Do your player characters have offspring? This has come up once or twice in my campaigns and I'm curious if and how other GM's handle this sort of thing.
My character in our D&D4e game, where we were "defenders of the community" did. In the first season of the game he was merely married. In the second season he had one child, and in the third he had two. They were mostly background elements, but part of grounding him in the place he lived. For him the region wasn't just some abstract area the party had agreed to protect, it was his home where his family lived.
One of my players often plays members of one family throughout the ages, but although there is this family link, the baby raising/taking the kids to school bit never comes up.
For example, his 1930s League of Nations investigator has married and his wife has now had a son. Aside from some background stuff, the kid will not be a big part of future games with this character. However, there are plans for the son to carry on his father's law enforcement career, if my 1960s Man From Uncle game ever gets off the ground.
Has never become and issue. A couple months ago I did a one-off game with a friend and my PC got a woman he had rescued pregnant, although they didn't know it. I think he would have retired from the adventuring life and settled down. Maybe not, he was a bit of a cad.
Should be pretty common in Pendragon campaigns, although I have (sadly) never played it myself.
It happened once before a few years back, and it's just about to happen again (I tend to run very long-term interlinking campaigns).
I can't recall how I determined the number of babies, sex, etc. that first time. I just remember it was random.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;866035Do your player characters have offspring? This has come up once or twice in my campaigns and I'm curious if and how other GM's handle this sort of thing.
Happens pretty regularly, I don't see it as really different from introducing another NPC Ally, Dependent or Follower.
My players never really pursue romantic relationships with their characters and, as a result, the issue of offspring never arises. If someone wanted his PC to pursue a family, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed, but it would likely all take place off screen with the player summarizing for me in an email or something. I'm not interested in acting it all out at the table because a) I wouldn't enjoy it and b) I think it wastes other players' time.
Once established, the family members would become NPCs that I'd weave into the game once in a while, probably either for comedic effect or as part of an adventure (child kidnapped etc). We wouldn't be acting out domestic squabbles every week, that's for sure.
If I recall Pendragon has rules for handling such things. Its estate rules could probably be modified to handle "home" in general.
Yes, Pendragon is a brilliant example both of rules about this, and of how mismanaging your household can bring the mighty low!
Quote from: AsenRG;866062Yes, Pendragon is a brilliant example both of rules about this, and of how mismanaging your household can bring the mighty low!
makes sense for pendragon
Some do.
It's rare though. In part that is due to in game time running slower than real time - so not that much game time has passed for the characters. In part that is is due to the PCs' station or role being unconducive to a stable family life.
Common enough theme.
Lets see.
As part of an onging campaign. Son or daughter takes up the mantle of adventurer. This can go to generations in the really far flung campaigns. Heard of often. Only seen in action once in an Oriental Adventures campaign.
As a back-up character. One player allways started off like that in one campaign. Just one.
As a consequence of role playing. Players and DM might really get into that and play it through.
Could even be part of chargen! One play through of Tekumel's lifepath chargen system and ended up with two kids before the game even started! TSRs Marvel Superheroes also had options for family.
I've thrown it in games several times to tie the characters into the setting. I've found giving characters families makes them grow an awful lot. It's not to all players tastes though.
Happens often enough. Back when I was playing my year D&D game, we had children and grandchildren of the initial PCs as PCs.
Romance happens pretty frequently in my gaming circles, and babies have cropped up a number of times over the decades. The first time it happened to me as a PC was the result of a drunken post-adventure screw with another PC, and the two of us being aristocracy in a formal culture, we decided it'd be best to get married. It wound up being a relatively happy marriage, and we handled our young son like most aristocrats do: nannies.
That's turned out to be something of the usual approach (and it's not as if most adventurers aren't loaded). Another important factor's simply been plenty of downtime between adventures.
Quote from: kosmos1214;866063makes sense for pendragon
Makes sense for any long-term game where the PCs aren't playing Imperial Eunuchs in an ancient empire, you mean;).
I've seen a character or two get pregnant, but never an in-game birth, simply because of time scales. Most RPGs I've played in or run have tended to cram adventures together back to back, with just enough time in between to heal up, so I can't recall any campaigns running more than several months in-game, and most less than that.
I'm currently planning a campaign that I intend to run on a time scale of "one adventure per season" or "one adventure per dX seasons", so I've been rereading Pendragon's "winter phase" rules to work out how exactly I want to handle things like births, aging, etc.
