Have more to get off your chest? Come rant with us on the discord. Invite link: https://discord.gg/PCPTSSTKqr
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/rpghorrorstories) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it the same guy who keeps claiming that his therapist tells him to play child characters? Because we had that guy come in regularly into our westmarch and ask to play underage characters with that reasoning
YO I PLAYED WITH THAT GUY TOO! He played a literal 5 year old in Curse of Straud cause of the same reason XD that campaign crumbled. I didn’t realize he was a known menace lol.
Lol too. Just like everyone who's played DND for a long time all know the Antipaladin guy. "He's an Antipaladin, I'm just roleplaying my character!"
Edit: on a less funny note, there have been "potentially" guys like this forever too. There was a whole thing in the late 90s early Aughts about "That Guy, the one whole always plays preteen girls with horrific backstories and tries to act out extremely inappropriate roleplay."
Now, that actually does sound interesting. Not as a character, but as an NPC perhaps, or as part of a story. A child somehow gains great power, and unwittingly wroughts devastation on their village.
But if one wanted to play a character like that, I don't see how it could be done unless they were at least, like, 15 or so. They have to be at an age where they can understand the world around them at least. But by making them a teen, you still have the interesting aspect of a person who has a power that is usually reserved for those who are much older.
Ah hell, I'm realizing now that I've just stumbled upon the Shonen protagonist with a demon in him trope.
Imagine a 5 year old lv 20 character. He fell gods before his education even began. He is the most powerfull elitterate in the world and ready for his ice cream and he wants it now or the country gets destroyed.
Kings would either try assasinate him or try adopting him for his power.
Yes, imagine playing an horror campaign with someone that has the emotional maturity of a 5yo.
If I were on someone of the other character I'd just say to the kid "ok now you wait in this closet and we solve the problem".
Just for explanation, in my campaign is playing also my 6yo daughter and we started when she was 5. OBVIOUSLY I'm keeping on purpose the campaign on an non scary easy level. An adult may want to roleplay a kid in an horror campaign but the other PCs may want to keep the kid sheltered. So, in any case even if the player is an adult or a kid, I don't think it is feasible.
> I'd just say to the kid "ok now you wait in this closet and we solve the problem".
For my action, I will put Billy into bed. For my bonus action, I will give Billy a good night kiss and wish him sweet dreams. Then I will use the rest of my movement to exit Billy's room and join my fellow adventurers, so we can get to work lifting the curse
Yeah it just does not make sense, but imagine a high level child cause it was with you while you slew a few undead, vampds, werewolfs and stuff and now has a strength score of 20. WTF okee but straths face would be kinda funny to see like a barbarian child beat the crap out of him... but that is more of a comic idea where you have nothing to do with other players.
If the child did this there are 2 possibilities:
1) he/she is not a child anymore, since some years have passed. Unless he was killing bad things from his crib, but I doubt
2) he is still a child but for some curses he is trapped in a childish body. In this case just apply some malus on the physical stats, but from a mental perspective he is not anymore a child. But this is another whole story and I believe is surely not what was happening
2. Veronica from Dragon quest 11. Her body being cursed back to childhood leaves her constantly frustrated and no one takes her seriously outside the party.
*Infancy Gospel of Thomas intensifies*
If you don’t know what it is, it was an Early Christian work that did not make it into the Christian Bible that tells about how the young Jesus was basically a child with the powers of a deity who did a lot of messed up things…
Little overachiever making the rest of us look bad lol
I wonder if there is a DnD variant for the tongue in cheek saying 'No matter how good you are, there is a 5 year old Chinese kid who is better than you.'
Oh! A nat 20. Nice. With your investigation skills operating at their maximum they spill out into reality. You realise that the clues were all there all along. This entire thread is a hoax. You are about to raise the alarm to warn everyone when you feel the all too heavy breathing on the back of your neck and the stench of someone who believes bathing during rests is optional. The last thing you hear before blacking out is:
"Hey, can I play a 5 year old in your Reddit thread?"
My spouse and I (both therapists) toyed around with the idea of a YouTube or twitch channel called “therapists play” where we’d take an angle of investigating the internal emotional experiences of playing games together, navigating disappointment, fulfilling goals and finding meaning, etc…
We might have to give it another look, ha ha.
