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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
How do you guys handle young characters?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6426560" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>How did we get from, "I won't let you play a child in D20/D&D family games.", to "Most PCs are banned as concepts."?</p><p></p><p>My reasoning is pretty clearly spelled out.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>If this is Mutant and Masterminds, then we have entirely different conceptual possibilities. Terrific Tom the Wonder Boy could be an alien or he could have 'mutated' or been granted magical powers so that his status as a child is entirely flavor and by superhero genera convention being a kid only matters when you want to do a scene about that. Otherwise, they get treated by grownups as if they were adults because well, 'superhero'. </p><p></p><p>However, in general, I find that parties with widely disparate power levels for the characters cause dissatisfaction and table concept. If Terrific Tom the Wonder By is just as powerful as Gravity Girl, The Blur, and so forth, then I'm ok with that. For unbalanced characters, well I'd have to have very high trust in the skill of the players, preferably because I've completed games with them before. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My post was made in direct response to a post asking how to mechanically handle children. I provided my answer to that as well as an answer as to why PC's couldn't be handled the same way as NPC's. Not giving PC's a mechanical difference at all would be one way to handle that, but I'm not sure that it would be a very satisfying one for every player, and again I'd have to have absolute full trust in the players skill as a role-player to pull it off and handle all the issues that 'I'm a kid' brings up which includes everything from lack of process simulation to potential issues with child victimization and violence perpetrated by and against children. I find that putting children 'on stage' just makes already difficult subject matter more difficult, and for me as a GM it breaks emersion for NPCs to neglect or overlook the minority status of a character as well as rendering the point of RPing the child well pointless. In general, I'd strongly encourage someone that wanted to play a younger character to play someone who was 16 or 17 - still young by modern standards but 'practically' physically mature.</p><p></p><p>I generally do not try to draw spotlight to the fact that in ancient societies, the concept of childhood as we know it doesn't exist. In general, I find that when you highlight something like that, people take it is as an endorsement. So, no, that isn't the answer either, even if I am well aware of persons like Charles XII of Sweden.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6426560, member: 4937"] How did we get from, "I won't let you play a child in D20/D&D family games.", to "Most PCs are banned as concepts."? My reasoning is pretty clearly spelled out. If this is Mutant and Masterminds, then we have entirely different conceptual possibilities. Terrific Tom the Wonder Boy could be an alien or he could have 'mutated' or been granted magical powers so that his status as a child is entirely flavor and by superhero genera convention being a kid only matters when you want to do a scene about that. Otherwise, they get treated by grownups as if they were adults because well, 'superhero'. However, in general, I find that parties with widely disparate power levels for the characters cause dissatisfaction and table concept. If Terrific Tom the Wonder By is just as powerful as Gravity Girl, The Blur, and so forth, then I'm ok with that. For unbalanced characters, well I'd have to have very high trust in the skill of the players, preferably because I've completed games with them before. My post was made in direct response to a post asking how to mechanically handle children. I provided my answer to that as well as an answer as to why PC's couldn't be handled the same way as NPC's. Not giving PC's a mechanical difference at all would be one way to handle that, but I'm not sure that it would be a very satisfying one for every player, and again I'd have to have absolute full trust in the players skill as a role-player to pull it off and handle all the issues that 'I'm a kid' brings up which includes everything from lack of process simulation to potential issues with child victimization and violence perpetrated by and against children. I find that putting children 'on stage' just makes already difficult subject matter more difficult, and for me as a GM it breaks emersion for NPCs to neglect or overlook the minority status of a character as well as rendering the point of RPing the child well pointless. In general, I'd strongly encourage someone that wanted to play a younger character to play someone who was 16 or 17 - still young by modern standards but 'practically' physically mature. I generally do not try to draw spotlight to the fact that in ancient societies, the concept of childhood as we know it doesn't exist. In general, I find that when you highlight something like that, people take it is as an endorsement. So, no, that isn't the answer either, even if I am well aware of persons like Charles XII of Sweden. [/QUOTE]
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How do you guys handle young characters?
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