Quote from: nDervish;866118I've seen a character or two get pregnant, but never an in-game birth, simply because of time scales. Most RPGs I've played in or run have tended to cram adventures together back to back, with just enough time in between to heal up, so I can't recall any campaigns running more than several months in-game, and most less than that.
I think this just must be a stylistic part of gaming circles. The ones I've been in would find the concept of relentless action-action-action to be stultifying, quite apart from that the world turns around us at its own pace. I'd consider a campaign lasting less than a couple of years game-time as an abject failure, and one of my two groups is currently at 16 years game-time and running. (Interestingly enough, given the topic, with the lead PC's children now 14 and 10 years old respectively.)
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;866035Do your player characters have offspring? This has come up once or twice in my campaigns and I'm curious if and how other GM's handle this sort of thing.
Male PCs often have children by their NPC spouses. One female PC I can recall had twins, but the (male) player had already semi-left the game. No female PC of a female player has ever had offspring.
Yes, it's happened quite a bit. Gets handled like other things, mostly. It can be handled by roleplaying and GM discretion, and how that works depends on the characters and the situations, of course (well, I say of course - I like games that make sense and mostly work like real life, when not involving fantasy races and magic - some characters have begotten or borne some interesting offspring). Some may decide to actually raise their children, which may change their "lifestyle" quite a bit (e.g. might give up habitual combat). Others may litter the world with bastards and perhaps do them a favor by staying afield and getting themselves killed off.
It can also involve rules systems. (I have roleplayed with the author of Naughty & Dice as GM (she's a very good GM), though AFAIK the rules didn't get very crunchy, though I was tallying my PC's erotic experience.)
I have usually had game time passing at about 4:1 to real time, so it has been more significant for longer-term players (who can see children born in-game grow to adulthood).
In my Ars Magica campaigns, which in game time, went over a 50 year period, the PCs had kids and grand kids.
Definitely in superhero games and a few times in Legends of Five Rings, but I don't remember PC babies showing up anywhere else. Dead babies in PC backgrounds, but not living ones.
Outside of one L5R campaign, I haven't had a group very interested in RPing family issues and having them intertwined in the campaign.
Quote from: Ravenswing;866125I think this just must be a stylistic part of gaming circles.
Most definitely. Rules play into it a bit, too (try playing an Ars Magica or Pendragon campaign without multiple years of in-game time passing), but I think group style plays a much bigger role.
Quote from: Ravenswing;866125The ones I've been in would find the concept of relentless action-action-action to be stultifying, quite apart from that the world turns around us at its own pace.
Interesting. The world turning at its own pace is, in my experience, the main thing that tends to push for back-to-back-to-back adventures. "
We need to form an alliance with the wizard living to the northwest ASAP, but the orcs to the west are fortifying and we don't want to let them get any further with that than we have to. Plus the trolls to the south might attack again at any time, so it would be good to launch a pre-emptive strike before that happens..." tends to make extended voluntary downtime seem unwise.
Just like in real life, I find PCs having children inconvenient. If one of my players would choose to go in that direction with his character, I'd be fine with it, but I'd make sure it'd be inconvenient for their adventuring "career". So far no one has ever suggested it, tough.
Quote from: AsenRG;866107Makes sense for any long-term game where the PCs aren't playing Imperial Eunuchs in an ancient empire, you mean;).
There are ways around producing offpsring that don't involve becoming a eunuch, you know.
Quote from: 3rik;866227Just like in real life, I find PCs having children inconvenient. If one of my players would choose to go in that direction with his character, I'd be fine with it, but I'd make sure it'd be inconvenient for their adventuring "career". So far no one has ever suggested it, tough.
There are ways around producing offpsring that don't involve becoming a eunuch, you know.
I thought about the inconvenience factor but honestly with the cash flow most adventuring parties have compared to other people in the setting, I'd think it would be pretty easy to hire people to take care of your children and make sure they have the best of everything. Of course depending on what society they come from and the setting, there may be social expectations that come with having a child and going off an adventure could be frowned upon. If family is considered important in the setting that might present some challenges depending on the particulars. But in terms of the inconvenience, it seems fairly easy for PCs to work around. I suppose when the children are old enough, mom or dad could always take them with them and show them the ropes.
Quote from: 3rik;866227There are ways around producing offpsring that don't involve becoming a eunuch, you know.
There are, but people, and by extension PCs, tend to eventually decide to produce offspring if they're able to;).
Quote from: AsenRG;866232There are, but people, and by extension PCs, tend to eventually decide to produce offspring if they're able to;).
