From: mfp+@CS.CMU.EDU (Michael Polis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: Re: SOND, was RE: a New line
Date: 17 Dec 92 01:43:16 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

In article <1992Dec16.020910.7541@news.columbia.edu>, jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) writes:
|> 	Wait a moment. What exactly are people looking for in this? 
|> 
|> 	When I first saw this, I was picturing something like NET.RPG - 
|> a realistic, generic system specialized to deal with young PC's, which 
|> seemed like a neat idea because it is something not handled well in other 
|> RPG's. After all, children are not just adults with lower Strength, 
|> Intelligence, etc. Skills must be modified to include some of the basic 
|> motor and mental skills which adults have which are just developing in 
|> children, etc. Some of the situations mentioned were an Arthurian setting, 
|> Horror (Stephen King's 'It'), and some others. 
|> 
|> 	OTOH, Steve Spencer, at least, sees a genre-specific 'silly' RPG
|> about children of our culture.

No, the post was by me.  I don't intend the game to be completely silly,
but I do think that it must be somewhat light-hearted.  Children are not
very serious, and I think a game played in a purely serious manner would
not do them justice.

I agree that parts of my post were specific to modern children, but
modern children are the only ones I know.  I invite your input on children
of other eras, but a culturally independent system for children is a
difficult task.  Children are, to a great extent, who you tell them they
are.  In the middle ages, children were treated as tiny adults, differing
in only wisdom and strength.  Later, when parents found it necessary to
protect their children from the world, we get more modern children; and
now children are caught in a battle between their protective parents and
the invading world, and the world seems to be winning.  All of these
children differ from their parents in unique ways, and as it is these
differences on which the game most places its focus, culture independence
is a weighty task.

Of course, there is a difference between the culture and the genre.
Modern children can search for buried treasure ("Goonies"), fight
supernatural monsters ("It" (I haven't read the book, but it sounds
like this is what it's about)), stop a spy, or get lost on the moon.

|> mfp+@CS.CMU.EDU (Michael Polis) writes:
|> >The scale should be geared towards children, since they are the players.
|> >You should retire from the campaign when you get too old.  Adults fit
|> >into the category of gods or monsters (a superintelligent race of giants).
|> >Maybe kids should get 2d6 on abilities, and adults 4d6. 
|> ...
|> >Agility may be an exception to this, in that children may well rate higher
|> >than adults in this area.
|> 
|> 	Some sort of 'willpower' stat would be an important stat to 
|> represent growing responsibility - which is not neccessarily too well 
|> connected with age. Also, since PC's will presumably be exceptional 
|> children, I would be careful about absolute limits, recalling the feats 
|> of child prodigies. 

Well, child prodigies tend to have one area in which they excel, so this
might better be handled by an exceptional skill.  Also, not all campaigns
need involve exceptional children.  Many children's adventure stories
involve ordinary children who happen to have extraordinary adventures.

But the statistics could be rethought.  It doesn't make all that much sense
to roll every few years to see how your ablities are going to develop
(although the mechanics certainly are easy).  Perhaps this would be a
good system for statistics:

There are two factors to the development of statistics, nature and nurture.
The first part, nature, is fairly random.  You can't control who your parents
are.  So you roll for each statistic when you create the character.  You get
maybe a third of this to start out, and then the rest of the points come
periodically as long as nothing happens to stunt your growth (you need to be
well nourished, you shouldn't smoke :-), etc.)  The second part, nurture,
comes from the development of the character.  If a character plays sports,
then his strength, endurance, and agility should increase; Tetris would
increase hand-eye coordination.  Maybe the way to do this is to count the
number of times ability checks are made, and to give you a point in the
ability for every 100 checks.  Of course, this requires attention to prevent
abuse ("OK, I've lifted the rock 100 times.  Do I feel any stronger?")
Another way would be to simply mark down which attribute a character had used
the most in each session, and require 5 sessions to increase an ability one
point.  The degree to which nature and nurture are components of each
ability may vary.  Height and weight strike me as an important attributes
for children, with their effects being in combat, reaching things, and
fitting into various places.  Height, at least, is based solely on nurture.
Newsgroups: rec.games.design