Quote from: Benoist;447307Actual quote: "Its only 'creepy' and wrong because adults shouldn't be playing children characters in an RPG."

That's what Ed actually said (link to the actual post is in my previous one). He did spell out that to him, adults should not play children characters in an RPG because it is creepy and (morally) wrong.

Jeez I got 'out of town' for 3 to 4 days to a convention and then I get quoted or referenced for two pages.

Yes , I think its strange/weird and more than a bit odd for adults to play underage characters.
(morality wasn't really, technically the main concern)

Teenage characters with MENSA-level intelligence or creativity might be alright for adults to play - but NOT characters under the age of 13 or so.
You might wonder about the motivation for that or if they are working out issues at the game table that maybe should be done elsewhere (at least not at the game table)

Whats wrong in their eyes with playing adult/'overage' characters ?


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;447546Jeez I got 'out of town' for 3 to 4 days to a convention and then I get quoted or referenced for two pages.

Yes , I think its strange/weird and more than a bit odd for adults to play underage characters.

Teenage characters with MENSA-level intelligence or creativity might be alright for adults to play - but NOT characters under the age of 13 or so.
You might wonder about the motivation for that or if they are working out issues at the game table that maybe should be done elsewhere (at least not at the game table)

Whats wrong in their eyes with playing adult/'overage' characters ?


- Ed C.

Maybe they just wanna try something different?

Not everything is "working out an issue at the game table", guys...sometimes people just wanna do something different in a game.

Now if you have a player who ALWAYS wants to play a 7 year old, or a LesbianStripperNinja or what have you, there might be cause for alarm...but if you're putting a game together and someone goes "You know, I always play Big Damn Hero Paladins...think I wanna be a 10 year old, lovable scamp thief this time", I don't think it's a big deal...nor do I think it's a big deal if they're not 100% Authentic 10 Year Old...'cause they probably weren't 100% Authentic Big Damn Hero Paladin either.

Koltar - I'd like to believe that you have an argument, but you haven't presented it yet.  You can certainly find examples of people role playing a character different from themselves for creepy/wrong reasons, but I submit that the extremely common case of a player playing a character who kills large numbers of sentient beings without being traumatized by the experience should be considered a much more worrying warning sign than a player playing a character who is ten years old.

Quote from: two_fishes;447363Or the super-hero genre, where putting children in danger is routine, in the form of side-kicks.

Generally speaking, in the supers genre kid side-kicks tend to be in their teens.  And as I said in the OP, that's different from playing an under-13 kid.

The main difference is that an adult can basically get away with playing a semi-convincing portrayal of a teenager by basically playing him as an adult with varying degrees of immaturity (some teenagers are very immature, others fairly mature).
But you can't just do that extrapolated and end up playing a believable child; pre-adolescent children aren't like "immature adults".  They're completely different.

Beyond that, the pragmatic fact is that players tend to play teenage characters that aren't just there to be utterly special-snowflake annoying fucks; whereas with kid-PCs that's almost always what you get. Barring those cases which are expressed by Koltar's complaints of "creepiness" (which are I think the considerable minority of kid-PCs), the vast majority of players who want to play child-PCs do so because it is a cheap way of demanding special attention in the game.

RPGPundit

I haven't encountered any players who wanted to play children. I have been in games where the PCs had to make child characters (such as a one shot horror scenario). It was effective in the later case (because we were at such a disadvantage), but it was hard to role play IMO.

I played a 12 year old super hacker in a sci fi game styled after cowboy bebop, it went well for the 10 or so sessions we played for. I can see how some people would take the piss with it though.