Some cases make me wonder if it's really a
decision rather than a conformist Pavlov reflex, but you're probably right. Still, in my experience players don't seem very interested in including it in RPGs, maybe because the game is a way for them to get away from their real-life offspring for a couple of hours.
Quote from: 3rik;866234Some cases make me wonder if it's really a decision rather than a conformist Pavlov reflex, but you're probably right.
Whether the decision taken by some people is due to conformism, to their enlightened decision, or anything else, is frankly a topic I'm absolutely uninterested in.
What I know that if I was a conformist in real life, I'd probably have had no kids. Luckily, I have a very unflattering opinion about the common sense of most people, so I'm a proud dad instead!
QuoteStill, in my experience players don't seem very interested in including it in RPGs,
Our experiences differ
strongly on that account:).
Quotemaybe because the game is a way for them to get away from their real-life offspring for a couple of hours.
If that was true, it would make more sense that people who have real-life children would be less likely to have children in the game, and vice versa.
Since it's in my experience the exact opposite, I can only conclude your conclusion is untrue, and due to a previous post of yours, probably influenced by your real life views;).
Quote from: 3rik;866234Some cases make me wonder if it's really a decision rather than a conformist Pavlov reflex, but you're probably right. Still, in my experience players don't seem very interested in including it in RPGs, maybe because the game is a way for them to get away from their real-life offspring for a couple of hours.
You could be right, but my 8 year old son is very much interested in his PC's offspring, and was delighted recently to learn he was going to be a grandfather. :D I've seen similar with other players, very interested in propagating their PC's lineage.
Multiple times, but I've never seen a pregnant PC. And given the compressed nature of time in most games I've played in or ran, most PC's never have to deal with the trials of parenthood.
I did have one PC become a father in a more time-extended campaign, but he wound up essentially retiring in order to enjoy family life. That wasn't the plan, its just how things worked out.
Quote from: nDervish;866222Interesting. The world turning at its own pace is, in my experience, the main thing that tends to push for back-to-back-to-back adventures. "We need to form an alliance with the wizard living to the northwest ASAP, but the orcs to the west are fortifying and we don't want to let them get any further with that than we have to. Plus the trolls to the south might attack again at any time, so it would be good to launch a pre-emptive strike before that happens..." tends to make extended voluntary downtime seem unwise.
In campaigns with nonstop wars, in which the PCs are heavily engaged, sure. I expect so.
As in real life, the nations of my gameworld are not each one of them at war all the time, nor are the PCs necessarily heavily invested in their political fortunes.
Quote from: AsenRG;866107Makes sense for any long-term game where the PCs aren't playing Imperial Eunuchs in an ancient empire, you mean;).
true i wasnt trying to say it didnt apply to other games just with pendragons focus that it made sense it would have rules for such
I haven't really encountered this. Most of my players have not been interested in portraying this sort of thing in a game or portraying their characters as having romantic lives at all while the game is going on. If it happens, it is part of the denouement and is something that happens Harry Potter style after the campaign ends. This sort of thing is inevitable in certain games like Pendragon but I have never run any of those games. I own Pendragon and the Pendragon campaign but have never had any players interested in playing it.
Quote from: yosemitemike;866299I haven't really encountered this. Most of my players have not been interested in portraying this sort of thing in a game or portraying their characters as having romantic lives at all while the game is going on. If it happens, it is part of the denouement and is something that happens Harry Potter style after the campaign ends. This sort of thing is inevitable in certain games like Pendragon but I have never run any of those games. I own Pendragon and the Pendragon campaign but have never had any players interested in playing it.
Whereas currently IMCs two PCs have pregnant wives, and another is about to get married. :)
Wilderlands
Hakeem the barbarian - married, wife (Malenn the paladin) pregnant
Rey the rogue - harem, no children
Thuruar the cleric - single, no children
Karameikos
Earl William, Wizard - married (to Princess Adriana Karameikos), 4 children
Baron Bravery, Fighter - married, wife (Aleena the Cleric!) pregnant
Roseanne the Cleric - courting Squire Quintus Vorloi
Other PCs single, no children
Forgotten Realms
Baron-Warden Lirael the ranger - married, no children
Dunstan the dwarf warlord - engaged, about to marry Serka, a dwarf warrior
Other PCs single or have girlfriend/partner, no children
Quote from: S'mon;866305Whereas currently IMCs two PCs have pregnant wives, and another is about to get married. :)
Apparently we GM for different people who are interested in different things.
Quote from: yosemitemike;866306Apparently we GM for different people who are interested in different things.
Guess it's time for you to run Pendragon, then;)?
