Cuendillar MUSH - Age and Chargen

Age is a defining character aspect. Is your character young and naive, or older and wise in the ways of the world? Young people have had fewer experiences to mold their personalities and outlooks, and are usually more flexible than older people. Older characters have had more opportunities to learn knowledge and practice their talents. They have had a longer period in the past to develop rich experiences that affect their view of life and the people around them.

The life span of people in the Wheel of Time world is older than it might be in an equivalent real world culture or historical period. Living conditions are generally pretty good for all but the poorest people. Sanitation is a priority, and bathing is popular. Health care may not be highly advanced, but important medical principles like washing hands between treating patients and separating the sick to minimize epidemics are understood. Medical treatments are based on herbalism and first aid, there are no barbaric practices like bloodletting and the like. The average person can reach 75 years of age, and a few live longer.

The Age you select for your character is used to calculate how many Skill Points you'll have to spend on Skills and knowledge in the Skills section of chargen. See 'cg age skills' for more information.

Aging takes a toll on people - their senses may lose acuity, they may become weaker or less dextrous, etc. When your character reaches a certain Age, whether in chargen or during play, the character generation system will calculate the chances of whether Age has negatively affected your character.

Age and Skill Points

The Skill Points you are given to use in the Skills section of chargen are calculated according to your Age. Other sections of chargen like Culture or Assets and Flaws may increase or decrease your Skill points, but the bulk of your points result from your chosen Age.

The Skill Points you receive are calculated according to the chart below. These are cumulative.

Human Ages

The chargen system is designed for characters of a minimum of 10 years of age. If your character is younger than that, you should wait until s/he's 10 before using the system. (MUSH time runs 2 times as fast as real world time, so characters age 1 year every 6 months of real time.) We are happy to see a range of character ages on the game, and you are more than welcome to play a person younger than 10, but the chargen system is designed for adult characters. If there is a reason why you need to take a character younger than 10 through chargen, please see CG AGE CHILD for instructions on doing that.

The maximum Age you can select for a normal human character is 75. This upper limit is in place because your character will continue aging as you play him/her. Game time runs at 2 times the speed of real world time, so for every RL year that passes, your character will age 2 years. Age begins to affect humans from 60 years onwards.

Ogier Ages

The Ogier age much more slowly than human beings, and live for a much longer period of time. They are not considered to reach maturity until 90 or 100 years of age. As a general guide, 1 human year of age is equivalent to 5 Ogier years. So an Ogier who's 200 years old would be equivalent in age to a human of 40.

If you selected the Ogier culture, the youngest Age you can select in chargen is 50 years. That would be equivalent to a 10 year old human. If your character is younger than that, you should wait until s/he's 50 before using the system. (MUSH time runs 3 times as fast as real world time, so characters age 1 year every 4 months of real time.) We are happy to see a range of character ages on the game, and you are more than welcome to play a child younger than 50, but the chargen system is designed for adult characters. If there is a reason why you need to take an Ogier character younger than 50 through chargen, please see CG AGE CHILD for instructions on doing that.

The oldest Age you can select is 475 years. Ogier begin to feel the effects of advancing age from 300 years onwards.

Ogier Ages

The oldest Age you can select is 475 years. Ogier begin to feel the effects of advancing age from 300 years onwards.

Children and Character Generation

The character generation system is designed to reflect the abilities of adult characters, and for that reason, you cannot select an age younger than 10 in chargen. You are more than welcome to role-play a character who is younger, we'd just prefer that you not go through chargen until your character is 10 or older.

If there is a reason why you need to take a child character through chargen (to be approved for a restricted Asset, for example), please contact the wizards and let us know what that reason is. If your request is approved, you can take the character through chargen. You will be expected to follow the guidelines listed below, and may be given additional guidelines by the wizards.

NOTE: Statistics (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) are fixed and cannot be raised after chargen. The Statistics chosen for a child character in chargen must reflect both the child and the adult. The system does not accommodate the improvement of abilities as people age and grow, and this is one of the reasons that we ask characters younger than 10 not to go through chargen.

