppose identifying as gender-less) so I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to change their pronouns to be 'they/them' when another player looks at them.

And so with all of that...does anyone have any input on roleplaying a horkval bard?
Thank you!

Solnir · December 2017

Short version, your character is pretty much identified by "he/she". You can try to RP that you're genderless, but nothing mechanically is going to change. Your description will forever start with "He/She is an insectoid horkval" or whatever the horkval line is.
As for race/class RP, due to some things in the game mechanically that allow people to change race/class pretty easily, not a lot of people actually RP their class, though a little more RP their race. The wiki is a good place to start, sure, but for more IC resources try finding a library and looking for some history in those. There's several very expansive and well-kept libraries in the game.

Draqoom · December 2017

I'm the self-proclaimed leader of the Horkval race and there's a racial clan (The Great Phalanx).

So far nothing is divinely backed but I'd be more than happy to sit down and talk to you (or anyone) about Horkvali stuff. It's nothing I've made up, just a conglomerate of things that I've seen/heard/done in regards to Horkvali and their culture.

Zackery · December 2017

The good news:
You do not need to have a great deal of background knowledge of Achaean history and lore to start roleplaying. There's a lot of depth that it will be beneficial to read over time, but you can fill yourself in as you go along well enough for most basic storylines. The Achaea wiki is very helpful, as are the in-game HELP <topic> files. Also, asking older/more knowledgeable characters about past events and topics is a great way to learn and RP at the same time!

The bad news:
Achaea's not a non-binary friendly game. He and she are the only pronoun options, and as per past forum wars, that will unfortunately never change.

If you want to RP a non-binary character, you'd essentially have to identify a group of folks who know how to do that respectfully and limit your interactions to those people as best as you can (or deal with your character constantly being misgendered and having to explain their pronouns over and over again). You'd also have to live with the fact that the game itself will constantly misgender your character in every single third-person message, in your HONOURS information, etc.

That said, there are a lot of great people in Achaea who will be respectful of non-normative gender identities. If you come to Mhaldor, I'll have your back.

Zackery · December 2017

Also: don't feel too constrained by what you read. Not all modern-day horkvals will necessarily feel the first known horkvals did hundreds of years ago. Your character's allegiances will be based more on their city and house than their race or class.

Kiet · December 2017

Achaea's society is at the point where the races have intermingled enough that none of them necessarily have a different 'culture' from each other. There are pockets of unique culture (like the Ulangi Grooks and Horkval), but overall no race needs to act 'different' from any other race unless the player really wants to.

Torinn · December 2017

I pretend I can't understand horkval if they have some sort of buzzing or insectoid accent. Makes it fun.

Razzle · December 2017

It sounds like the lore (not all of it obviously, editing here for a disclaimer) here is truly player ran and up for interpretation....cool!
Makes things a bit easier for me even if I'm not really used to it.
So next I'll look at a character bio outline to assist with character building.
Thank you all!
....
I wanna choose every answer as the RIGHT answer...is that possible? XD

Salisa · December 2017

No right answers, that is what makes Achaea a unique experience.

Irolnar · December 2017

Zackery said:

If you want to RP a non-binary character, you'd essentially have to identify a group of folks who know how to do that respectfully and limit your interactions to those people as best as you can (or deal with your character constantly being misgendered and having to explain their pronouns over and over again). You'd also have to live with the fact that the game itself will constantly misgender your character in every single third-person message, in your HONOURS information, etc.

Oh, so it's like... real life.

Xaden · December 2017

Irolnar said:

Zackery said:

If you want to RP a non-binary character, you'd essentially have to identify a group of folks who know how to do that respectfully and limit your interactions to those people as best as you can (or deal with your character constantly being misgendered and having to explain their pronouns over and over again). You'd also have to live with the fact that the game itself will constantly misgender your character in every single third-person message, in your HONOURS information, etc.

Oh, so it's like... real life.

Yes, cos in real life you're either one or the other too.

Zackery · December 2017

There aren't third person messages or HONOURS in real life. The closest (and even this is arguable because third person messages in Achaea take the tone of an omniscient narrator rather than a governmental records keeper) would be the data kept on file by the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Passport Administration, and/or Social Security Administration, and whether those organizations recognize non-binary genders or not can vary between states and countries. Feel free to look it up if you're interested!

But I do see your point in that yes, people bring their OOC biases and misconceptions into the game with them, so it is important to be cognizant of that.

Minifie · December 2017

Razzle · December 2017

Well crud, I didn't mean to start the debate all over again (I see that the other thread with a related question got derailed and locked) I was curious about an ingame feature, not changing it, just seeing what was possible currently, and that was answered properly without it going sour, and I reeeeally wished it stayed that way.

Minifie · December 2017

Razzle said:

Well crud, I didn't mean to start the debate all over again (I see that the other thread with a related question got derailed and locked) I was curious about an ingame feature, not changing it, just seeing what was possible currently, and that was answered properly without it going sour, and I reeeeally wished it stayed that way.

