I have an acknowledged time skip with my characters. Some of them, especially the children, only appear in the later time period. I also have a couple from an alternate future (and we see the alternate future version of their mother).

For the characters I do actually play out from my roster, yes. I do have them age in real time, though I just don't actually change out their appearance that much.
Unless it's for characters who have started families and I wish to play as some of the children. It's not that fun playing as a literal infant, so there are alternative versions of them vastly older.

An interesting view and something I wouldn't experience at all, playing only one character. A good way of doing it for sure though.

It's some combination of both. I sometimes like to imagine where my characters are at different stages of their lives sometimes and I can express that if necessary.

That's how I handle it with my OCs. They do age, but the scenes I post and upload can be at different stages of their lives and careers.

Interesting. So you just jump around based on the whim of the story and art you'd like to get done at the moment. I like that. Sometimes it's good going back to an earlier time, and into the future to see where they might be headed.

Yeah agreed. Like.. when it comes to Miracle, since I've had for like ten years, TC and I made up her children and what they would do. And because of that, I like to fill in the gaps in my head, see how they would have grown up. Like, say, Erin's relating some information she overheard to Erica and the kids are wondering if she's talking to "Aunt Janet" or "Aunt Annie" so one of them can come over for some game time or dinner.

Yes, my characters age over time. Instead of living in a parallel universe where they don't age. I'm going with reality. My first OC has the same birth date as me. My second is eleven years older than me. I am planning two or maybe three more characters. One will be female and will be a year younger than the second character and both have fathered a child and is born after the 2000s. I still have to think about the date. I also have a couple of adopted OC up for bid. Where I honestly don't do much and act more as dust collectors.

I like that idea - there's two versions, totally different time periods, but still (roughly) the same age. Allows you to do a lot with what's essentially the same character, but not.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme.....0972/image.png

Oh, the passage of time! That's a mixture for me.

A lot of the stuff in my roleplaying days would definitely happen in semi-real time, it would honestly depend on how much we were getting done honestly. So a good year could stretch across a year, but a year without a lot of roleplaying could only contain a few weeks or months of it.

I revisited a few old characters from an RP setting with a good friend of mine and even then it depends. For one set we had the time difference from when we left them be an actual decade, but for some we wanted to continue some old stories / do some stuff in between so rather than a decade it had been only a few months or years since the old days.

However most of my characters are built for stories now, rather than roleplaying. They're all intended for bigger processes.

Do they age? Absolutely, but not in real time technically. I've got a few chaacters born the same year as me or close to it and if I were to talk about them out of context then sure, 100% their age would line up with mine IRL but otherwise they typically don't age beyond when their stories take place

So if I'm only covering a two years of a character's life in a plotline (assuming they never show up again), then it's irelevant if more time than that has passed IRL. Of course, I'd treat them as older in sequels or cameos that took place after though.

On top of that I've got a few characters you could label as immortal for one reason or another, they'd look mostly the same even if a century had passed. Although they may change asthetics at that point.

TLDR; How it's handled varies from character to character, but the passage of time absolutely does happen for all of my characters. I just may not get commissions of it happening in a linear sense. They do all age, even the gods even if they don't look it. Summer doesn't last forever.

Second add-on to already huge comment: Sometimes for certain pictures or RPs some characters of mine will appear to not have aged. These are usually alternate canon exceptions, the core-canon version always has time pass for them, even if an old version is the one that's popular/being re-used.

Mine do but they live in the 35th century where advances in biological sciences, medical sciences, and cybernetic technologies make them either functionally immortal or extremely long lived.

For example, my character Janice was 94 when I first roleplayed her in 2014 and is currently 102 as of this past 2022 but she is biologically between her 20s and 30s by our modern standards, but that depends on who I roleplay with. I am constantly updating her character and story. She could be 136 and still look incredibly young.

Not sure what this exactly counts as but I feel its special in a situation its both yet not quite both at all.

My characters use to age, they all aged on a year-to-year basis, though as time has went on, I canonically made them all stop physically aging beyond the age of 25 years-old.
Specifically it being a literal byproduct or subsequent result of intense training - not very dissimilar to how one sees Goku & Vegeta train to get better as well. Though the purpose of this training is that it does something quite special to the energy in your body and makes it flow perpetually at an incredibly strong rate yet calmed to that of a soft-flowing river. Basically a ton of energy once surged and was unlocked, but once brought under control, would have massive benefits to the body to where it'd stop aging at whatever specific age one lands at.

There's only a few characters or at least currently, just one that is actually older than 25 years, I'd say he's closer to 30 or 35 if i had to guess correctly. Maybe even older. So that character is not physically aging beyond that point either.

Though prior to this little story beat that only exists in my head as I have not really had very express interest in sharing my own world that much via stories, my characters or the one I mainly used, aged with me - but to be fair, he is just me, maybe a bit modified or tweaked.