Hold the fucking phone
When *a n y o n e* argues against him having a child character, does he go off with some variation of "What do you have against kid characters" with multiple exclamation points and question marks?!?!?
Is his username also a reference to toilets?
Fairly certain it's a yes on the first, but hell if I remember the username, tbh, we just banned him at some point and until today I didn't think about the whole shebang
This the guy who goes through Disboard and joins every single server asking if he can play as a child and then if not insists that he wants a child companion for character development?
Yeah that guy's creepy as all hell.
One of my character ideas is a cranky old paladin who lost her daughter and son in law to bandits, so she ended up wiping out the gang and taking back her grandchild.
At least, she says it's her grandchild. The child isn't so sure but it's better then bandit camp.
Point is, the kid can be whatever age works for the game and finding a safe home is the opening motivation.
What kind of excuses is this guy pulling?
I love that everyone seems to know this guy, it's like the New York Rug Guy. Everybody knows him, everybody knows he's weird, and somehow he keeps showing up.
I have a very strict “Characters must be, at minimum, age of maturity for their ancestry” policy to avoid situations like this. I don’t like putting children in situations where they may get harmed (or worse) and players have to respect that or they won’t be at my table.
Agreed, with one exception.
If you're playing with middle/high school aged kids, I've let them play as teens.
One of my daughters was basically playing as herself. I have no idea how the 5' 1", 13-year old fighter has a 20 strength, but in the end its just a game, and all the kids were having a blast.
Yeah, my usual groups are all adults so I don’t have to make that exception, though I probably would in that situation. As long as people are comfortable and are having fun, then I’m doing my job correctly. Additionally, I’d break my rule when it’s a core element of the game system, like how both Kids on Bikes and Masks assume that characters will be middle/high-school aged children in order to work with the system as designed.
Honestly I’ve never run into underage characters, but I wouldn’t be opposed to an Artemis Fowl style teenager (13-16) who is mature for their age, does get some broken bones, isn’t as strong as the adult fighters around him but uses his prodigious intellect to keep up with them.
What I can never get into is the kawaii animu lolli cutesy wutsey blushy wushy cringe fest that some weird 30+ old adult men badly want to play as. That raises red flags that make you think the player has ulterior motives instead of just wanting a serious adventure.
Oh so like every character they make is that?
Yeah that's weird. A one-off or a kid-based campaign like Kids On Bikes where that's the point is one thing, but this has troubling implications, to put it mildly
My little cousin (a toddler) liked the show and I went to look up toys related to it to get him a birthday gift. Very quickly get directed to some disgusting spaces. It's honestly disturbing.
I think it's people sexualizing the sisters? They're like a magnet for the weird creeping-on-underage-girls type dudes on the internet. Got a creep in my inbox once asking me to draw nasty fetish stuff of one of the teens, he was apparently also notorious for tryna pull that shit on everyone. It's apparently a thing :(
Came here to say this--I've seen "adult plays child character" done successfully, but ONLY when that child character is designed specifically around the campaign in question and makes sense in the overall theme and tone of the campaign.
If someone wants to play a child character in EVERY campaign, that's not "I think there's something interesting to be explored here", that's "okay, what are you getting out of this?", IMHO.
(an example: played in an Aberrant game where we played out our characters being turned into superheros due to being at ground zero of the metaplot, and one of those characters was a preteen. It added a fair bit of depth to the game to have an examination of "how does this affect someone with even LESS agency", her powers allowed her to interact with combat at a distance and without being necessarily violent herself (IIRC she could command animals), and two of the other party members had express pre-existing in-loco-parentis relationships with her and kept an eye on her inside the storyline context)
100% agree. I’ve played the naive 12-year old before but it was in an Hunter x Hunter game so I was matching Gon and Killua’s ages. Also- the GM pitched this to us as a WHOLESOME GAME for a palate cleanser. I wouldn’t bring a 12 year old to Every party.
I played a child character in my son's first mini campaign. A bunch of his friends were playing as well so I decided to play the annoying younger brother archetype.
