Pcs with kids?

[the Jester]

How many of you have run games with pcs who were parents or played characters with kids? (The character, not the player.) How did it affect things? I ask because one of the pcs in my current campaign has a young half-dragon child (long story) from the last chunk of the campaign she was involved in five years ago (game time)... She's placed the waif in a monestary far from where the group currently is, but I'm just curious how others have dealt with such things.

 

[Crothian]

I've had it happen a number of times. The adventureing Dad would take a few months off to be with his family, but then need or want would get him to go out and risk his life. I think it helped with role playing. We had a dwarf get into an hour long discusion with a red Dragon on Child rearing. It was a really interesting bonding moment that allowed them to avoid a nasty fight.

For me I allow it effect the game as much as the PCs want it to. If they just have a kid that they name but keep it in the background, I don't do anything with it. But if they want the child to become a little more important I've always got ideas for that.

 

[Mercule]

It's happenned twice, IMC.

The first time was a PC who married an NPC. They found another NPC to watch them when they went to reclaim the PC's throne (i.e. did what nobles do with kids -- brush them off).

The adult children (2) were brought to live with Dad (Mom was killed in an arena combat) years later. There were a couple of storylines that really exploited the whole father-doesn't-know-the-kids thing.

The second time, I used the child as a plot point. This time the mother was the PC (I don't know if I've ever actually had a PC to PC romance in my game). The romance was very off-camera and it was all agreed on because I said "I've got a great idea for a campaign building off the last one, but you need to have a baby."

Turns out the mother was the grand-daughter of one of the major villains in my game and the baby was the psionically endowed culmination of his work. Kind of a savant. He kidnaps baby, the party goes after the baby, etc.

 

[Sixchan]

Well, when we did it (back when I was a Player), we got halfway through the campaign and then went off on a whole reverse-starwars thing. For a change, the bad guy was the son, and so we alternated adventures between the Good Party and the Son's Evil Party and had a final showdown where the Good Party died.

Losing that Character was possibly one of my worst times in D&D...

 

[DarkSoldier]

I write fantasy fiction and stat out the characters for my own reference. Here we go.

Kerad Dyilf, one of my pet characters, is currently in Ravenloft, where he has been for the last 20 years. He has adopted a caliban named Silas Fitzroy, whom the Vistani dropped in his lap (literally).

He actually has a biological son as well: Arik Dyilf, a dysfunctional, misanthropic, mysoginistic.. I could go on. I'll say that he was born while his mom was a vampire, even though he's fully human.

Arik's "benefactor" is a vampire darklord who wants Kerad badly, and she's using Arik and his mom to get him. When they all get together, it is going to be one Baator of a family reunion!

PS: Download my netbook!

 

[Darkness]

PS: Download my netbook!

Cool site that you got there. But this is just... interesting.

 

[Azure Trance]

Cool site that you got there. But this is just... interesting.

For an April 1st adventure perhaps? The one where PC's keep smacking their heads as they run into creatures like this and Lamb Chops...

 

[the Jester]

Not long ago I ran an adventure where the pcs killed Pikachu (an advanced yellow shocker lizard)...

 

[Dave Blewer]

I once played a street samurai in Shadowrun who had an estranged family. Worked very very well... My son got involved in a street gang and to start with I got the SR team to act as unnofficial muscle for what was a very low ranking street gang... When this attracted all the wrong attention things got a bit more serious. One of my most fun PC's I have ever played.

Scorpion was a Bioware samurai who had had his emotions repressed so he was aware of his family, but didn't really feel a connection with them. At the start of the campaign I had also been missing presumed dead for two years so my wife had remarried.

As the sessions progressed Sciorpion slowly rediscovered his emotions, came to terms with his feelings for the family - sorted out her rather errant new husband and set him on the straight and narrow, pulled his son back from the brink of anhilation. Met another woman (another bioware Samurai sent to assasinate him, called Mantis) fell in love with and married her.

Sounds like a soap opera doesn't it. I can assure you that it didn't feel that way and in between all this I had to deal with Cyber Vampires, insect spirits, Toxin shamens, corporate double dealing, werewolves, space travel and about a gazillion gun and spell fights.

 

[enworldatemylogin]

I've dealt with this in a few games in various ways.

Once played a bard in a Dark Sun campaign who met and married a defiler turned preserver and had adventures until wife gave birth to twins. It helped that another player also had a kid, but he was playing an elf and elves in Dark Sun are usually dead beat dads. The game ended soon after so the biggest effect was the roleplaying through the pregnancy.

In a Fantasy Hero game I was playing a Death Knight, (not quite the undead skeletal DnD type), who decided to pick up a kid from an orphanage and try to raise her, (evil but with a spark of goodness). That was interesting, I was actually having trouble trying to remember I was evil. The GM herself had children so she was actually pretty good at coming up with interesting situations.

In some stories I wrote for flavor in a high powered game, my character had a child or two, but the actual game never got to that point. When Icewind Dale the computer game came out, I ended up making some of my party members the grown up version of those in the story.