# Long-Term Characters LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Should player characters age? There are some characters in text MUDs that have been played for so long that, were they alive in the real world, they’d be entitled to vote. For virtual worlds with moderately low persistence, it’s perhaps not an issue. If the world periodically resets, it never ages; it’s not inconsistent to suppose that the characters entering such a timeless world shouldn’t change either. For greatly persistent worlds, it’s not this easy. EverQuest’s night/day cycle is 90 real minutes in length. That means 3 years of real time is nearly 50 years of virtual time. As the virtual world never formally resets, shouldn’t 3-year-old characters be in late middle age by now? Everyone must sup regularly from a fountain of youth. Aging, like gender differences, is one of those inconvenient facts of real life that designers often omit from virtual worlds. They don’t even address it cosmetically: Beautiful characters are forever beautiful. The reason for this, of course, is that aging implies decay and, ultimately, death. The decay part might be acceptable to players if it’s balanced by something else—for example, dexterity might drop but intelligence might rise. What they are unlikely to accept without a great deal of persuasion is that they themselves are responsible for supplying the main gain that comes with aging: experience. Their character will be better when it is older because of what it experienced when it was younger—that is, how they played it. Character death is not something that sits easy with players, even when it’s “natural” through aging. Would people buy a music CD if it was guaranteed to stop playing after five years? Why would a player want to start in a virtual world knowing that their character would be taken from them when at the height of its powers? What about the players of elf-types, whose characters are practically immortal? Would female characters get an extra two or three years, as they do in the real world? It’s almost inevitable that in such a climate, some fiction would have to be created to assuage the concerns of long-term players. Characters don’t age because, er, there’s something in the air. Okay, so they don’t age. Time still passes, though. Characters get married all the time in virtual worlds—it’s a common ceremony (and one I’ve performed many times myself). Do they get to have virtual children? Virtual children pose so many problems for virtual world designers that most will avoid the topic at all costs. Unfortunately for me, as author of this book I can’t do that. Here, therefore, are the main issues: - Children have to be conceived. We all know how this happens in the real world, but…. - Women bear children and men don’t. Is this unfair on male characters, unfair on female characters, or unfair on both? - It takes nine months from conception for a human baby to be born. Even at accelerated time, this is plenty long enough for the player to have second thoughts. Are virtual abortions allowed? - After a few months, pregnant women look different to non-pregnant women. Do their character models change? - The final few weeks of pregnancy can be quite disabling. Should pregnant characters still be able to hack dragons with the best of them, or would suggesting this be irresponsible? - Labor and the birth: These are going to be faked up to happen when the player is logged off, right? - Naturally all babies are born in perfect condition without any complications. So, who looks after them, and how? - Are children shown in the virtual world? If so, they grow, they change shape—all that needs to be modeled. - How are children’s looks and attributes computed? Are “designer babies” possible? What about something basic, such as choosing a child’s sex? - Parents don’t age, but their children do? - Can you sell your children into slavery? Every real-world parent has thought about it…. - Have you any idea how expensive it is to bring up kids?! - Are children educated automatically? Do parents have any say in the matter? What if they disagree? - Can children die before they reach adulthood? Can they be killed? - Who gets custody of the children when the parents split? - Can parents abandon their children? In worlds with permanent death, what happens to orphans? - Who gets to play a child once it reaches adulthood? - What tangible reasons are there for having children anyway? There are serious moral, practical, and implementational issues concerning virtual children. They can all be addressed, but never to the satisfaction of everyone. In most virtual worlds, the cost of implementing virtual children so outweighs the benefits that it makes sense to put the idea in the “forget about it” pile. The main exceptions are - Virtual worlds with a strong, realistic theme (particularly ones in an historical context). Children may be necessary for gameplay reasons, and the prevailing morals of the modeled reality can be used to answer some of the more awkward questions. - Virtual worlds actually about children—for example, educational ones. - Virtual worlds with permanent death, where children are used in an inheritance fiction to replace dead characters [^40]. And that, thank goodness, is quite enough of that. [^40]: This means that the death isn’t actually permanent, of course, as characters are reincarnated as their offspring. There’s more on this subject later in this chapter.