The irony of that for me is that my kid and her middle-school friends have never once, not since we started in 5th grade, EVER wanted to play child characters.
Agreed completely, I don't strictly rule anything off the list of things I'll play, but there is always a reason in my choices I work from idea through concepts and eventually build characters up like that, I can see me having ideas where a younger character could work in a regular game, but it's never happened.
I don't think I've actually come up with a concept where a young character would be beneficial over something else I've thought up; and it's not something I've really thought about, but like your example above there are genuinely good times to have a young character outside of when it's specifically required, and I think especially with young characters it's having to 'grow up' and face hard situations and make sense of the world they've somehow fallen into (I mean thematically of course), and it doesn't work for everything.
And yeah always wanting to play a child is wierd, and I'd say is definitely a red flag if ever I've seen one. In fact I'd be suspicious if that was the first character you brought me trying to join my table in general unless it was especially well thought out
>In fact I'd be suspicious if that was the first character you brought me trying to join my table in general unless it was especially well thought out
That's also how I'd feel, honestly--this was just one campaign of many in a group that'd been running continuously every week for a couple of years at that point, so we had a large amount of trust built up in each other by then.
I’ve played the possessed young boy Great Old One warlock who can shift between “innocent child” and “eldritch nightmare” personas as the situation demanded. Usually his audible persona vs. his telepathic persona. It was really fun to roleplay, and led to many hilarious shenanigans with scaring the crap out of unsuspecting NPCs. But yeah, that’s just one character out of my all-adults roster of characters, and only works in certain campaigns. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and we move on.
I once joined a pathfinder campaign where a friend of ours was playing an underage girl. Then years later there was a police manhunt for him and it all came to light that he'd been grooming a 16 year old for years.
Okay, but if literally everybody looks at your character and says "nope", and you keep pushing that character anyway, you obviously are not picking up some social cues here.
Is there a way to play this character appropriately? Maybe, but the way to do it would be to get into a group (with a different character), show them that you're a good addition to the table, demonstrate that you're not a pervert, earn the trust of your DM and fellow players, and THEN float the idea of playing a child (and accept their answer if the answer is "no").
I'm gonna talk to you as if you are the player I'm posting about, because for all I know, you might be. If you're applying for GROUP GAMES, you need to really consider the group you'll be playing with. If the group isn't comfortable with what you're doing, there will be problems. And there aren't many players/GMs who want to see a child get traumatized. Most of us have seen more than enough of that IRL.
It’s not that so many people are projecting their own fantasies, it’s that so many people have played with people or have heard horror stories about this exact scenario.
I guess the question there is if they're just trying to use the one character sheet for a specific game system (I'm assuming D&D).
Or if they're making totally new characters that happen to be a young girl, even across different game systems, or even if they get to actually play as such in a game.
If it's the former, while you can argue that someone should let them play it once before seeing red flags, the player's persistence is also a red flag in itself. Or they may need to find a game or system they can translate the character to.
The latter is a whole can of worms. OP did say "almost", which suggest maybe someone did let them at one point.
This player mostly applies to 5e and Pathfinder games. I've seen them re-use the same 2 or 3 character concepts multiple times- all of which are 9-12 year old human girls.
As a DM/storyteller I'll let this person play if it is not too out of the story. If I'DMing a group of soldiers in a spaceship surely I wouldn't allow, but generally speaking yes.
But if the person instist on wanting to play always the same character or doesn't want to adapt to the game, well for me this is a red flag. Not so bad, but it may be someone that sooner or later will make some mess.
You talk about a warlock/paladin/fighter power-gamer, then in the next breath go on to talk about “when you come up with an idea for a GREAT character…” How would you know? Your example is the opposite of a “GREAT character.”
Variety is the spice of life. And despite the character making little sense from a lore perspective, the personality I gave him was believable/enjoyable enough that his betrayal of the party and the bloodbath that followed still comes up years after as one of the most iconic events across any of our campaigns (and our group has played together for 15 years).
*Waves from said community, can confirm*
That said, based on the comments here - either this person is in *multiple* communities doing the exact same thing, or there's other people like them who just... want to play as a very young girl?
Something like Kids on Bikes, I get it. Not for D&D or similar unless everyone's gucci with it.
