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How do you justify your character wearing skimpy outfits? [Roleplaying]


LibertyPrime

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Nord men piss on dead and dying foe. Nord  having high resistance to cold, covering genital is an affront to warring traditions. Nord woman want men aggressive for war, they wear nothing at their 'honeypot' to sweeten stormcloak aggression... War Wench expose all, to honor their battle-lost husbands and sons. (Immersive Wenches with Modded outfits) War Wench, reveal all to sign themselves as War Bride to all fighting Nord, as a reminder of the freedom they live, fight and die for. Modesty is an imperialist concept -- an insult to Nord tradition.

 

Imperials taunt the Nord by exposing their own phallus and vulva, both as reminder of rape, conquest and domination of the Nord sub-race. Elves are superior in all things revealing themselves as proof.

 

To all combatants an un-sheathed sword expresses alpha status and the willingness to prove such a claim.

 

Modesty in Tamriel is not what we understand it to be -- quite the opposite in-fact.

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Alright folks, not to play forum police, but the OP actually asked about ROLEPLAYING reasons.
 
TL;DR version: just scroll down and press the Gallery link to see RPG-lore-friendly skimpy outfits
 
 
Long version for the educated:
 

Some people want to enjoy this as an RPG that delivers immersion, as in sinking into a believeable virtual world where you no longer have to think "WTF that's hilarious" and other things.
In fact this ominous immersion means that you temporarily are no longer aware that you are playing a game in that moment.
 
And saying that you forget the real world because you get a boner from watching a woman's booty shake with HDTPE while wearing a latex zipsuit does not really count in the RPG context ;)
 
Another thing is the "lore" that people talk about. The lore in an RPG defines how the world works, for example the way how nobility rules Tamriel in the respective kingdoms or what dragons are (immortal demigods or just lizards with wings?).
So if you make a mod that introduces the Booty Co. Slavers Company who now rule Skyrim and turned all women into naked sex slaves, it can not possibly be "lore-friendly"  - just like a mod that allows dragons to transform into humanoid females with tits and pussies, simply because the lore by bethesda defines them otherwise.
 
However, back to the OP - i already posted the box art from Elder Scrolls Arena. Obviously there's nothing in the lore that says that women can't wear sexy/skimpy clothes. Just look at the vanilla Forsworn armor. And they are worn by people living mostly outdoors in the mountains, dammit :P
If you just stick to tasteful equipment like the CT77 remodeled armors, i don't really see an immersion breaker anywhere.

Regarding the frozen north issue, if you combine this with Winter is Coming and maybe similar mods like Wet and Cold, things are looking as lore-friendly as they can be:

3763086-1405303165.jpg
3763086-1405436801.jpg


 

Gallery

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Alright folks, not to play forum police, but the OP actually asked about ROLEPLAYING reasons.

 

Sorry officer, OP asked us how we justified it or if we roleplayed it.

 

Every poster so far has either said that he used a replacer to shape the lore his way, or that his character has personal reasons to dress that way, both answer the questions.

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The truth is that real sword and axe fighters don't go into battle in a full suit of plate armor. Especially not a female. Those suits can weigh hundreds of pounds and are only suitable on horseback. So anyone not going light, or a bit "skimpy", is the one not role playing and making it far less believable. Not even Arnie would last for a fight with plate armors. Geesh. He'd be too tired and too encumbered to swing a claymore, and then he'd get sliced to bits by a little, skinny guy wearing a light shirt and trousers that could literally run circles around him.

 

Something to ponder, folks. Real sword fighters don't encumber themselves with tons of armor. It would be a death sentence because speed and mobility are what win a sword fight.

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I don't.
However, there are the cases like the Dark Lilith armor for my vampire.
My current playthroughs are a warhammer-weilding male, a female that follows my typical playthrough style (1H sword style, typically dual-weird. Rogue/theif style playthrough. She's my vampire and often changes clothes to fit the situation.)
And then there's my full-mage experiment. I want to see how plausible it is to play a PURE mage.
 
I might make a Khajit who wears little because fur, but to be honest, I'd rather play Khajit/Argonian as male.
 

