Do your characters age?

Depends.

When I came back after a 3 year hiatus I peered at one of my teen characters bio's and thought 'he's been gone ages, I think I will add 3 years to this bio and rewrite it a bit'. Since it made it a little more interesting to do so. For the most part though I guess I go for the typical comic book trope of only when the plot demands. I guess the 'away for a while' kinda falls into that too. Comic book characters do get a bit of a redesign when they take a break from the comics, and are often a bit older when they come back.

My characters do age, but they aren't perfectly aligned with real-time either. I think they've progressed about 3 years over the course of the game.

Well one of mine ages very slow due to her mother's side of the family. Currently she is in her 50s yet has the looks of someone in her early 20s.

Other than that, I consider leveling to be a form of aging since I don't actively try to get to 50 ASAP, plus all the alts I have created. I also consider active playing time. I had shelved my teen Peacekeeper for years and in my mind's eye she's the exact same age since I last played her.

Deamus the Fallen "Evolved" as I leveled - at level 1 he was a mostly human punk who had some demonic powers - at 20 he was skilled in the usage of underworld powers, 30 he was able to control his demonic powers, by the time he was 50 he was a demonic prince with no remnants of humanity left.

Other that one character, I didn't really focus much on aging my characters.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

I hadn't thought about it before, but they probably will.

It depends upon the character. Most of the time I don't have a solid enough story behind them so they exist in a perpetual 'early to mid 20's' state.

The few that actually have aged usually have done so in real world time . For example:

Valentina Rose started off her hero career at age 17. Now, 5 years later (and I have had this character for 5 years) she's about to hit lv 50 and retire and start looking for a real job.

Doc Vendetta didn't even become a villain until her mid 30's. Now, 7 years later, she's in her 40's and has made her personal fortune and has decided to leave the whole villain game up to the younger fools of the Rogue Islands.

I guess it all comes down to whether or not their story needs them to age.

My characters not only sometimes age, sometimes they age backwards. They've also been known to change race depending on what looks good with their costume colors though, so I'm not a good benchmark.

I only have one character who has aged, because how they look defines so much of the character for me.

The character who aged is an 11 year old, who loves quirky costumes, particularly if it involves a hat. She is the only character who has so much personality that SHE picks out her costumes, not me (Once I put her in a pretty party dress. Oh, there was hell to pay for that!).

So, anyway, trying on new clothes one day, she lit upon the Defense set, and fell in love with it, and now feels that she is a PROPER super hero. Thing is, it's so tight, that even with the bust and leg sliders at minimum and waist slider at max, her figure shows too much development to look 11. Since she's not giving up the costume, then it stands to reason that she's about 14. But only in that costume. With the other costumes, she's still 11.

But since I just rescued Statesman a couple days ago, several weeks after I saw him die, I feel that her aging up and down is pretty much just another typical day in Paragon!

I've always viewed the levels as decades.

By the time my hero hits 50 they have been around for quite some time, with the 40-50 journey being the zenith/twilight of their career. The costumes generally reflect this 'maturing'

Though quite a few of my characters don't play that way. Instead having time playout ingame, so that a week ingame is actually a week in their life. As such, those toons are ageing slowly compared to the levels.

My main, the Aspirant, started out as a 14 year old former sidekick, and just recently turned 17. I never made any specific mention of when he turned each age, I just made reference to him aging when it fit his storyline and character development.

Another memebr of my SG has a character who has been '...totally almost 18' since she started the character.

What's amusing about that is I knew people when I was younger who would play the 'round up game' from 16-21....

My main is chronologically in his mid 30s. Physically though, he ages much slower than normal due to the nanomachines present in his bloodstream. The nanomachines are responsible for his rapid healing, and they function by perpetually repairing any tissue to the exact state it was in when they were first introduced to his body.

My BS/DA scrapper on the other hand, ages at the exact pace I age. Since, well, he's "me". Currently in his early 30s, just like me, and will remain on pace.

Admittedly, I've got a thing like Sam going for my main hero and villain. They are different dimension versions of a Muvian human-based battle construct. They are both pushing 14000, but are physically maybe late-20s to early-30s. As such, an extra year here and there doesn't much bother them. And those who tap into their power (so far, only really my main hero's wife) come out of the process changed - Their hair takes on whatever color it was at the time (her's was dyed pinkish-red) permanently, and they gain some measure of his magic (including a bit of regeneration, generally enough to keep up with time, if not outpace it a bit).

As it is, I actually have a family tree for those two, branching out to almost 100 years ahead of where we are chronologically in the game. Those two are still around, observing what their great-great grandchildren are doing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venture I'd never use a nuke in a superhero universe. You nuke a city, you kill 1.5 million people minus one. The last guy not only gets superpowers from the explosion, but ones that let him survive a nuke...and wow, is he torqued off

I've always had a difficult time wrapping my head around the non-aging of comics and cartoons like the Simpsons when I bother thinking about it. To cope, I just assume all my characters are in their early 20s when I start them. That way, I can handwave that they are aging, because they're at a time of life when their precise age isn't all that important. I have yet to do any children or middle-aged/old heroes (not because I have a problem with heroes of those ages, but because I have a harder time getting 'into their skin').

So any of my characters could be between 20-35 and it doesn't matter all that much. They're typically younger adults with superpowers. All set. =)

What an interesting question.

For the most part, I'd never given this much (if any) thought.

As I think about it now, I like Seldom's answer:

Yes.

In fact, my regular main has retired from general super hero work to maintain his mass-production prosthetic and robotics company. He isn't "old" (he'd now be in his late thirties), but.... yes.

My slight astimagtism kicked in and, despite having already read this topic, I forgot I did and thought the title said "do your characters aoe?". My characters don't age, but I certainly do.

Not really. Too many characters to track.

If we want to get down to it,

Hyperstrike's body is more or less self-repairing. Not like W******** levels of regeneration, but he (eventually) heals up from pretty much anything. His form is more or less in a state of biological stasis. He's more or less, physically in his early 30's, but is homing in on the 4.0 (yeah he's an expy).

Inion, my warshade, her physical body's more or less mortal, but the nictus inside has been around since Cimerora (she's "Master Dark's" sickly nictus offspring and one of the first tries at a human/nictus bonding, prior to Romulus).

Eclipse Phase, my PB (yeah yeah, don't get me started), was fighting in WW2. He was forcibly retired from the Marines, but has little more than cosmetic aging going on. So he's short (was always short) and old/grizzled looking (was always a bit grizzled). But he's as physically fit as any Olympic athlete.

Cosmic Rae isn't "technically" alive. She's something of a Dr. Manhattan expy, and is essentially a living radiation storm with a human personality overlay.

Blastion is not human. He's a magi-tech construct from Crey that was built from genetic material from multiple fire-based supers. They then tried sealing a fire elemental in as a substitute for a soul. Let's just say it didn't go over too well. He's affable enough, but is kinda like a little kid (who can generate spot temperatures in excess of one million degrees kelvin).

Tectonica was a guinea pig for the experiment that ultimately created Terra. It's only been a few years, so whether or not she's actually aging is up for grabs.

Stabbitha is probably aging (she started out as a young teen magical girl who'd accidentally been put on a bus to an assassin's academy instead). She's in her late teens (maybe 17-19 now).


Pretty much every other toon I run is some combination of "No" and "Haven't really thought it through".

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I either put them as some supernatural being that only looks a certain age, or I just use the magic powers of Ouroboros! Though for a more natural character I did have him go into the mountains once when I was focusing on another alt. When I got back on him, said he aged a bit and had a huge beard. Like Santa!