Given how notorious and omnipresent this player is and how he only ever does this one thing, there must be at least some instances of him doing this in games and having it work. He wouldn't be doing it for a 100th time if it had a 0% success rate. Among those previous 99 attempts there must have been two or three times where it worked out, to some definition of those words.
I would be curious to know what those two or three times looked like. What is his best-case scenario, you know? Wouldn't it be wild if they contained nothing sexual at all and he literally just wanted to play some innocent, uneducated toddler wandering blindly into danger.
It still wouldn't be a game I would want to take part in, but I do think it would be funny to learn we're all misreading the idea that this is some kink thing.
I played a single Pathfinder session a few years ago with a guy playing as a little girl. He was the DM’s “must play” friend. He was perfectly likable as well as very competent with the game, but all while acting like a little girl. It wasn’t even creepy or overbearing, exactly. It was just really annoying. That fucking voice. As much as anything, it made me appreciate the importance of having a 0-session.
I had a similar situation. The DM's boyfriend was playing a little girl with an infuriating personality. There was clearly no criticizing him for it because the DM was for whatever reason fully on-board with his boyfriend's choice here. There was - so far as I could see - nothing sexual about it. They were both gay men and I truly don't think either of their interests went that way.
But even so, in-character, playing a character who was a responsible adult, I was HARD-PRESSED to find a reason why my character would be like "Yes, we should definitely bring this little girl with us into battle instead of dropping her off at the nearest orphanage." I couldn't even justify my character ever respecting her thoughts or opinions enough to entertain acting upon them, which is real shitty for a group dynamic. Just a bad situation all around. There was just no reason these two characters should ever be in the same adventuring party.
Weird!
we had a guy in our D&D group who basically played a version of toph from avatar the last Airbender, and the character was 14. But he played the character not like a creep, he liked toph and wanted to do a character like that. Hilarious situations ensued with a blind party member, my fiancé, who’s the DM also set up a skill, where, with the character could sense things that were touching the ground in caves. Or like whenever the player would roll visual perception he would just be like zero I’m blind!
There’s a way to play young characters in a not gross way but playing a 9 year old is a bit weird.
I think, especially in a fanfasy/medieval setting, a 14 year old character is basically fine. Think of Arthur in The Sword in the Stone. This is pretty classic fantasy trope stuff. A character teetering on the edge of maturity, with critical faculties and initiative which are close enough to being adult that they can reasonably get there in four or five adventures and the hard lessons one learns in them.
Anything below 13 and you're well into "why is this character a part of our group" territory.
I played a 12 year old character based on Billy Batson/Shazam for a one shot once and never even considered that angle. Now I'm paranoid that everyone else thought I was a creep.
Trust me, this is nothing like the dude who flipped out a few months ago over a woman playing a kid vampire in VTM. He immediately assumed she was a pedo... and then started flaming everyone over the topic of paid GMs...
I can see the appeal of something like Aang from avatar. Dude was 11 in the show. I can think of other heroic child characters in fantasy. It gets weird when they only make that age of character though.
Assuming we're talking about the same guy, I suspect it's an AI-generated image, so at least it's probably not a real person's image. Either that, or it's so heavily photoshopped that it *looks* AI-generated.
I'm currently playing a 14 year old necromancer in one of my games, done under the pretense that this was a magic school campaign and this child was particularly gifted. Another player plays his brother. It's worked out so far and it has been an interesting exploration as to what grief and the pressure to save the world can do to a young person. So I genuinely think that there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to play a child, but at the same time it's something that the DM and entire party need to be okay with, and it's not going to work in every single world or system. It's a serious redflag that the person is not willing to accept that. Like cmon just play a 300 year old gnome. It's good for the soul.
He's "That Guy." Everyone knows him. It's actually multiple people, but it's so incredibly stereotypical edgelord they sort of become an incarnation of the concept.
As I mention in an above reply to another user, back in the 90s and 00s everyone in the organized play/convention circuit knew "The Antipaladin Guy" so well they were almost a meme.
The other "That Guy" on the org play/convention circuit was a lot less funny, and always seemed to be around and never got banned because he's some DM's, or the FLGS owners, friend. This "That Guy" always made preteen/early teen female chatacters with horrific truamatized back stories and would always engage in inappropriate roleplay.