	If the character chooses Pauper or Poor the extra Stat point(s) should go into Quickness, Dexterity or Perception ONLY.
	No Stat (see 'cg stats' for a list) should be set to more than +2 either in the Stats section of chargen or through Asset purchase. This does not include additional points from Pauper/Poor or Assets that have a side effect of boosting Stats higher than that (Viewer, Wolfkin).
	At least two of the following Flaws should be purchased: Delicate, Frail, Build: Slight, Build: Short.
	In the Age section of chargen, you should select age 15. Then when you've completed chargen, @mail the wizards to tell us what the character's true age is and we will manually reset it.
	You can spend ONLY a number of Skill Points (see CG SKILL RULES and CG AGE SKILLS) equal to the character's age times two, minus 5. (The additional 5 points turn into Experience Points that can be spent after chargen to increase skills or buy new ones). This is to ensure that child characters don't receive any more Skill Points than any other character. Examples:

Female Channelers

Manifestation of the Channeling ability seems to be linked to the onset of puberty. Children cannot Channel, and it is even impossible to determine if they'll be able to Channel as adults. The average onset for puberty in the Wheel of Time world is 16-18 years of age. If you selected the Asset of Channeling, you must choose an Age of 15 or higher for your character.

Women who can Channel find that their aging slows down in their mid-twenties, particularly if they Channel regularly. These women can live much longer than the average human being. The maximum Age a female Channeler can select is 475 years. The aging process begins to affect them at 300 years of age.

NOTE: Aes Sedai who have taken the Oaths age more rapidly than other female Channelers.

Aes Sedai

If you selected the Asset of Aes Sedai, the minimum Age you can choose for your character is 40 years. The average age to be raised to Aes Sedai is 25-35 years. Since the characters who role-play their way up from Novice fill out the younger ages of the age spectrum, those who wish to start play as full Aes Sedai have to be set up as older characters to round out the Tower's population.

Aes Sedai experience slowed aging, similar to other female Channelers. Their lifespan is much longer than that of the average human being, but shorter than that of other female Channelers. (This is probably due to holding the Oath Rod, but that isn't anything any character would know.) The maximum Age an Aes Sedai can select in chargen is 275 years. The effects of Aging begin to take their toll on Aes Sedai from 180 years onwards.

The Effects of Character Aging

The chargen system takes the effects of aging into account, to help evoke a more realistic world. Once your character reaches a certain Age, the system will periodically check to see if s/he has been affected by Aging. Each time your character has an Age Check, there is a _chance_ that s/he will lose a point on a Statistic, gain a Skill Penalty or gain a Flaw related to aging.

If you select an Age for your character in chargen that is older than the point when Age Checks begin, the system will immediately calculate the possible effects Aging has had on your character. (See 'cg age chart' for information on when Age Checks begin.)

Example: Teena selects an Age of 75. The system makes 15 Age Checks, so there are 15 chances that she _might_ have an Aging effect like losing a point from a Statistic or gaining a Skill Penalty.

Each time a character has an age check, there is an X in 30 chance of an Aging Effect, where X is equal to the number of Age Points the character has. If the person rolls X or under, they have an Age Effect. If they roll over X, they gain 1-3 Age Points.

Characters who have 30 Age Points acquire a serious physical Flaw on each birthday. These Flaws include Blind, Enfeebled, Joint Disease, Build: Hunchback and Disfigured. (Read 'cg ' for info on the Flaws.) We encourage people to role-play the death of characters who have become severely debilitated by age, no one lives forever.

If you receive an Age Effect in chargen or on your character's birthday during play, you will be sent a @mail telling you the effect is so you can role-play it, and the MUSH will automatically adjust your character sheet as appropriate.

Age Effects include loss of a point from a Statistic, or a -1 Penalty to a Skill.

Age Chart

The following chart is a summary of the minimum and maximum Ages for all character types, and when the effects of Aging begin for each.

NOTE: Certain other character aspects may alter your minimum allowed Age. See'cg malkier' and 'cg cairhien' for more information.