I don't think it's gone sour, it's just a topic a lot of us would avoid I think, just because it's a really touchy subject

Krypton · December 2017

It took 755 years after the fall of the Seleucarian Empire, for us to finally get male Sirens. With continued advocacy, perhaps we will recognise our first gender-neutral Sirens by year 1510 AF.

Zackery · December 2017

I realize my first post came across pretty negative. I've given it some more thought since, and here are some workarounds I've come up with for how someone could RP a non-binary character within the mechanical limits imposed by the game.

Custom Poses
Use the command:

POSE ^ is here. They wield a [weapon/shield]&nbsp;in their left hand and a [weapon/shield] in their right.

You might want to trigger this to send automatically every time you log in (you can use the pattern "Password correct. Welcome to Achaea." to do this.) It will override the default message folks will see indicating your presence when they LOOK in the same room as you.

Custom Emotes
Use the fairly robust custom emote system in the game in place of the stock emotes. For example, instead of just typing SMILE, which would appear as "Person's mouth turns up as his/her face breaks into a smile," you can use:

EMOTE 's mouth turns up as their face breaks into a smile.

Note: You can use aliases to make this less time consuming. For example, the pattern ^smile$ would be your alias to send the custom emote above, etc.

Acting
In addition to customizing emotes, you can customize the messages that appear when you drink, drop, eat, give, kneel, lie, put, remove, sit, stand, take, get, and wear things. For example, instead of using EAT BISCUITS, which would give the message, "Person unwraps some biscuits from cheesecloth and crunches it up in his/her hands, compacting it," you can use:

EAT BISCUITS: unwraps some @thing from cheesecloth and crunches it up in their hands, compacting it.

Custom Descriptions
Though you can't change the fact that all personal descriptions (the text shown when you LOOK at a character) start with a binary pronoun, you can then customize the rest of the description. You could do something like:

DESCRIBE SELF + and upon coming into focus, is not a "she" at all. They...

Then when someone LOOKs at your character, it would read, for example, "She is an insectoid horkval and upon coming into focus, is not a "she" at all. They..."

Limitations
You - or more specifically, the people you RP with, won't be able to take advantage of certain emote features, particularly ones that can substitute "you" for the target of the emote and show a third person pronoun for others in the room (this is done with the syntax $name_he, $name_him, etc). In order for someone to use the correct pronouns to interact with you, they'd have to specifically type in "they/them," and so even though you are the target of the emote, it would read as a third person message, not as though it is directed at you specifically.

Additionally, you cannot customize or overwrite combat messages, so those would all still use the wrong pronouns.

And, as previously mentioned, when someone LOOKs specifically at your character, it will start "He/she is a..." no matter how you customize the rest. And of course, the matter that HONOURS will always show either "male (race)" or "female (race)" in parenthesis after name and title.

In sum, no, it's not impossible to RP a non-binary character, and I apologize for the knee-jerk reaction of saying it was. However, it will take a significant amount of effort to pull it off, and you should be prepared to handle less than ideal reactions from a significant percentage of the playerbase. That said, when you do find a solid group of people who can be mature and respectful about it, I'm sure it can be a very fun and rewarding experience!

[Edited a few formatting errors]

Keorin · December 2017

It's maybe worth noting that while there's certainly a significant part of the player base that might not handle that sort of thing well, there's a lot of people who'll be perfectly understanding about that sort of thing. The game as a whole has a pretty large percentage of people that either are lgbt or are understanding of the issues involved, so I don't think you'd have much trouble finding a group of people that are respectful of that kind of thing.

I've known of a few characters that were portrayed as transgender through picking a mechanical gender that didn't match how the character identified, and I've generally been pleasantly surprised by how people handled it. That might have something to do with my character's social circles, but I think it's fair to say that while the game offers a disappointing amount of mechanical nuance in those areas, I don't think it'd be hard to find people that would make that sort of thing fun to play.

Tahquil · December 2017

Don't get overwhelmed by the amount of lore. There is a lot of lore and you won't be able to get a grasp of it all by just reading out of the proverbial textbook.

That said, investigating lore IG is a wonderful role-playing opportunity! It gives you the chance to go socialize with other characters and ask them questions, then they will hopefully divide the long paragraphs into smaller more manageable pieces.

Tysandr · December 2017

Tahquil said:

Don't get overwhelmed by the amount of lore. There is a lot of lore and you won't be able to get a grasp of it all by just reading out of the proverbial textbook.

That said, investigating lore IG is a wonderful role-playing opportunity! It gives you the chance to go socialize with other characters and ask them questions, then they will hopefully divide the long paragraphs into smaller more manageable pieces.

man I asked my Regent so many questions they thought I was illiterate... Huge shout out for being so patient, you know who you are!

Hail, Stranger!

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I want to roleplay, but there's so much lore to study! Where to start?

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