What is canon and what is not (Spoilers)

[Brightamethyst]

Everything in the game is canon unless specifically stated otherwise (e.g. EX trials being reimaginings by the Wandering Minstrel, not actually battles the WoL fought.) Even quests that you personally haven't done canonically happened and you just didn't see them. It's like skipping pages in a book. The parts you didn't read are still canon.

The only sort of exceptions to this are are crossover events and Hildibrand, which are technically canon but exist outside of normal continuity and don't interact with the rest of the story.

[Melichoir]

My understanding is that more or less, if it's handed to you by a quest giver and isnt a Cross over Event - its canon.

If you want to be more nuanced, MSQ is hard Canon. This is the undisputed story, but it will take liberties in assuming youve participated in certain side events at times.

Side Quests, Beast tribe Quests, Raids, etc are all soft canon events and they exist more to flesh out the world and explain some of the things going on that influence the MSQ. You dont have to do them, but they do impact your understanding of whats going on in the MSQ and the world at large. There are admittedly inconsistencies in the timeline of things, but that is just the nature of playing an MMO. Not much you can do about that.

As examples: CT, Alexander Raids, and Omega Weapon help fully explain how ShB can even occur as technology from these events allow for the creation of the tower machination that makes the CT go to the first in the first place. If you havent done it, it is implied you know about it and the MSQ kind of glosses over this. But these events do take place one way or another, regardless of your involvement.

Event Holiday Quests are incredibly loose canon. They do happen and the NPCs will recognize you if you do the event repeatedly through the years, but what happens isnt reflected in MSQ or indicative on how much time has passed. It's almost like Holiday Quests are in their own separate timeline from the MSQ. Holiday quests may reference MSQ stuff loosely on occassion, but very rarely do the actually impact one another.

Cross Over Quests are canon in name only. They dont affect MSQ or seem to have any real world impact on things. These are purely cosmetic sub mini stories and games.

[Ruinfeild]

I treat basically anything as canon except for the crossover promotional events.

That said, very few people actually roleplay being the Warrior of Light/Darkness in the RP community because that whole idea falls apart very quickly, and also beholdens you to a linear story instead of RPing whatever you want for your character's story. If everyone 'is the Warrior of Light' or even just five people in the same room, it gets ridiculous because the story is written very clearly with a singular protagonist in mind, and having everyone say they experienced the same events is very limiting.

As for people going to the First, it's not exactly an easy task to do but I believe Yoshi P in an interview basically gave his blessing for people to do that if they want to in their RP as non WOLS but I'd have to go looking for the exact quote. But in the context of the msq it doesnt' really make much sense because it's a pretty big point that only the WOL is able to freely make that journey. On the other hand, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to cut an entire expansion worth of zones and story out of their RP so I have no issue with people RPing ways to do it.

I did a quick search and came up with this.

https://brytedarklyt.tumblr.com/post...related_post=1

So if this is true (even with the source link), it does seem like Yoshi-P is indeed giving his blessings to RPers who are just simple adventurer's to be able to travel to the first and back to the source.

The question now becomes though that despite yes, even though Yoshi-P supports the idea of normal adventurer's going to the first and back because it is all about making the players own fun, will the RP community be able to accept it and move on or still throw in the excuse of 'but the story says x and y'

Even though I know in RP it is all about having fun and creating a character you enjoy within reason of course (not like x character is the son of these two named NPC's but was actually adopted and y is their father), but I seen new RPers and those wanting to get into it put off because of how fractured the community can be.

Edit: First link I looked at also had to do with the topic and seemed the discussion was more pointed at the question being asked for lore purposes and it wasn't really an answer other than 'RP how you want and not worry about what others think'

[MariaArvana]

The question now becomes though that despite yes, even though Yoshi-P supports the idea of normal adventurer's going to the first and back because it is all about making the players own fun, will the RP community be able to accept it and move on or still throw in the excuse of 'but the story says x and y'

Even though I know in RP it is all about having fun and creating a character you enjoy within reason of course (not like x character is the son of these two named NPC's but was actually adopted and y is their father), but I seen new RPers and those wanting to get into it put off because of how fractured the community can be.

I mean what do you expect him to say when being asked an innocent question like that? "NO, WOL ONLY YOU DARN RPERS"? 90% chance he'd say something similar if someone asked if they could RP WOW's horde invading Eorzea through a portal or just joke and say "whatever you guys find fun!". He's not gonna try and fun police people.

For many people, wanting to RP is to immerse yourself in the world and all its limitations, physics, etc. Every last bit of the lore to this day has stated that travelling to the First is basically impossible outside of supernatural or super-engineering feats, which nobody but the most mary-sue like characters are going to have the means to do so. So by wanting to explore themes and settings that are impossible to reach by all except for a very small amount of people, you're naturally going to shun a vast majority of people who want to stay bound by the lore of the universe the devs have created or turn them off from Rping with you due to your character having mary-sue like properties. It's not an excuse; its simple lore-adhering.

But like any RP, it's about the groups you find. You could RP anything you want in FF14 and bend the lore as much as you like, just find a group of like-minded individuals who are interested, and leave anyone who's not interested alone instead of trying to convince them otherwise.

[Iscah]

If you want to be more nuanced, MSQ is hard Canon. This is the undisputed story, but it will take liberties in assuming youve participated in certain side events at times.

Actually it's sort of the opposite. The "undisputed story" as intended by the writers includes the optional events.

Meanwhile, it does not assume you've participated in events if you haven't - this is where canon starts to twist itself according to your individual game progress.

The canon version of the Binding Coil, for example, ends with Alisaie inspired to depart on a journey of self-discovery. When she rejoins you, she makes reference to that time you spent together.