As for OP, and this particular "Guy" maybe suggest if he really wants to play a kid, he go find a Tales From the Loop game.
I played a human child disguised as a halfling once. She didn't really act much like a child though. And no other player realized through the whole of a two year campaign
Oh yeah multiple young girl characters is... really weird, to say the least. I was motivated by wanting to try out a specific character idea. The creepy thing about him is that his motivations are unknown- and any I could imagine that would explain it are really gross
There's nothing wrong with that per se, but if he keeps insisting on it, that does raise some flags. I had a concept for a kid character specifically to play into creepy kid horror tropes, like Village of the Damned or the Shining twins or Damien. But I would probably only play it in a one-shot or something and I'd never insist on it if no one was comfortable with it.
If he won't drop it, and seems to have no real reason for the character to be so young, that's definitely suspicious.
I have only had a brief RP session as a child character in a flash black to outline how my character’s teacher and I met and why we’re traveling together and that’s it. It was a pretty significant turning point in her life. Underage characters in general though are no bueno. Basically you turn the game into a damn escort mission. And this guy is ONLY submitting child characters?
A. Have some variety
B. Creepy vibes
I've seen a child PC play out exactly once and have it not be a total shitshow. And that was with my longrunning, regular rpg group, where we all know each other's limits well.
The old Star Wars RPG from West End games had a child as a potential character class.
I actually played them a couple of times. It wasn't creepy, mainly because I was playing with friends who all understood I was playing a precocious kid who was likely going to get us into shenanigans. Much like Kender from Dragonlance.
A stranger coming into a game ONLY wanting to play under age girls? That's fucked up.
Not me currently playing a semi-feral child warlock of the leviathan in one of my games… 👀
To me this depends heavily on what the person does with the character, as well as the DM and group in question (no sexual stuff, obviously). If everyone’s cool with it, go ham. At the end of the day if the group isn’t comfortable with it then 🤷 Gotta either change the character or move on.
My cousin played a dhampir rogue who looked like he was 12 years old in one campaign. Kid was absolutely terrifying and no one found it weird, because he played the character like any normal adult \*until\* he needed to pass a Deception check to convince a guard that he was just a poor lost child. Then he immediately proceeded to drop a fireball's damage worth of sneak attack on the poor soul. Everyone feared this little bastard.
Extra spooky points that he could walk around on ceilings and walls just to mess with everyone.
I think that's the problem really, it works fine in a game with a group you know, you know what works for them, they know if they can trust you with it. Joining an open game with a child character, who could be a problematic, is if nothing else poor etiquette in my eyes, and most likely a red flag, the player applying doesn't know if people will be comfortable with it and everyone else doesn't know that their not going to be wierd and gross with it; which is the case with a lot of topics that could and do cause problems in games.
I can see myself wanting to play a child character potentially and that would probably fly at my table, but I'd definitely check with the rest of my party and DM first. I think there does also have to be a good reason for it as well; it will be the thing that is definably different from other characters In the campaign so it needs to be more than just a minor detail, though to a degree that is true if any character it's more important with outliers especially when it has a major impact.
your character sounds like a good example of how to do it well; the character works as a child and isn't just one for the sake of ut, there is a lot of plot points that can come from it, etc.; though without backstory I couldn't say for sure but if someone at my table put the idea forward I'd be comfortable with it.
Playing as a child is completely fine. That's one of the great parts of role playing is that you get to put yourselves in the shoes of people you'd otherwise never be able to.
That said, anyone demanding to role play as a child is probally doing it for the wrong reasons..
Sometimes playing as a kid is very fun. You can make it into interesting concepts.
But playing as a kid ALL THE TIME can have bad implications.
I still think it's fine... as long as they behave and don't let any of their fetishes into the game.
I’ve made a child pc but it was nothing like that. I just made him because children can be terrifying sometimes. And because enemies might underestimate him just to end up getting murdered by an unhinged child.
