Fantasy Fulfillment: Having Children (Or Not)

[Kaodi]

Classically we speak of roleplaying games as allowing you to imagine you are a powerful wizard, mighty warrior, or checks notes dragonman mcdragonface. But how often do people use RPGs to explore the fantasy of having children, or alternatively being child free for a little while?

 

[ichabod]

I did sort of the reverse. I was in a game where half the characters were outcasts from their family, and the other half didn't have any family left alive. So created a character who had grown up with two loving parents, who were still alive, and who he still had a great relationship with.

 

[Clint_L]

I have never created a character who is a parent. Childcare is hard enough to manage in the real world!

 

[aco175]

I once played a deadbeat dad who was always adventuring and spend all his money on B&Ws. I seem to recall that they came through the town one time and the wife was remarried and happy.

Another time we had someone who claimed to be my child to go on adventuring with the group. Never determined if she was actually my child though.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think pretty much always I've left PC's families unspecified or faded into background. In an adventuring game, a family is a liability. Note how rarely a BBEG has one.

For that sort of fantasy fullfilment, I would rather look at a non-violent RPG, if they exist at all (I have never played a RPG that didn't have at least some threat or danger).

If some of my players really wanted to add such fantasy to our game, I would grant them some sort of plot immunity.

 

[GMMichael]

Classically we speak of roleplaying games as allowing you to imagine you are a powerful wizard, mighty warrior, or checks notes dragonman mcdragonface. But how often do people use RPGs to explore the fantasy of having children, or alternatively being child free for a little while?

Never?

Shoot. In the Matrix: Resurrection, "the fantasy of having children" is (SPOILER but not really) what the Matrix uses to keep Trinity enslaved. So, it doesn't really sound like a good time, unless the game's point is to escape the burden of parenthood...?

 

[dbm]

The Great Pendragon Campaign covers 80+ years and PCs are expected to form dynasties. Song of Ice and Fire RPG is primarily focussed on conflict between great houses so family ties are key and children can be both an asset and a vulnerability. Ars Magica focuses on covenants (communities) where the mages extend their lifespan with magic and the non-Mage characters will age and retire / die during the extended play so families and generations may come into play.

The super heroes genre often features characters with family ties be they parents, children, siblings, partners.

 

[Richards]

I had a PC, Jase Syngaard, who was a hideous (facially scarred), dumb brute of a human fighter, but his secret background was he had been married and his wife died giving birth to their only daughter, Hope. Syngaard immediately dropped Hope into the orphanage at the Temple of Pelor, claiming he'd found her in the woods, where he knew she could have a good life, and then became an adventurer so he could provide for the orphans at the church. None of this was mentioned to the other players at the beginning of the campaign, but it all eventually came out. Twenty levels later, when we finished the campaign, Syngaard retired as an adventurer and became a full-time dad to Hope.

Johnathan

 

[Faolyn]

Ages ago, I was in a game where another character and I (both orcs) adopted an orphaned human child. We got her halfling-sized (it was 3e) armor and nunchucks to protect her. Then there was a time-skip of 10 years and the GM made her into a flail-using paladin.

 

[MGibster]

But how often do people use RPGs to explore the fantasy of having children, or alternatively being child free for a little while?

Other than Pendragon, where characters get married and have children they end up playing as characters when the parent inevitably die, I can't think of many games where that kind of thing is built in. In Cthulhu type games, like Trail of Cthulhu and Delta Green, players can select family members as their sources of Stability (something that helps keep them sane), but it doesn't have to be kids and who knows how involved they'll be in the game?