Arrgh! Mark! said:
Greetings, all.
A strange event occured recently; I recieved an email from my yahoo group messageboard from a random person wanting to play. Logically enough I asked a few questions - how old, what games did they like, that sort of thing - and got back a message that it was a 14 year old and she likes Shadowrun.
By profession I'm a teacher, and while I have no theoretical problem with gaming with a young girl (Always good to increase the gamers around the place) but I could see a bunch of real problems. Anyway, I sent an email back saying it would be unlikely, there's the problems of off-colour jokes, language and the like and that I'd have to meet and greet her parents if anything was to happen at all. Also, I mentioned that there were other options for her - there's a place in town that organises gamers together. I haven't recieved a message back as yet. Her original e-mail read like it was mature and she mentioned that she had already spoken with her parents about the fact she was talking to people over the internet.
Our group is a bunch of professionals and my ball-and-chain, a group going back 10 years of play-time. We've always had an open door policy of new people, though we've never had a problem of younger kids in the game.
Has anyone else had any experiences with this? Advice, or problems?
I think I have a problem with your posts. I don't think that you are giving all of the facts or you just don't like 14 year old girls and 40 year old men.
Seriously though, what do you teach at age 19 that makes you such an expert on life that you can judge how a 40 year old man or a 14 year old girl will fit in your gaming life? Your other players are for the record, 16, 17 and 20, so a 14 year old girl, with permission from the parents, is not that bad of a fit and remembering back to my own male youth, probably more mature. I could see the odd joke arising once or twice but as a responsible DM a quick, "let's keep it clean," speech on your part to the other players would most likely be enough to stop that in its tracks.
As to the 40 year old man, well, as Wiz Boot said, "wait until your 40". I'm not there yet, but soon. What you say might be true, he might be weird, I can only wonder what you will be like at 40 since you now at 19 have such a narrow opinion of others.
Perhaps you should re-list your ad saying something like, "Gamers wanted. Must be clean cut college or college want a be, ages 16-21 (and only 21 so we can have someone to buy beer). No weirdos and must be male."
I'm not flaming you, I just don't get it, truely. I could see a lot of problems from letting either in your group but I tend to focus more on what they can offer to the group rather than the potential problems that might arise. A 40 year old gamer, great, let's get him in and pick his brain. Unless he is new to the sport he must have great ideas and experiences. Bring him in for a game or two and tell him it is a probation peroid. If he turns out to be truely weird tell him that it is just not working out but don't put an ad out there asking for gamers and then getting mad that gamers respond.
As for the girl, well, girls are usually rare in the field so I always encourage them in the game and they usually keep the game more on focus rather than, "I roll to see if I am drunk yet." Although, sometimes it doesn't matter and people will try to get drunk in D&D no matter what you do.