If you haven't progressed the Coils storyline by that point in the MSQ, she will instead mention your partial progress, or maybe that you haven't met since you first encountered each other early in the game, and she's been on a journey for some vague reason. It's a less satisfying version of events, and it's not how the story is supposed to go, but the game will do its best to alter the dialogue to your individual situation if you don't look too closely at the rough edges. It's only meant to be a temporary non-canon version of events until you see how the story actually played out.

Of course, this approach only works because Alisaie isn't visibly in any different a state whether you completed the story or not, so the difference can be swept over with a few altered lines of dialogue. If the state of something has actually changed, the MSQ will probably avoid referencing it - but may make the earlier quest a prerequisite if it's necessary.

On your hidden paragraph (spoilers up to 5.3):

The CT/Alexander/Omega trio are a special case because of the time travel element. The game is not pretending you have done them by the point that Shadowbringers takes place - only that they will have happened by the future point that Cid needs the information to develop his time machine concept. This is why the game can treat them as definite fact without requiring you to have done them first. If you haven't done CT during 5.0 then the Exarch will say that you haven't met his past self yet.

Again, the reasoning is quite flimsy if you look at it too closely and it all makes a lot more sense if you did the other stories when you should have, but their route around it is not pretending that you've completed them.

Note that the Crystal Tower alone has become mandatory as of 5.3 - not because of its importance to Shadowbringers' plot but because it is absolutely necessary for those events to have happened first. You cannot find G'raha Tia asleep in the tower if he hasn't shut himself in there first. If the writers simply pretended you'd done things when you haven't, this wouldn't be a problem - you'd simply find him there whether you'd ever met him (in that form) before or not. But that isn't how the story handles things. The sequence of events must be that you meet G'raha, then see him shut in the tower, then get him out again. You can put it off but you will not see those events happen out of sequence.

[Clover_Blake]

I believe that you have plenty of freedom to do crazy things, so long as you RP privately with a group where everyone accepts it.

Otherwise, if anyone plans to engage in public RP with strangers, then I'd advise to not break the lore and not claim to be the WoL, for no one is obliged to accept your personal canon in their stories.


Private RP = Anything works so long as everyone involved agrees.
Public RP = You need to adhere to the lore as a basic rule for it to work with everyone.

[Iscah]

Meanwhile, the question of "what is canon for roleplay" is very different to asking what the canon version of the WoL's adventures are. If your character isn't the WoL then should any of that have happened to you? Or are you someone else on the edges on the story, in which case the canon you need to know is (a) events that affect you-the-non-WoL, and (b) world lore about how things work and what people can do.

It's canon that the WoL can teleport across the rift because they were personally pulled there by the Exarch and have now established aetheryte attunements that allow them to travel back and forth at will.

It's technically canon that the same could be repeated for someone else, assuming they could handle the vast travel distances (the WoL is unusually strong in this aspect) but you'd need a very good excuse to get there. The Exarch's summoning method is underpinned by exceptional circumstances and he's unlikely to be pulling random adventurers across.

If you can come up with a way to get your character there, great. But it's not something that anybody can just do.

Ultimately yes, you can make up whatever you like that appeals - but the point of sticking to canon rules about how the world works is to keep everyone on the same page so you can build your ideas from the same basic concepts. Some people will care about that more than others.

[Roda]

I did a quick search and came up with this.

https://brytedarklyt.tumblr.com/post...related_post=1

So if this is true (even with the source link), it does seem like Yoshi-P is indeed giving his blessings to RPers who are just simple adventurer's to be able to travel to the first and back to the source.

The question now becomes though that despite yes, even though Yoshi-P supports the idea of normal adventurer's going to the first and back because it is all about making the players own fun, will the RP community be able to accept it and move on or still throw in the excuse of 'but the story says x and y'

Even though I know in RP it is all about having fun and creating a character you enjoy within reason of course (not like x character is the son of these two named NPC's but was actually adopted and y is their father), but I seen new RPers and those wanting to get into it put off because of how fractured the community can be.

Edit: First link I looked at also had to do with the topic and seemed the discussion was more pointed at the question being asked for lore purposes and it wasn't really an answer other than 'RP how you want and not worry about what others think'

So anything the game presents as possible is up for grabs in rp, pretty much. (hell, even stuff that isn't is up for grabs with a bit of social finesse)

But, there's a bit of a catch. What is acceptable to RP is up to the players ('cause it's their imaginations and the devs don't have an official rp server that they moderate for rp), and not the devs.

Balmung -currently- has a kind of reverse arms race when it comes to how fantastical people make their characters in public rp. The Echo/blessing is extremely rare instead of adventurers being prone to having it awaken. There is ONE warrior of light instead of every 1.0 player / decent heroic adventurer being called a warrior of light. And even if an event IS canon, if a common adventurer from whatever region you're rping in wouldn't know about an event, it isn't relavent to apply to RP. Which causes plotline scales to be quite small when compaired to the fantastical powerscales of the msq. No one wants to be the mary sue of the server with the way-too-fantastical character that overshadows someone's mercenary/merchant/hunter/dancer/adventurer/refugee personal plot. A kind of canadian standoff of "no no no, you take the spotlight now, I'll stand back and wait for my turn" while everyone rps what is essentially a side npc that just kinda exists around the msq, just not in its center.

Now, don't be discouraged if you want to delve farther into where the MSQ explores, as that's my general observation of how people set up their characters for random/pickup rp and there are of course different philosophies on how powerscales should be in rp wthin different rp cliques, and an established group would eventually venture into newer and more recent territory. As long as you clearly communicate what kind of stories you're looking for, then you shouldn't have too much of a problem finding those stories. And who knows, with how 5.3 is exploring its themes, maybe we'll see a shift of what is considered "mundane" in a fantasy setting.