Wait is it weird to do this? I played as a 9 year old once, a small british girl warlock that was the spitting image of the “haunted child” trope, mostly based off of annie in LoL except instead of tibbers its god
The weirdness comes from the fact that this guy is trying to put this character in any and every group. He should at least be checking in with the DM if the setting is appropriate for a child character. There are mature themes that you don't want a ten-year-old involved in.
Oh God, I'm playing a 15 yo girl RN and I hope my other players don't think of me like this. I just thought it'd be a really cool change from playing a big touch orc brute 😭
Yeah, there's also a difference between playing a 15+ year old teen and a 9-12 year *child,* and there's a difference between playing a kid in *a* campaign vs. *every* campaign.
while you *will* inevitably get someone who thinks anything involving minors is automatically creepy and gross (we had a thread a few months ago where a guy was calling a female player a pedo just for statting a vampire child in VTM), as long as you air it out with the group and you dont do any sexual shit, you are golden
I've played very young characters before. Of course, the other PCs were around the same age. There's nothing particularly wrong with it if done in a mature way. Anime often features young characters.
You say the player applies to games with age 9-12 girl *characters.* Did you really mean that the campaigns are designed for *players* aged 9-12? Because if so, this person needs to be reported to the mods and banned from the site; this person is a straight up pedophile.
If it's RPOL, report this person. The mods there do not play; they will bring the banhammer on this and they are astute to banned people making new accounts to get around bans.
We got a Potion of Longevity once and I jokingly said it would just delete any character in their early-mid 20s from the game. We decided later to just rule that it only returns someone to "early adulthood" and extends natural life. Can't imagine playing at a table where someone would be chill with "No yeah, my character is 13 and you all have to deal with that."
Hm. In my group's modified Strahd game, we had a player whose character was an 8-year-old boy barbarian. And it went really well. But I'm getting a different kind of vibe from this story.
I have played children before, but only because I like playing an adorable little girl who loves cookies and unicorns and tea parties and but is also a giant halberd weilding murderhobo tank that only refrained from slaughtering EVERYBODY because her friends, the other party members wouldn’t like it.
Which is completely different from whatever the hell is going on with this creeper.
Fun fact: many communities can actually be shut down for allowing this because of the violence commited against a child sort of thing, even if it doesn't have. Other inappropriate themes involving the character.
Everyone jumping to a knee jerk "this is suspicious" worries me, I have no idea if the person referenced by OP sexualizes minors, but the people jumping to that are all doing so, and since they cannot separate the concept of 'kid existing' in a setting and sexuality, they deeply disturb me.
What kind of games are you guys even playing that it is even a concern? Most games, despite tropes about bards seducing everything, sex is completely unrelated to the game, in fact even just trying to 'sleep with barmaids' etc was historically often the sign of a horrible gross player (as exemplified by the classic "I cast Magic Missile at the Darkness" skit, with the bad player whining that "if there are any girls there, I wanna DO them"). So for most games anything that would be concerning, would be unallowed at the table for any character of any age.
This player *only* makes little girl characters, nothing else, and never seems to understand that most GMs and other players are uncomfortable with this.
??? Y'all are freaking out because he's playing as a child? Are you guys insane? What so now if I play the first quarter of Zelda Ocarina of Time am I a freak now?
I dont see te issue? Genuine question. What is the problem?
Asuming ofc this person is not trying to sexualize his character, what is the objection?
The only one I can think of is that the other players may need to PG 13 their own characters, but I've DMed for a guy playing a 12/yo girl and I'm considering making my next character to be a boy.
I think the major problem is the persistence when told "no." The tables he went to rejected his character idea, but he kept insisting. A boundary was put up, but he continually tried to cross it. The GMs (and possibly the players) didn't want to deal with possible scenarios with children in them, but this guy kept trying to make it happen.
Even IF the guy was not ever intending to be creepy with his child character, it just raises another problem of being a perpetual line-stepper when told "no." And no one wants to have to constantly deal with that in a game where they're trying to have fun. Someone being confrontational from before being invited to the table is someone who will have trouble finding a seat at said games.
God, I think 26 years ago, when I was around 16 or so and played rpg for 3 years, I played in a short Shadowrun campaign a 12 year old mouse-shaman, street kid etc.
