litphoria

The age a character appears to be.

I'll put that better: who cares if your age is an adult, when you look like a kid? You're a kid, at best you mess up my searches for adults. Also I'm not into elders but if you're an immortal vampire who eternally appears to be a 24-year old I want you in my searches for adults. Having an apparent age and separate actual age would make a mess of that and be a headache to navigate, almost all the time only one of the two matters anyway.

But even so, having the two as the same trait makes it confusing when it comes to actually making the characters. Ilias, for instance, is pretty much one of the oldest characters around, but she doesn't look much older than a woman in her 20s. I figure that'd make it more clear which is being used for what. The fact that you said "That's the one I'd have to guess at anyway" actually supports this, since you wouldn't have to guess when both traits are present. Maybe it'd take a bit more input to get what you want in the search, but it's worth it in the long run, if you ask me. Some people think actual age is more important, and others think apparent age is more important. That's just how things are.

The fact that you said "That's the one I'd have to guess at anyway" actually supports this, since you wouldn't have to guess when both traits are present.

...I did not mean to hit that submit button so soon. What I meant by that statement was I'd have to guess which trait to be searching by. In almost all cases, in characters where both of these ages are different, one of them negates the other and relegates it to more of a flavour note.

You might be one of the exceptional cases.

Ilias from former conversations about this subjects, both in chat and on closed feedbacks, this is what I can tell you. when building your character, think of what a complete stranger would say when stumbling upon them. If they are a strange alien species that happens to have cat like ears and tail, then they look like a cat. If they are an ancient vampire in the body of a toddler, then they look like a child. I think that ageless is meant mostly to apply to things like robots, or giant rambling tree monsters that have no apparent age at all. The system is set up to make it easy for onlookers to judge based on a set standard.

Yasu, that is a fairly elegant summary.

Declined. The Age trait is meant to be used to represent actual or apparent age, whatever's most contextually appropriate.

My personal observation is that usually only one actually matters, and it's most effective for the profile author to choose which. A several thousand year old vampire may be adult if they still look and behave handsome and youthful. They may instead be an elder if the years have worn heavily on their demeanour, spirit and appearance - still an adult, but one who's seen more than anyone rightly should.

On the same token, let's consider a common occurrence: the thousand year old loli. That they're actually thousands of years old usually doesn't matter at all.