Quote from: AsenRG;866313Guess it's time for you to run Pendragon, then;)?
Lack of players might be a bit of a problem...
Quote from: yosemitemike;866299I own Pendragon and the Pendragon campaign but have never had any players interested in playing it.
The last time PCs got pregnant, they both died before coming to term in 50 Fathoms. One of them was splashed with dark water from the Sea Hags and had a crocodile baby as she died, which became our nemesis the Crocodile God, eventually becoming monstrous, Godzilla-like in size.
Quote from: slayride35;866324The last time PCs got pregnant, they both died before coming to term in 50 Fathoms. One of them was splashed with dark water from the Sea Hags and had a crocodile baby as she died, which became our nemesis the Crocodile God, eventually becoming monstrous, Godzilla-like in size.
The Surgeon General advises against Adventuring While Pregnant.
Quote from: S'mon;866327The Surgeon General advises against Adventuring While Pregnant.
Oh so very very true. That kicked off a brutally long revenge campaign in the Red Shetland RPG.
No pregnant PC's, I don't have any cross gender characters and none of my female players have ever wanted to explore that angle. I kind of assume that PC's won't get pregnant from lifestyle issues, and because even in my D&D I have birth control tea (based on Silphnum a real life but extinct herb allegedly i with that property) that is made magically to be highly prolific.
However pregnancy is playing a part in the current game. One of my current "rogues" from Pathfinder Epic 6 has a common life wife who says she is pregnant .
Thus far she is only a month in and as I told the player "She might be lying to get a more formal marriage from you" PC fence gets a shady wife is not news at 11
The player seems to be enjoying the side bit and is playing his character as happy about it. In fact its come about just about everyone in game is happy he settling down a bit and growing a bit less nuts
Well at least after after he gets the SOB who fire balled his wife's eel and pie shop.
I wasn't sure about trying this mind you since this is more D&D with Guy Richie directing it as a TV Show than standard D&D much less Pendragon but its worked out well and with the 'she might be lying" or she might miscarry or desert him angles in play I have an out if the player's want a more "trad" game.
Seems that at least in the campaigns I have seen. Players tend not to get interested in family untill about the domain level of play. Creating a dynasty. Others use it as a closing element as the character retires.
Not counting the occasional tryst that turns into more.
We tend to have campaigns where the PCs adventuring career is a wild-flurry-of-events that the PCs expect to resolve and eventually settle down from. Perhaps to an equally perilous lifestyle like warlord, but it's perfectly reasonable for them to say, "not at this time in my life." On the other hand, in the real world, many a child is conceived during rather chaotic times in peoples' lives. Who knows what is more realistic.
Anyways, when we do have campaigns that span years and decades, then yes, PCs do end up having families.
Ummm... My games are perhaps a touch less traditional in this manner than many. Just a smidgen...
Quote from: 5 Stone Games;866364I wasn't sure about trying this mind you since this is more D&D with Guy Richie directing it as a TV Show than standard D&D much less Pendragon but its worked out well and with the 'she might be lying" or she might miscarry or desert him angles in play I have an out if the player's want a more "trad" game.
The concept of Guy Ritchie running a D&D game is mind-altering in itself.
JG
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;866035Do your player characters have offspring? This has come up once or twice in my campaigns and I'm curious if and how other GM's handle this sort of thing.
Yes.
It happened in my GURPS Traveller campaign that I ran 2004 to summer of 2008. We actually played it in game - the fictional 8 to 9 months of the pregnancy. The character gave birth to twins - a boy and a girl whilst adversaries were attacking their
Empress Marava class Far Trader on the ground. The crew of the
Maggie Thatcher had set sort of a trap for a recurring nemesis that they had - it just happened that the character went into labor at the same time as 2 or 3 climactic fight scenes.
(
Yeah, I paced events like an ongoing action TV show)
- Ed C.
Quote from: James Gillen;866471The concept of Guy Ritchie running a D&D game is mind-altering in itself.
JG
Heh. Its an in game store, drop in game designed so anybody can come and go and its built around just making a quick buck.
The core idea of the game is "you bring your troubles on yourself" As for the kind of fail train you see in GR's movies, I just roll a D20 higher is better for the PC's whenever I'm not sure about something or the rules don't cover it. The vagaries and swing of the die combined with the players captures the feel.
Given the players are basically Fantasy Heisenberg , Viking Stacy Keach playing Joe Pesci's character from Casino, The Cool Collected professional and a professional Strangler who works for the noble families along with a motley crew of occasional mutts, a Nordic barbarian hunter used as muscle, Fantasy Lara Croft and others its going to have a lot of troubles.