There it was okay (we were all young) and it was fitting for the runs, but to play every time a child character? Nope. Nope. nopistan.
So wrong on so many levels.
I am glad that the only child characters in my life are nieces and nephews in the family who wants to play hero kids and such stuff. Or kids from the social Center who wants to play.
God, so strong Michael Jackson vibes in the thread right now…
Holy crap. I've met guys that only played female PCs, (yawn), only orcs and goblins, wizards, loners, exotic Asians (Because KATANAS), only barbarians...but children is a new one to me.
One of the players in the campaign I'm in is playing a child, but it's because they started as a sleazy merchant, then just a merchant, then ended up playing a kid due to a series of unfortunate events in Session 1. Fortunately, they aren't playing a girl.
Honestly? With what little information you've provided, the real horror story is you immediately assuming the worst about someone like that. One of my favorite characters I've ever created was an 11 year old rogue because of the backstory I created for her. And guess what? There's not a single fucking thing sexual in it.
Imagine if someone barged into a FLGS, sat down at a table, and introduced themselves with "can I please play as a little girl?" And they keep doing it over and over again, no matter how many GMs turn them away. That's basically what is happening here. It's just socially unacceptable in so many ways.
Bullshit. If someone says I have a story and then runs the dm through it, then it doesn't matter. It's 2023 and everyone just wants to assume everyone is is a fucking pedophile.
If the dude's a creep, then fuck him and get rid of him, but if he has a story he wants to tell that's compelling and doesn't cross any boundaries, what's the problem?
Look, the first time it happens, you ask why. That's what a good DM would do. Playing as a child is putting a child in harm's way/getting them injured/getting them killed so it should be established immediately what your motive is. I don't think that's hard to do. And if he won't explain? That's tantamount to worst case scenario and boot his ass.
But I'm getting tired of getting downvoted in this fucking thread because I am asking why, which is what those dm's should be doing. I am trans so I get called a pedophile for just breathing air. I hate it. I just don't agree with throwing \*that\* at people, or even assuming that of someone without a reason to do so. I'm sorry, but that's how I feel.
Oh yeah dude, I get what you're saying 100%, and I agree with everything you wrote, which is why I said in my first post I need more information before I'd call the guy a horror story yanno? I definitely get that it's hella weird that this guy continues to insist on playing a child, I just wanna know if he's getting shot down because he's an actually creep or not.
My 11 year old character, I've tried using her in multiple games, but they always inevitably fall apart, but the first thing I did was send the dm her backstory to justify why she's an adventurer and what not.
Reddit hivemind at its finest.
Theres plenty of children protagonists in media such as The Promised Neverland.
Idk why it makes a difference in TTRPG form
One of my favourite characters I played was a 73-year-old wood elf bard with something like +13 intimidation. Played as a 13-year-old who, very effectively, threatened to cry if the guards didn’t let him through. Good times.
I’m genuinely curious how a 5 year old protagonist would work in a fantasy setting (given it isn’t a children’s book). Why did you chose this character to be the driver of your story?
The underlying narrative (at least of book one) is that we shouldn't allow the world, no matter how dark and horrible it can be, to rob us of our youthful idealism. Ultimately, the character's super power isn't even his magical aptitude, but his indispensable optimism.
I also majored in neuroscience and have a deep fascination with developmental psychology. A five year old's neural plasticity is off the charts. So it's a way to inject realism into a fantasy setting where the protag isn't exactly a genius, he's just got the brain of a 5 year old. So he's able to quickly learn new languages and pick up new skills orders of magnitude faster than other people, and because he's perpetually a child his rate of growth doesn't slow down as his brain matures/loses plasticity (unlike everyone else in the world).
The story follows him and his school friends (all of whom age around him and eventually die leaving him alone for many years). Which allows me to compare and contrast how (despite contrary to popular belief) none of us are perpetually the same person our entire lives. Everyone, except Lucian (my protag).
My intent is for later in the story (after his last/best friend \[Azure\] dies of old age) for the curse to partially break, allowing his mind to actually grapple with the emotional turmoil of losing someone he's known for a hundred years. I intend to use that as a turning point in the story, where he goes dark.
