Fantasy Fulfillment: Having Children (Or Not)

[ichabod]

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?

Your family can be allies, patrons, or dependents in GURPS. That makes them more involved in the game. If you have local family in your background in a D&D game, I will (as DM) make use of them for side quests.

 

[Autumnal]

Living relatives whom the character still loves and wishes to help showed up in Vampire and Wraith from time to time. Some great drama in them, often but not always tragic - it was possible in both games to provide support and protection from the shadows.

I liked that. Children were never possible for me thanks to chronic illness, and sometimes I enjoy playing with the imaginary possibilities.

 

[MGibster]

Your family can be allies, patrons, or dependents in GURPS. That makes them more involved in the game. If you have local family in your background in a D&D game, I will (as DM) make use of them for side quests.

I had forgotten about GURPS. Their values as advantages or disadvantages could be affected by the frequency of their appearance in the game. i.e. An ally who was likely to appear in a session was more valuable than an ally who was unlikely to appear.

 

[Jd Smith1]

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?

Man, I can't remember the last time I had a campaign that shallow. The '80s?

Anyway, I've had players choose marriages, parenthood, adoption, opening a strip club karaoke bar, investments (extremely common regardless of the genre), running for public office, running a prostitution ring, real estate speculation, various types of inns and bars, exploiting alien races, collecting pornographic ethnic art, collecting body parts of things killed, forming a band, collecting rocks, forming a sports team, building a library, seducing other PCs mothers, and countless more.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've certain had characters in certain games that had children (which I have not). It wasn't the main thrust of the game, but it seemed to follow from events.

 

[BookTenTiger]

In my last long-term D&D campaign, we had a lot of siblings / cousins... Two half-elves were half-brothers (through their human father), and three dwarves were cousins all under the same patriarch. The theme of the game wound up being "bad dads." The dwarves patriarch turned out to be the BBEG, and there were just a bunch of bad dads throughout.

However, as I think of it now, no one had children!

 

[John Dallman]

I had forgotten about GURPS. Their values as advantages or disadvantages could be affected by the frequency of their appearance in the game. i.e. An ally who was likely to appear in a session was more valuable than an ally who was unlikely to appear.

I've had a couple of GURPS characters who had families. One family was definitely offstage, and was merely part of the way that character (a TORG Dwarf) subverted Tolkien's ideas about Dwarves. The other family was definitely in-game background and appeared several times.

 

[Moonmover]

I once ran a campaign where a PC got someone pregnant. However, the campaign did not last long enough for the child to be born.

I once played as an old paladin who came out of retirement. His motivation to go adventuring was to raise money for his son to go to wizard school - that tuition is a killer! I talked to the GM and got his agreement that should my paladin die, my next character would join the party as a level 1 wizard seeking revenge. That did not end up happening, though.

That's it.

So yeah, not a lot of child-rearing business in my games. One of the PC's in my current campaign is newlywed, though, so maybe this will be the time it comes up.

 

[GreyLord]

Well, there were two CRPGs...or more like Console/handheld RPGs.

Fire Emblem:Awakening and Fire:Emblem Birthright/Conquest/Fates

 

[aramis erak]

I've seldom made families matter outside Pendragon and L5R. In those two, families are important as a genre trope.