The truth is that real sword and axe fighters don't go into battle in a full suit of plate armor. Especially not a female. Those suits can weigh hundreds of pounds and are only suitable on horseback. So anyone not going light, or a bit "skimpy", is the one not role playing and making it far less believable. Not even Arnie would last for a fight with plate armors. Geesh. He'd be too tired and too encumbered to swing a claymore, and then he'd get sliced to bits by a little, skinny guy wearing a light shirt and trousers that could literally run circles around him.
 
Something to ponder, folks. Real sword fighters don't encumber themselves with tons of armor. It would be a death sentence because speed and mobility are what win a sword fight.


You see, that doesn't justify skimpy armors in my opinion. Which is why I almost always have to resort to something magical (vampires are immune to the cold [Frostfall will back me up here :P], mages can warm themselves up with fire magics?) lest it break immersion.

 

Your post justifies light armor, but not skimpy. In fact, even those in medieval times could still run in full plate. Mind you, light armor would have been even more mobility-forgiving.

Leather, for instance. Not that movement-inhibiting, but not that protective.. even if it can withstand punishment much better than bare skin (duh).

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Most of my female characters end up as spellswords or mages. So they don't really specialize in heavy armor perferring more lighter gear.  In my head-canon Skyrim world... Well, Skyrim's aesthetic firmly shows that its a medieval and barren realm. That's fine, but for me the rest of Tamriel isn't like that at all, especially in the more urbanized and populous places like the Imperial Province. Cyrodiil and High Rock has all these skimpy outfits in fashion and since I generally play Breton, Imperial of Atmer characters its natural that she wears the stuff she wore at court or in the city. That's how I explain where all these things come from.

 

In the Sexlab version of Tamriel my character ends up as a nymphomaniac/sub after post-bandit tramua or natural inclination. So they wear less to stop wasting time, damnit.

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All of my Characters are Mages at the Start then take up the thief/assassin role later in their career. Mostly I play Bretons, who have a liking for Politics and Courtly Intrigue, with that also comes fashion so what ever the modders release for the body type i'm playing at the time is what they wear... mostly its a skimpy item... and I don't have any control of that :P and... to Quote my Nikki "Not all Daughters of Skyrim wield heavy blades to cut down our foes, some of us are delicate little things... The playthings of Jarls, not the pawns of...' ". Its hard to be seductive in heavy armor LOL besides that... Whiterun seems to be a rather warm place so the weather there would not really effect her... I don't think.

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However, back to the OP - i already posted the box art from Elder Scrolls Arena. Obviously there's nothing in the lore that says that women can't wear sexy/skimpy clothes. Just look at the vanilla Forsworn armor. And they are worn by people living mostly outdoors in the mountains, dammit :P

If you just stick to tasteful equipment like the CT77 remodeled armors, i don't really see an immersion breaker anywhere.

Yeah, skimpy outfits are already present in Skyrim and are nothing new in ES games. You talk about Arena's cover, we could also have mentioned the scraped prostitutes guild of Daggerfall. But now every once in a while some zealot comes at you and say that sex and kinky stuff are not lore-friendly.

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I don't, cause my characters never wear skimpy outfits.
 

(Honestly, I always thought skimpy outfits were stupid. Not even because of the whole 'it's not lore-friendly!!!11!' thing, but because I never found one that's even remotely decent. And I happen to find armour very sexy.)

If I DID, though, I'd probably justify it with the same reasons I justify wearing simple clothing or weak leather armour over those that offer more protection:

a/ My characters tend to have grown up in the wilds and aren't really used to clothing. Skyrim ought to be glad they don't just run around naked. (for serious playthroughs)

OR

b/ It's easier to distract your enemies with skin, especially if you're a runaway slave who has never learned to do anything without her master. (for my sex playthroughs)

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The truth is that real sword and axe fighters don't go into battle in a full suit of plate armor. Especially not a female. Those suits can weigh hundreds of pounds and are only suitable on horseback. So anyone not going light, or a bit "skimpy", is the one not role playing and making it far less believable. Not even Arnie would last for a fight with plate armors. Geesh. He'd be too tired and too encumbered to swing a claymore, and then he'd get sliced to bits by a little, skinny guy wearing a light shirt and trousers that could literally run circles around him.

 

Something to ponder, folks. Real sword fighters don't encumber themselves with tons of armor. It would be a death sentence because speed and mobility are what win a sword fight.