The fireball incident for example along with the capture (well probable capture) of one of the PC's is entirely agro caused ironically by a legal job they did and by the person they didn't know very well
Of course it helps that I've run this kind of game before, its my go to game when some or all of the group can't make it some of the time.
I played a Slayer in a Buffy RPG campaign who ended up getting pregnant in season three. We had one season of pregnancy and one season of baby-minding.
It fit well with the dramatic tone, I thought, and there were a lot of subplots around it.
EDITED TO ADD: That's the only example I can think of, though. Pregnancy has come up in some other games, but I can't recall another time a PC had a baby born in-game.
A large part of the plot of one of my groups has derived from the following sequence:
Mighty wizard, enjoying getting away from it all on her infrequent downtime, hangs out incognito with the local gypsy kumpania.
Elven prince (and one of the world's great swordmakers), really wanting to get away from it all, hangs out with the same bunch of gypsies.
Wizard thinks that elf is very cute, and goes to significant lengths -- as elves go, he's considered remote and standoffish -- to get him into the sack. Baby results.
Wizard finds out that elf is a prince, somewhat to her consternation, and that there are political enemies that would love to get their hands on the baby.
Wizard also finds out that a fundamental law of the elven empire is that all children of the imperial family must be escorted by no fewer than two Imperial Guardsmen, at all times.
Hilarity ensues, and that's eleven game-years ago now ...
Quote from: S'mon;866327The Surgeon General advises against Adventuring While Pregnant.
The Surgeon General would be right in this case as this turned out very badly with the Crocodile God harrying us for the rest of the campaign.
Quote from: S'mon;866327The Surgeon General advises against Adventuring While Pregnant.
"Side effects of alcohol abuse may include pregnancy."
Quote from: James Gillen;866778"Side effects of alcohol abuse may include pregnancy."
Well that may have lead to the two pregnancies in this case due to carousing rules in 50 Fathoms...
Quote from: S'mon;866327The Surgeon General advises against Adventuring While Pregnant.
Tell that to my poor Elven Wizard who got eaten by a pack of Velciraptors just a week or so after learning she was pregnant.
Our Wednesday night group has a Fighter who owns a tavern and runs it a bit like the Playboy mansion.
Meanwhile the group's Cleric was tasked with building an orphanage.
The children are mostly offstage but the groundwork is established for all sorts of complications and plot hooks.
My own PC is moving into 'crazy cat lady' territory with all his pets and wards, but no children.
Quote from: Trond;866052Should be pretty common in Pendragon campaigns, although I have (sadly) never played it myself.
A long term Pendragon campaign is hugely involved with PCs desperately trying to produce enough potential heirs to have at least one male survive to adulthood.
It's not uncommon to role-play our characters' kids in "generational" style campaigns. About half the PCs in Shadows Angelus 2: Ten Years After (http://surbrook.devermore.net/worldbooks/shadows_2/shadowsindex2.html) were children of the PCs from the original Shadows Angelus (http://surbrook.devermore.net/worldbooks/shadows/shadowsindex.html) campaign.
Hell, my first character in that milieu has grandkids now. Don't know if I'll ever get around to playing any of them in a future campaign....
Quote from: Bren;866322Lack of players might be a bit of a problem...
Come on, Bren, when the GM wants to run game X, how many groups are prepared to say "no"?
Quote from: AsenRG;867263Come on, Bren, when the GM wants to run game X, how many groups are prepared to say "no"?
You got me. :D It took me a while to realize you were joking. Fortunately I reread your post before I posted my first reply. :)
Quote from: Bren;867293You got me. :D It took me a while to realize you were joking. Fortunately I reread your post before I posted my first reply. :)
:D Finally! After so many attempts *shakes fist at the sky*!
And yes, the GM has a disproportional-though-not-total influence on what is going to be played next, but the goal of the post was, indeed, a joke;).
I think Adventures in Tekumel gets my personal wha??? moment when during the lifepath chargen Im rolling up family after deciding my female character is setting out to adventure right out the gate of 15 years age.
Roll for spouse(s): 37 = none. Concubine(s): 49 =none. All good here.
Roll for kid(s): 100 = THREE!?!?!
The first and third of which are dead. The second of which is still kicking at age 2. doh! Calgon Take me Away!
And I was promptly wiped out by Hluss while poking around one of their freakish barges.
Never even made it to Livyanu! Tekumel is harsh! :boohoo: