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Middle aged/older characters?


shaobadman

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6 hours ago, paym4n said:

I think more people just have to breach the flodgates first then a lot of people will follow suit.

It's sort of a catch 22 but also something I don't see changing because there's no incentive for people to have older characters unless they actually wanted them, and even the ones that want them might be demotivated.

 

  

3 hours ago, Koko said:

Walking around as an older character in South Central be like:

 

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Relatable, I've been to South LS on an older character, it's like walking into a younger amalgamation of early 90s hood movies, just much less interesting and more "hey, someone in their 40s, how unusual".

Edited by shaobadman
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On 7/30/2021 at 11:05 AM, ChromaticDeath said:

Been RPing my 46 y/o main for the past 2 years, very rarely find other characters their age to hang out with, et-cetera. It's a little annoying because it means a 46 y/o has to hang out with a bunch of younger people (20s, 30s) because there's just no other characters over 40.

 

Yeah, the unfortunate truth. Don't get me wrong, I was part of a group before where it was mostly people between 18-22, and there was one character aged 40+. The dynamic actually did work, but it could only go on for so long before it got stale. 

 

I got demotivated from going on certain characters because it's like taboo being over a certain age. 

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3 hours ago, Valkyr_ said:

how do you go about RPing as someone older? Is there any guide i could take as reference to build on?

I'd say a good starting point is to generally have an outline of their life. It doesn't have to be more than a rough sketch:

 

  • Where did they grow up? Were they rich, poor, middle-class?
  • What decade would they have been a teenager/young adult? (This helps because it can help you make up stories about their youth, for example my character was 20 in 1980, so a lot of his "party life" happened between 1980 and 1990, and I can take from the culture of that decade as inspiration to what he considers fashionable, or what music he likes, for example).
  • Are they married? Do they have kids? Are they focused on family? If they're not married... why? What happened? Did they not find anyone, did they lose them?
  • Where did they settle in life? Did they find a stable job? Did they like it? Were they just trying to get by?

 

I like to ask myself questions as they come to my mind, to help me get in the mindset of someone like that. I'd say another important aspect about being older is acknowledging that you have fallen behind. Your prime is over, and you peaked a long time ago in most cases, unless you're part of niche areas like being an academic, a politician or a CEO. For a lot of older people who have families, or a community life, this means taking the backseat, chilling out and guiding younger people in their environment.

 

Unless you're exceptionally curious and stayed up to date somehow, you don't understand modern things fully. You're not an idiot: you understand the concept of a videogame, or a smartphone, but you don't have the natural understanding a three year old with their mom's iPhone has. Technology has surpassed you. You miss the days when phones sat in your living room and you didn't have to deal with a touchscreen when it's raining. You grew up being able to walk down to the basketball court and knowing who was going to be there after school without needing to text anyone. You don't care that much about social media and you can't really wrap your head around what the hell people do on their phones all day that's so interesting.

 

There's lots of things you can do, but I think that definitely the most important bit is to have a rough outline of the life they lived, like I said. Just a couple bullet points is enough, to get you into that mindset. Read a bit about what was popular in past decades, how people dressed and talked. What was normal to them when they grew up, and what shaped their worldview.

 

The most important aspect of RPing an older character is, to me, to remember that you're not a caricature. You're a person with feelings, a person with decades of experiences, a whole life they built (or lost), and that there is so much more to RPing an old person that being a cranky old man for a meme.

Edited by Koko
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