Quote from: RPGPundit;258248Really? that's a feature of western literature? Could you please give an example?

I'm butting in a little, but there's Conan.  Granted, he's not a warrior as a child, but he was raised under horrid circumstances (brutal slavery) and became a mighty warrior in his immediate post-adolescence.  How old was Conan in his first adventure?

!i!

He was in his late teens, at the youngest. Its not the same as the 12 year old axe murderer. I'd really like to know exactly what claims to western literary tradition Engine has, for precedent of the 12 year old axe murderer.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Jackalope;258274I don't know where you're getting the idea that I have some kind of problem with homosexuals.  One of the best players I ever had was gay.  He's the guy who introduced me to Ninjas & Superspies.  And I've never said I won't game with women (there are two women in my Pathfinder Society group).  And finally, I only said that people who want to have trivial in-character conversations with trivial background characters annoy me, not that I'm opposed to all in-character talking.

Seriously, I wish you knuckleheads would actually pay some fucking attention.  If you're going to bash me, at least know what the fuck you're talking about.

What's trivial to you might not be to someone else.

Plus what is stopping you as a GM from making that NPC less trivial?  Is the party interrogating an "trivial" shopkeeper?  Make him a novice member of the sinister cult the party is investigating, or have a villain question the shopkeeper later to get some dirt on the party.  Perhaps the shopkeeper noticed their weapons and/or armor and tips their enemies off so they can better prepare.  Perhaps the shopkeeper gets murdered and the police/city watch find evidence to detain the party.

The point is not to get irritated when players do seemingly trivial things.  Everything can be used to your advantage and employed to help craft your story.  In an RPG nothing is trivial, because the future has not been written.

As for your thoughts on homosexuals, you used the term "boyfriend" to provoke those guys and you wonder why people think you have a problem with homosexuals.

Then there's the subject of your choice of vocabulary.  The moment you use the word Assmuncher you undermine any chance of people taking you seriously.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;258277I'm butting in a little, but there's Conan.  Granted, he's not a warrior as a child, but he was raised under horrid circumstances (brutal slavery) and became a mighty warrior in his immediate post-adolescence.  How old was Conan in his first adventure?

Conan wasn't raised in slavery.   Conan was raised in a village in Cimmeria.  You're thinking of the movie, which is completley (offensively) inaccurate.

And he was 15 or 16 when he first set out in the Vanyr lands, though he was by all marks a full grown man.

The definition of "underage" is dependent of the society. We have played teenager girls in Aquelarre who were to be married being 15, because the society had other mores and that was the way things were done. Those 2 character were manipulative bitches, used sex to get things done, murdered some people, and were the byproduct of being raised in a cutthroat environment like the Borgia era. And it was fine, as we all knew what the ge was about: cutthroat intrigue in the Borgia court.

I have also ran fantasy campaigns in which the PCs were teenager Orlanthi fleeing the Lunar army, and they had to do pretty rough things to escape and fight the enemy, and to avenge the treachery that caused the fall of their families. We had a similar situation in one RQ Vikings campaign. So we had teenager people who made things that, to our perspective would result brutal and horrifying, but made sense in the context of the setting. One of the male PCs, 16 years old, raped a French woman during a raid because that was usual in the era. We didn't dwell on any of this things, we didn't describe them in lovingly detail, but they certainly happened and I asked the players to try to portray the consequences on their PCs. No one was specially stricken by that, really.

Frankly, as usual in this debates, I think that a grain of sand has become the fucking Himalaya. Fucking hysterical crowd unthinking, I think. Oh, and what Clash said.

Quote from: RPGPundit;258279He was in his late teens, at the youngest. Its not the same as the 12 year old axe murderer. I'd really like to know exactly what claims to western literary tradition Engine has, for precedent of the 12 year old axe murderer.

RPGPundit

The youngest murderer in Canada I think was at one point a 12 year old girl who killed three members of her family.  I can't find an article at the moment but I'm pretty sure that's the gist of it.

I doubt he'll be able to back that up, but I suspect you are only asking that question because you are sure of that.  The question here is about context.  What was the purpose of this game and this character?  Was it splatterporn or something deeper than that?  Was it handled with care and exploring a theme, or was it just a chance for Engine to play a psychopath?

If the game details the paranoia of living life as a serial killer, or even the legal system as a killer is processed, then perhaps it could make for an interesting story.  If it's a hack and slash adolescent axe murder fest then perhaps it's a bit shallow.  Not that there's anything wrong with hack and slash, it's just not for me.

Quote from: Jackalope;258274I don't know where you're getting the idea that I have some kind of problem with homosexuals.

Yeah, that came outta nowhere. Maybe it was when you said "go tell it to your boyfriend, pudfucker."

Quote from: Jackalope;258274And I've never said I won't game with women (there are two women in my Pathfinder Society group).  