 

Not to mention breastplates on the female armours.

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The truth is that real sword and axe fighters don't go into battle in a full suit of plate armor. Especially not a female. Those suits can weigh hundreds of pounds and are only suitable on horseback. So anyone not going light, or a bit "skimpy", is the one not role playing and making it far less believable. Not even Arnie would last for a fight with plate armors. Geesh. He'd be too tired and too encumbered to swing a claymore, and then he'd get sliced to bits by a little, skinny guy wearing a light shirt and trousers that could literally run circles around him.

 

Something to ponder, folks. Real sword fighters don't encumber themselves with tons of armor. It would be a death sentence because speed and mobility are what win a sword fight.

 

I have to burst your bubble here with some points in no particular order. 

 

1> Plate armor weighed up to, at the peak of the 16th century, in the age of plate armor, 100lbs. That's actually not that much at all. Soldiers in the military have to carry more than that regularly and run with that regardless of their gender. Soldiers completely wore plate armor into battle and on long campaigns.

 

HOWEVER - You're not completely wrong. Adventurers would have been insane to wear plate armor. See this excellent video on the matter here by scholagladatoria.

 

2> Strength is equal with equal muscle mass. The disadvantage with being female is the rate at which they build muscle - a female with equal muscle mass to a male has no significant disadvantage in strength, they just have a hell of a time getting there. In Skyrim, the characters have equal muscle mass across genders, so there would be no difference between a female and a male. 

 

HOWEVER - This does not apply with body mods. CBBE, UNP, Dream Girl, etc. are built to be attractive, unlike the vanilla body in Skyrim. The women using these body mods, which is the assumption if you're using skimpy armor, would have a serious disadvantage in strength. 

 

3> Plate Armor was not even worn by big hulks of men. It was worn by wealthy fighters. And you can completely swing a claymore with plate armor because martial arts and fencing is not about strength at all, it's about tactic and technique. Yes, doing a big baseball bat swing would encumber you, but you'd be stupid to try that whether you were wearing plate armor or a lace bikini. 

Not only could Arnie use a claymore and fight in a full plate of armor, so could your grandmother. Plate armor was built specifically to be used in battle and improved over centuries to restrict movement and encumber as little as possible. 

 

A "Real sword fighter" in a skimpy outfit would be at a severe disadvantage. Unlike what you see in Hollywood, you cannot cut through plate armor. You cannot beat it to death. You cannot stab through plate armor. The only way to take on someone in plate armor with a sword is by getting the blade in the cracks in the armor. 

 

The sad fact is that skimpy armor is completely nonsensical. There is no practical fencing reason to use skimpy armor, except for the long debunked myths about being naked reduces your chance of infection.  

 

Perhaps, then, for roleplaying, there are economic reasons - making a dress or a full suit of armor is a time consuming and difficult process, and you've got to go kill dragons. So, you slap on the parts that will fit your tiny, frail, feminine body, and go, because the armor that the big men and big nord women are wearing is just too big for your fashion structure. 

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Skyrim is a fantasy world with magic so basically any outfit, or none, can be rationalized depending on the player's RPG preference. 

 

As to the thread somehow changed direction to that women lacking the physical strength to wear plate armor, do not confuse the ability to wear heavy armor as swinging a heavy war hammer.  Women can carry heavy burden just as well as most men.  You will be surprised how well ergonomically engineered European plate armors were.  They were heavy for sure but the weights are so well distributed that they don't burden the wearer nearly as much as the raw weight suggest.  Furthermore, while full metal armors were favored in the West, Chinese and her neighboring nomads actually prefered interlocking metal/textile/leather layered armors for their heavy Calvary instead of full metal.  The textiles were specially treated and the armors were almost as protective as metal.  The marginal relative weakness was compensated by the armor's ability to breath, absorb impact and lighter weight.  They were essentially the Kevlar of their days.  There is no reason why women cannot wear "heavy" armors.  The difference in physical fighting ability is in the muscular strength to wield heavy weapons.

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Real-world history doesn't really mean much in the fantasy context.

 

Go figure why any kind of functional body armor was abandonded in medieval europe - already several centuries before the first semi-automatic firearm was invented.

Yet bethesda says that a full set of daedric plate armor is the top choice for a warrior when fighting dragons or fire wizards, then be it so.

