14 year old girl wants to join my game

[Dr Simon]

Anyway, I played on sunday and I just realised I was running a (Ars Magica/Riddle of Steel) game where there was implied rape (Between BBEG and a village girl), the ritual killing of an infant (A fey queen did it - not the PC's), we all had a few cans of alcohol.

Things I wouldn't raise up in a year 9 classroom.

Strange, considering English Lit. in my school covered Cider With Rosie (implied rape) and Macbeth (infanticide) without flinching. We would have been about 14 at the time. One of our set texts for the exam was a book called The Cone Gatherers in which a gamekeeper, driven by sexual frustration, jealousy and underlying psychoses kills a deer in an almost orgiastic frenzy.

Fourteen year olds are quite capable of dealing with some pretty mature themes.

However, whether they should do so in a stranger's house in a situation involving alcohol, when one of those people is a teacher, sounds like grounds to tread carefully.

On the subject of running a game with kids, I recommend Goonalon's 'Lost Boys' story hour. However, he's DMing for an all kid group (4 boys of 9-12). I would think the primary 'problem', leaving aside the paranoid innuendo, is that 30 year old gamers are going to want to play a different style of game to a 14 year old, and that a lone teen novice in a group of experienced adults may feel rather isolated.

 

[Wraith101]

I dont know whether you guys are Victorians but I grew up in Geelong and we have an excellent solution there. It's called the Geelong Gamers Guild, we meet Monday nights in a guide hall with people of all ages.

There are wargamers, CCGers and roleplayers (with the older crowd tending more towards the rping than the youngsters of course) and we often have younger people at the roleplaying tables.

I know there are similar groups right around Victoria; this particular style will probably suit her better than roleplaying in a private home.

These organisations just add an air of legitimacy, and it does help that parents can see other parents picking their kids up at the same time!

 

[krissbeth]

Shortman Mcleod, etc,

Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but you just accused me (and by association my gaming group) as a particular breed of sexual deviant or being creepy; I don't think I deserve that label.

Let us also not forget that the girl approached me; I wasn't wearing a dark coat and hanging around the schoolyard handing out Players Handbooks here.

I realize that it can go both ways, but I was referring to the whole anonymous approach by a 14 year old girl as creepy. Strange girl, internet, minor... all signs point to "creepy."

However, I'd also call an older group actively pursuing a lone, strange 14 year old girl as a player creepy too. (Imagined situation, not accusing you of anything.)

 

[Shortman McLeod]

Shortman Mcleod, etc,

Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but you just accused me (and by association my gaming group) as a particular breed of sexual deviant or being creepy; I don't think I deserve that label.

Let us also not forget that the girl approached me; I wasn't wearing a dark coat and hanging around the schoolyard handing out Players Handbooks here.

I know nothing about you personally, so I was in no way attempting to malign you, my friend. I apologize if it came out that way.

But I stand by what I said: when I ask myself what kind of 30something male gamers would want to play with a 14-year-old girl, the answer is decidedly unpleasant.

And that's part of the problem, isn't it? No matter how lily white your intentions may be (and I believe, without a doubt, that your intentions are perfectly innocent, otherwise you wouldn't be discussing the situation here ) the perception is a distinctly negative and unwholesome one.

As the parent of a daughter I can tell you this: if my teenage daughter were to be invited into a gaming group consisting of 30-year-old men, I would go visit them with a baseball bat.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

Let us also not forget that the girl approached me; I wasn't wearing a dark coat and hanging around the schoolyard handing out Players Handbooks here.

Totally irrelevant. The issue is your willingness to game with her, regardless of who initiated the contact.

Is it really worth risking the potential perception of being a predator just to have this person in your group? :\

 

[Jeysie]

I'm a little dismayed at some of the responses here, I have to say.

I was always the sort of kid who got along better with people older than I am, so there were several adults that I enjoyed talking to, and I didn't have a lot of friends my own age. I can remember one specific 50-something-year-old that I spent a lot of time hanging around as a pre-teen, listening to him tell all sorts of stories about when he was a younger man. Nobody thought that was a problem, and nobody thought he was being creepy, and if anyone *had* said anything I would have rightly stood up for the matter.

Has society really changed that much since the early 90s? Meh.

I *would* try to steer the 14-year-old towards a younger group first, but only *because* I agree that she might not want to play the same game a bunch of 30-year-olds would. Otherwise, I don't find it creepy at all; a 14-year-old is old enough to make her own decisions (provided her parents raised her right ), and she may also be the sort of kid that doesn't fit in around kids her own age.

And I have to ask, if this was a 14-year-old *boy*, would people have an issue? If not, I don't see why there's a problem with this. We have 30 and 20-something guys in my RP group, and we've gamed with teenagers before, and we didn't have any problems.

Kind of disappointing that when a teen wants to interact socially with a bunch of adults, the reaction is "OMG, they're a bunch of creepy predators!" instead of, "Aw, it's good to see the big divide in understanding between the generations being reduced for a change, instead of widened."

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[Harmon]

I find it pretty sad that the first place the vast majority go is to the sex with a minor thing.

Personally, I would tell the girl- "I need to speak with your parents first." Talk to the parents (with a recorder (digital or tape) present) and find out what they know about FRPG, explain what it is if they need that, then explain my method of gaming (we are an R rated group), and ask them if they mind their daughter involved in such a group. If the answer is "sure, why not?" then I am okay with it.

Personally, I have only ever found fourteen year old girls attractive when I was fourteen years old, they lack a lot.

If anyone called the police on me I would have a couple of people that I could rely on as witnesses to say- "he never touched her," and "your kidding, right? You know this guy thinks anyone that would do that should have their throat slit, and their body dumped in a dumpster?"

 

[Shortman McLeod]

Kind of disappointing that when a teen wants to interact socially with a bunch of adults, the reaction is "OMG, they're a bunch of creepy predators!" instead of, "Aw, it's good to see the big divide in understanding between the generations being reduced for a change, instead of widened."

You're not a parent, are you?

 

[Jeysie]

You're not a parent, are you?

No. However, I am: 1. a woman, and 2. one of the few adults, it sometimes seems, who really remembers being a teenager.

I know that I and most of my friends were intelligent enough as teens to make our own choices as to who to hang out with (and those of us who weren't had the rest of us to set them straight). I also know that I enjoyed my time spent with adults as a kid, both male and female, because I was mature enough that I got along better with people older than me, and it let us get to know each other's generation.

It seems like the generation gap just gets wider all the time, and this sort of reaction fuels that problem. The less that kids and adults are allowed to interact on a non-authority basis, the less each can understand the other.

If I was the parent of a teenager, I *would* want to get to know anyone they were hanging out with, teen or adult, and know that they weren't doing anything dangerous, weren't drinking, were decent people, etc. But after that, I'd let them be. Because if I raised my kid right, a teen should have enough brains to know what's right and wrong, and people need to be free to make their own choices.

And because I know from my own experience that being more comfortable around people older than you are is something that happens, and better to have adult friends in that case than spend your time alone (as I sometimes had to).

Peace & Luv, Liz

Edit: Realized I had a perfect example. When I was 16, I had the chance to join a group of three men, one 19 at the time, the others in their late 20s- early 30s, to film a public-access TV show in the basement set of one of the guys, in a nearby city, once a week. Not only was my mom OK with this, not only did none of them molest me, but I had a lot of fun; learned about TV production, filming, scriptwriting, and editing; got to see myself on TV; and the then-19-year old and I have been good friends for 11 years now. In fact, we became roommates for several years, letting me move out on my own and get a headstart on making myself independent.

If my mom had panicked at "letting me hang out with those obviously creepy guys", not only would I have missed out on a few months of a lot of creative fun, but heaven knows what my life would be like now. Probably still stuck in my hometown friendless and working crap jobs trying vainly to save up enough money to move out.

 

[dvvega]

@Jeysie. (and everyone really)

I think the point being raised here is not how you personally see the situation but rather how most of society will.

When I was a kid around 10 (going on 25 years ago now) I used to be very imaginative (not that I'm not now) and create stories and characters and so forth. This put me completely in the "weird" box with children my own age, even some of their parents who didn't understand that I was creative (being an only child helped). Nowadays we have a lot more psychological research that would have labeled me as a problem-solver with lateral thinking tendencies and high creativity. This is relevant because society and its methods of discovery, investigation, and labeling has changed a lot since I was a kid.

I too preferred the company of adults and I taught older teens to play D&D (red/blue boxes) so that I could have a mature group to play with. My group of peers made me the DM thinking it was the boring job, the most work (silly them) but they just wanted killing and looting as their main purpose in life and I didn't see that as fun personally. I then moved up my age bracket to adults 20+, answering advertisements in the local bookstores and so forth. Could you imaging the furor nowadays if a young teen answered an advertisement in the paper for people wanting to role play? My parents met every group I played with, okayed it, and they had to drive me to and from games, all was fine. They even opened their own house to host games so that they could get to know people as time went on.

But nowadays parents may not even know their child is communicating with adults, and predators are becoming more evolved in their methods. Back then we didn't hear about all the perverts in society going around because back then those perverts didn't have access to the methods of "grooming" available now. In addition I believe parental responsibility has gone down the tubes in general. As a teacher I see it more and more. Parents who have extremely sick children dumping them at school because Wednesday is their "tennis/golf day with friends" and a sick child isn't going to wreck that.

I personally never suggested Arrghh! Mark was a pervert, however society nowadays with all the press this kind of thing gets will think so. It really has nothing to do with how upstanding he is or how much he openly states that he's not like that. Society wants sensationalism, they see monsters in every shadow. The reason why? Because if you don't see that monster in the shadow and it REALLY IS a monster then you've just let your child fall into the hands of a predator. Just recently here in Australia over the last 6 months there has been massive focus on child protection and pedophilia, with rings of paedophiles being shut down. Do you honestly think that if a 20-30+ male allowed a 14 year old girl to play D&D with his group of mostly males that our currently non-roleplaying public would see that as okay especially with all the bad press out there?

Once again it is not the original poster people are referring to when they say "that's creepy" but rather the "evidence" in the matter: older male, extremely young girl, group of males roleplaying. And the girl doesn't have to be young to cause a problem. I had one female student who was 18, and her brother 19 in my class. One evening there was a late event on at the campus and they needed a lift home or spend hours on the bus. I offered them and 2 other students a life home because it was on the way. However the next day I was pulled into the office and told that I was never to do that again because those young adults could bring a case against me and there is no way I could prove nothing happened in the car. I know myself, I would do that - but society doesn't give a damn. And that is what everyone is trying to get across.

The risk is just too great.

D