On marriage

[Miretar]

I have been playing Stardew since it came out but none of my characaters have ever married. Here’s why:

At the beginning of the game 20 years elapse between your grandfather’s death and taking possession of the farm. Calculating from the death of either mine or my husband’s grandparents that would put my character’s age between 39-51.

Let’s discuss Sebastian, Maru, Abigail and Sam. Aside from being too young for my character they wind up as huge disappointments. First Sebastian and Sam confide their dreams to my character, as they might to a sympathetic older adult. Both want to leave Pelican Town, which I think is great. A few birthday gifts later, they’re willing to throw their dreams out the window and go live on a farm they’ve never visited. This makes me want to scream.

Maru is clearly bound for greater things beyond Pelican Town and it would be wrong to hold her back.

Abigail is a slacker, supposedly going to school but never studying. Then she invites my character to her room at night. I may have gone to school in the 70’s but still.

Haley clearly should go off too and become a super model.

Penny-nice but not much personality there.

Emily possibly a stalker type. When I walked into her house and into the dream sequence and her her say “Septimius’ and my destinies are intertwined,” my character’s first urge was to call a realtor, put the farm on the market and disappear into the night. I see Emily in an upmarket coastal city running either a New Age shop or a hand made clothing boutique.

That leaves only 4 choices. Shane, Harvey, Elliot and Leah. All of who are nice, but whom my character doesn’t want to marry.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I have been playing Stardew since it came out but none of my characaters have ever married. Here’s why:

At the beginning of the game 20 years elapse between your grandfather’s death and taking possession of the farm. Calculating from the death of either mine or my husband’s grandparents that would put my character’s age between 39-51.

It's XX years and while that can be interpreted as 20 in Roman numerals, many interpret it as <random number> of years. So they play the game as an RPG. Play the role you want to.

Let’s discuss Sebastian, Maru, Abigail and Sam. Aside from being too young for my character they wind up as huge disappointments. First Sebastian and Sam confide their dreams to my character, as they might to a sympathetic older adult. Both want to leave Pelican Town, which I think is great. A few birthday gifts later, they’re willing to throw their dreams out the window and go live on a farm they’ve never visited. This makes me want to scream.

Maru is clearly bound for greater things beyond Pelican Town and it would be wrong to hold her back.

Abigail is a slacker, supposedly going to school but never studying. Then she invites my character to her room at night. I may have gone to school in the 70’s but still.

Haley clearly should go off too and become a super model.

Penny-nice but not much personality there.

Emily possibly a stalker type. When I walked into her house and into the dream sequence and her her say “Septimius’ and my destinies are intertwined,” my character’s first urge was to call a realtor, put the farm on the market and disappear into the night. I see Emily in an upmarket coastal city running either a New Age shop or a hand made clothing boutique.

Many people have this reaction to Emily buuuutttt..... Junimos. Wizard. Goblin. Flying Serpents. Krobus. Galaxy Sword. Flying Skulls. Dinosaurs. Obelisks. Return Sceptre. Totems. Slimes.

And Fish that wear Hats.

Emily is the only Villager truly in tune with this insane place.

That leaves only 4 choices. Shane, Harvey, Elliot and Leah. All of who are nice, but whom my character doesn’t want to marry.

All of the dateable Villagers are a pretty blank slate and are stand-ins for a few different archetypes. Many are also quite young and while some may have life goals, they can seem simplistic. So especially as an older gamer they lack the complexity of a full personality and I think that's just running into the realities of game design. Having been made by one younger person and needing to get the game out the door in a working fashion means that complex character arcs for 10 (later 12) people plus the rest of the Villagers is something that simply didn't happen. I've mentioned many times in the past that reading the Dev Blog from start to finish is VERY informative when it comes to designing a game. Frankly that's the gold on this site, the insight into the time and efffort it takes to design a labor of love from scratch.

Understanding those real world restrictions, I approach the game as an RPG and I play the role of the farmer of about her late 20's who has some personal issues stemming from her previous lines of work. And I take the game from there into different directions.

And your concerns are why I started (OK and mostly stopped-started-stopped LOL) writing about the game because it's incomplete that way. I wanted to allow the characters to be more than just the archetypal templates that they are because of IRL restrictions.

And frankly RPGing is just fun! Make it what you want! And yeah if your Farmer is in their 40s, well there's Harvey! He's supposed to be a great husband and still keeps his business and hobbies. But if they're all understandably too simple then at least you can invite Krobus to be your roomie to get that last Stardrop!

 

[REtroGeekery]

It's XX years and while that can be interpreted as 20 in Roman numerals, many interpret it as <random number> of years. So they play the game as an RPG. Play the role you want to.

I have always interpreted the "XX" as "an indeterminable number of years in the double digits". Honestly, it never even occured to me to try to read them as roman numerals since roman numerals aren't used elsewhere in the game.
Since the farmer was a small child -so young that grandpa's ghost isn't even sure his grandchild would remember him, so probably eight or under- you can choose to age your farmer anywhere from eighteen to sixty, although higher ages can be tricky as you need to account for Lewis and Evelyn remarking on how long they knew your grandfather. Of course, most characters in the game don't age so I guess you could work that into your story.
You can even make the farmer half Tamaranian or a blue humanoid human-alien hybrid that doesn't age by human standards.
The game leaves most of your farmer's backstory (and all of their lige goals) for you to fill in.

That's probably why Harvey, Eliott, Shane, Emily, and Leiah read as 'older' singles while Sebastian, Sam, Alex, Haley, Abigail, and Penny read as 'younger' singles.

You can also remain single (some of my farmers have) with an optional roommate if you just want the daily interaction and/or opportunity for that extra Stardrop. The game doesn't really bix you in with that kind of thing.

 

[Jayamos]

As others have suggested, I use headcanon to make the dating work for me.

My farmer is typically half my age or less (I mean there is no way Current Me could handle a life that strenuous—I’d be in bed for a week after every Spring 1). Talking about dreams doesn’t imply to me that they see me as older, just that they want to get acquainted; I just met someone IRL who’s middle aged and mentioned a possible career shift, which comes to about the same thing.

I imagine ways the “younger” characters could be educated/mature beyond what dialogue suggests (e.g. Maru could be home while she’s looking for a suitable post-doc and via her or her father’s connections is able to work out a remote position exploring Stardew Valley’s exceedingly unusual environment once she realizes the farmer is The One). Or their stated dreams might not truly match their deepest desires (e.g. Sam loves music but doesn’t actually want the life of a touring musician). I like the way the blank slate quality Lew mentioned allows for my own creativity to unfurl.

Which is another way of saying IRL I wouldn’t date any of them either, but I sure enjoy playacting to my own script.