 

Games are what they are, because they have (mostly) arbitrary rules. And as long as the rules make sense on their own, the players will accept them.

Which leads us back to the topic, wether and how you can justify to yourself that a woman is wearing an "armorkini" rather than a plate hauberk.

 

---------

 

Also maybe i should add, that i practically never play female characters. ESPECIALLY not with mods like SexLab installed.

I'm a dominant heterosexual male IRL, so i simply can not identify with the role of a female character even if i wanted to.

 

I just have to decide wether my vanilla replacers are appropriate for my followers and NPCs, should i ever get to actually PLAY the game again ;)

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I don't mind the skimpiness (probably telltale sign I'm male), I just really mind the metallic looking armours bouncing like crazy with my body :(

 

Makes me want to fix it...

 

And I will.... eventually......

Well neither do I and I'm not. 

 

I roleplay for escapism . I'm never likely to go tottering around Waitrose in a steel bikini and greaves with 6 inch heels, my belly full of mead and waving my bastard sword at the lad at checkout when he asks me for my Nectar card, making off into the night on the back of my proud war steed, saddle bags bulging with a weeks groceries consisting of cheese wheels and perfectly red apples. 

 

That's what Skyrim is for.

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Real-world history doesn't really mean much in the fantasy context.

 

Go figure why any kind of functional body armor was abandonded in medieval europe - already several centuries before the first semi-automatic firearm was invented.

Yet bethesda says that a full set of daedric plate armor is the top choice for a warrior when fighting dragons or fire wizards, then be it so.

 

Games are what they are, because they have (mostly) arbitrary rules. And as long as the rules make sense on their own, the players will accept them.

Which leads us back to the topic, wether and how you can justify to yourself that a woman is wearing an "armorkini" rather than a plate hauberk.

 

---------

 

Also maybe i should add, that i practically never play female characters. ESPECIALLY not with mods like SexLab installed.

I'm a dominant heterosexual male IRL, so i simply can not identify with the role of a female character even if i wanted to.

 

I just have to decide wether my vanilla replacers are appropriate for my followers and NPCs, should i ever get to actually PLAY the game again ;)

Your mentions of female characters in skimpy clothing exclusively just draws further attention to the fact that no one ever seems to ask these questions about male characters who were wearing skimpy clothing not only long before written language was devised but long after males in meat space started wearing increasingly defensive armored carapaces.

Has anyone ever asked why '80s action movie heroes entered gunfights almost completely nude?

 

I have the female characters wearing minimal gear for the same reason as I do the male characters,but it might be nice to have more entries in this thread on what justification others have for dressing their male characters in skimpy clothing or armors(well,beyond the skimpy clothing that Bethesda Softworks already included in the Fur,Leather and Studded crafting categories).

Does anyone even feel the need to justify it at all?

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A Knight in full plate armor had to be one scary looking opponent on the battle field... unless of course you had a polearm or long spear as your weapon... or a Maul :) Kinda hard to breath when a 20+ pound hammer crushes your breastplate and takes the air from your lungs. Not to mention the rays of the sun beating down on that steal or the frigid temperatures turning you into a walking popsicle!!! the only good thing about medieval plate was that it would deflect arrows and most slashing attacks. In game terms, we don't have to worry about any of that of course, only the movement penalty at the lower levels are a concern to us so why not go skimpy? why cover up our entire body... the bodies we have spent hours putting together mixing and matching this mod and that mod to get that perfect look... LOL...yeeeah! I'll go skimpy regardless of it being heavy or light armor... or even clothing!  and I must add, that most of my Characters are Dibella Followers so, if you got it.... flaunt it!!! :)

 

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Also maybe i should add, that i practically never play female characters. ESPECIALLY not with mods like SexLab installed.

I'm a dominant heterosexual male IRL, so i simply can not identify with the role of a female character even if i wanted to.

I'm a dominant heterosexual male IRL too and yet I can identify with a female character. What is this sorcery ?

 

I don't mind the skimpiness (probably telltale sign I'm male), I just really mind the metallic looking armours bouncing like crazy with my body :(

 

Makes me want to fix it...

 

And I will.... eventually......

I mind the skimpiness and I'm male, what's your point ?

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