I could cut and paste from any one of the megathreads where you talk about how "bitches bring too much drama" and women just can't accept being told how stupid their ideas are, but I'm a bit short on time at the moment. maybe later.

You stay awesome, Jackalope!

Quote from: Idinsinuation;258289Not that there's anything wrong with hack and slash, it's just not for me.

Like homosexuality!

Quote from: Jackalope;258286Conan wasn't raised in slavery.   Conan was raised in a village in Cimmeria.  You're thinking of the movie, which is completley (offensively) inaccurate.

Mea culpa -- the movie it was.

Okay, so Conan is off the hook, but what about some of the more murderous protagonists in western fairy tales?  Jack the Giant Killer leaps to mind.  Still, I don't think the spirit of the grimmer fairy tales is captured by a 12-year-old axe murderer.

!i!

Quote from: Ian Absentia;258344Mea culpa -- the movie it was.

Okay, so Conan is off the hook, but what about some of the more murderous protagonists in western fairy tales?  Jack the Giant Killer leaps to mind.  Still, I don't think the spirit of the grimmer fairy tales is captured by a 12-year-old axe murderer.

Yeah, exactly.  Jack the Giant Killer isn't some traumatized freakshow, he's a foolhardy young man who doesn't recognize his own limits and overcomes them through clever thinking.  Jack the Giant Killer is a typical medieval folktale in that it is an allegory for the passage into adulthood.

And while Jack is described as a "youth," he's more likely to be young man than a young boy.  His reward for killing the final giant is, afterall, the hand of King Arthur's daughter.  Not exactly an appropriate prize for a 12 year old.

The youngest group I GMed was a bunch of six year old characters. The first session I just used them as a plot hook. They chased a kitten into the forest and got abducted by goblins. A few of them escaped and told the adults. Five miniutes later, fully armed warriors and Magi teleported in and slew the goblins without breaking a sweat.
 
After that, the players kept asking for more stories where the kids could help out. I used them as kidnapping victims, baker street irregulars, and even gave them a couple of pint sized adventures where they evaded drunken pirates and stood their ground against a mean dog. Eventualy I shipped the lot of them off to magical boarding school and never ran an adventure with them again.
 
Dang. In hindsight I realize I was *this* close to inventing Harry Potter.

Quote from: Engine;257158No, seriously, I played a 12-year-old boy who killed people. Murdered them. Slaughtered them, with glee and an axe. Shouldn't I be shunned or ridiculed or something? Or is it only sex-and-children that's deserving of reprehension, not ultraviolence-and-children?

To my mind the point is that children should not be murdered or raped. That is to say, child murderers aren't the same as murdered children.
 
 
But for the sake of argument if you had a bunch of 12 year old boy player-characters that you steered into gory death to satisfy your self avowed murdered child fantasy needs then yes, I would encourage Pundit to put some sulphur and brimstone in his pipe and get rid of ya.

It all depends on how you defne "underage".

One of my best campaign was run in 1990/1991.  it was nicknamed the "Magic Bus" campaign or story. The premise was that a typical commuter bus somehow got Zapped! or "BEAMED" to another planet while in the midst of rush hour traffic.  The player characters were all passengers on the bus and were asked to create characters for 1986-era North America/USA and tell me why they were riding the bus that day in the game - they had no idea of what was ghoibg to happen in the rest of the campaign after that.

 I created about 15 NPCs to fill out the rest of the bus passengers, then rolled to see which ones "survived" the cosmic special-effects laden trip to another planet & star system.


Here's the part related to the thread topic:
One of those NPCs I created was based on a 15 year old gorl that most of the players knew or had met. As I based the bus route on one that a lot of college kids and High Scool kids noirmally ride around rush hour.   Then , one of the players suggested "Hey , why don't we ask J___ T___ to join tyhe game? She could play Jenny"
Well "J____T____" did join the group - playing a character that was originally based on her. She also started immediately always sitting near my GM spot as I ran the game...and a few thought she might have a 'crush' on the GM.  Not a big deal really - but I had an underage kid playing an underage kid, even though she was in MENSA that was the reality of it .  The  group was 4 women and 1 man as the players, 5 women if you coutnt that added player.

In the contecxt of the game it worked out and her character did contribut. She was basically playing a slightly altered version of herself. In real life she had gone camping with her family and her family's friend - so she did know basic outdoor survival skills.

Guees I'm saying it all depends on the context of the game you are running...and what and who your players are comfortable with.


- Ed C.

Yeah, okay, so that was a creepy story.

Quote from: RPGPundit;258248Really? that's a feature of western literature? Could you please give an example?

RPGPundit

Not that I'm all up in Engine's biznezz.... or even that its a remarkable strong case, but in Neuromancer, by William Gibson, one of the characters was a former member of a cannabilistic gang of street kids in the ruins of Berlin.

Of course, he betrays everyone and isn't the main protagonist... and its all character history rather than being played out on the pages but....