Imagine the following situation:

You have announced to run a gritty hard scifi game at a local gaming convention.

When you show up at your table, it turns out that of the six players, two are 12 year old girls. A quick conversation reveals that they have roleplayed before (once, some kind of homebrew), they chose your game because they like scifi (although you haven't heard the scifi things they mention), they claim their parents are ok with them playing (but they aren't anywhere near), and they are eager to play.

You have prepared a pretty straight forward investigation/action scenario, but it touches some mature themes. There is nothing in it that is overtly unsuited for children that you couldn't tone down or change on the spot, but the base premise still is "Blindsight" meets "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". A 12 year old might get the "rough picture" ("those aliens killed and replaced the scientists"), but they probably won't get the nuances and implications (which might be a good thing). Your pregenerated characters all have some transhumanist element in them: Cyberware, shared consciousnesses, one is an outright AI, that kind of thing.

The other players appear to be normal convention folk, perhaps a little bit on the annoying side.

What do you do?

Run the game.  Why wouldn't you?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;923532Run the game.  Why wouldn't you?

Agreed.

But from experience heres some thoughts.

Keep an eye on the other players. Not because they might cause problems. Merely because they may forget that theres kids present. Make sure the other players know this right off. Both my younger sisters were handling D&D at around 10 and 8 and by the time they were 13 and 11 respectively were pretty good at handling this stuff. So 13 is my personal threshold for when I stop worrying as much. (But still keep an eye on things anyhoo...)

Describe what sort of adventure you are running and see if that really appeals to them. This is good advice for dealing with any age or gender really.

If you still feel uncomfortable then have them bring over their parents to confirm its ok. It shouldnt take that long and will put at least one possible worry at ease.

Summon forth a staff person to fetch said parents. Get their buy-in. Make sure the adventure is not going to squick out 12 year old girls. You just became a herald of the hobby, like it or not, and your behavior/performance is going to leave an impression on young minds. No pressure or anything.

If you are concerned about the apropriateness of your game for the girls a check in with the parents is more than appropriate.

Remind the other players that two of the players are young. Repeat as needed. Be aware that the girls may be the worst offenders.

Have fun.

Quote from: Pyromancer;923531What do you do?

Keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get out of hand with the rape jokes and over the top violence.

I was once 12 years old, and had a sister.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;923568I was once 12 years old, and had a sister.

Yeah, at 12 my sister was quite in the know about a lot of things. I remember her writing stories about an Indiana Jones-esque gynecologist named Smiling Gilbert Goldfinger and his nurse, Miss Moist.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;923568Keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get out of hand with the rape jokes and over the top violence.

I'd expect players at a convention to keep it clean no matter what the age of them or the other players. Certainly that's my UK experience. I guess other nationalities may be different. IME from the D&D Meetup players basically never swear at the table, never mind make rape jokes. I have occasionally met male American players who swear at the table - "My PC has a goatfucker beard" said one Californian - so could be cultural difference I guess.

Nothing in the OP sounds inappropriate for 12 year olds.

We had this issue almost exactly, and it occurred twice at UK Games Expo last June. The GM's toned things down and continued and then advised the organisers who reiterated their policy that underage children should have a parent gaming with them. Games are often marked as Mature or Over 18/18+ accordingly but parents either don't read the game blurb for a pre-booked game or just dumped the kids and left the area.

Google the SF they mentioned on my smartphone, read the plots. If that doesn't tell me anything, I'd check with the parents, but I suspect they've left to rest a bit and wouldn't be easy to find;).

Then I'm going to run the game anyway, and damn those torpedoes:D!

As you might have guessed, this happened to me. I didn't put much thoughts into it at the time, just told the other players to behave like there were two 12 year olds present, and then we played. About an hour into the game, one of the mothers showed up for 20 seconds, but was gone before I could talk to here. The girls had lots of fun with their neurally linked cyborg twins, and didn't seem to mind too much that they were killed and replaced by "body snatchers" in the end.

Nonetheless, I think I should have talked to the parents first, just in case.

I don't really run games at cons anymore but when I did I always assumed a general audience and kept things PG.

I usually run horror games, so 18+ for me, but I'm okay with young players for D&D or Warhammer even - if I think the scenario ain't, then I'll just ask that 18+ is sticked on my game list during the con.

Quote from: Pyromancer;923531You have announced to run a gritty hard scifi game at a local gaming convention.

What do you do?

After having been screwed by fickle GMs, I have sort of a hard line on this: run the fvcking game.

If it was really supposed to be gritty, then it might not be exactly what you pictured, but you'll probably still have fun. I know I would.

Just roll with the punches man. Gaming is awesome and it has lots of different players. Though there are players I would not tolerate (put shortly: assholes of various stripes), I think if you are offering up a game at an open convention, you have to be tolerant of a variety of gamers.

Sorry Im definitely one those that wouldn't have permitted the kids to play. When I game with my twin 10 year old boys, we play with that in mind. When I work up a game for adults, the content is different, the conversation at the table is different, the way I approach GMing is different. It may sound petty but I would probably have had to excuse the kids, unfortunate but that's the way it goes.