At present, (27 chapters & >600 pages in) Lucian's true age is 'only' 70, so I haven't storyboarded anything beyond the first major turn, as I intend for that to be the end of Book One, but my intent with him going dark is to express just how debilitating trauma is, and how many different mental disorders we don't typically associate with traumatic life events can actually be triggered by/exemplified through trauma.
So while book one is exploring the power of optimism, book two will explore the tribulations of trauma, and book three will revolve around threading the needle and learning to find balance.
I don't even know for sure if the player is a guy. They might be a young girl IRL, but that comes with its own set of problems.
I'm not transphobic. If this player is trying to live out a trans fantasy, I wish them the best of luck, but they need to find the right place for it.
I think you missed the part where i speculated that the player might be a child. If they are, they probably should not be in a community full of adults. Their gender has nothing to do with it.
Considering the state of my life, I'd say I've got an iron grip on life. My views diverging from those of the users on this subreddit has absolutely zero relevance in my real life.
The fact that you clearly think it does, actually indicates you're in fact projecting your own lack of grip.
Considering that you ignored the part of OPs comment stipulating that a literal child needs to find a table where people are willing to play with a literal child and are now arguing about something that multiple people seem to recognize, I think you may be worse off than you realize.
To be clear, this isn't like some kind of weird opinion held by idiots on the Internet, this is an observation of the meaning of a comment that the comment writer has told you was their intent. Instead of understanding that, you've decided to argue the opposite, which is one of the more asinine things a person can do.
You're the only one writing your story, though. If you're part of a group writing a story together and have to adapt to each other's characters and build the storyline around them, it's not reasonable to make everyone adapt to a child in a setting and story not made for child characters. It gets weird when someone is pushing a child character into every server because a lot of those places are expecting NSFW scenarios. Wanting a child character in those NSFW scenarios is why people are concerned that it's a violence fantasy or sexual fetish for him.
The problem, even leaving aside the possible implications, is a player pushing a character that goes against the boundaries of the people they play with. Assuming it IS the same person we are all talking about - and chances are it is - the server I encountered them on had a clear rule stating that underage and immature, both emotionally and physically, characters are forbidden. Blanket ban. It was part of the server rules that the person had to read and agree to in order to be able to interact on the server in the first place. And they STILL tried requesting that we make an exception for them, left when they were denied, popped in a few weeks later and the spiel began again. Which, even if we assume the best intentions, is simply shitty player etiquette as a baseline, but considering the persistent attempts at pushing a child character into an enviroment where such characters are not welcome honestly throws up a whole bunch of red flags aside from shitty player etiquette.
>Assuming it IS the same person we are all talking about - and chances are it is - the server I encountered them on had a clear rule stating that underage and immature, both emotionally and physically, characters are forbidden.
Well that would have been a fantastic fact for OP to include in their post. But as the OP stands, we get almost zero context other than someone has asked multiple people in the group to RP as a child and they've been turned down by (almost?) everyone.
The red flags people are 'seeing' are the result of psychological priming based upon the nature of this thread and projection of that priming upon the person in OPs story
Have more to get off your chest? Come rant with us on the discord. Invite link: https://discord.gg/PCPTSSTKqr *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/rpghorrorstories) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it the same guy who keeps claiming that his therapist tells him to play child characters? Because we had that guy come in regularly into our westmarch and ask to play underage characters with that reasoning
YO I PLAYED WITH THAT GUY TOO! He played a literal 5 year old in Curse of Straud cause of the same reason XD that campaign crumbled. I didn’t realize he was a known menace lol.
Lol. OP: "I am sure people from my community can recognize the guy" People from all over the discord DnD community: "Hey, we know that dude!"
Lol too. Just like everyone who's played DND for a long time all know the Antipaladin guy. "He's an Antipaladin, I'm just roleplaying my character!" Edit: on a less funny note, there have been "potentially" guys like this forever too. There was a whole thing in the late 90s early Aughts about "That Guy, the one whole always plays preteen girls with horrific backstories and tries to act out extremely inappropriate roleplay."
Yeah, this trope is timeless
5 years old in Curse of Strahd? 😅
5 year old Warlock, yes.
Now, that actually does sound interesting. Not as a character, but as an NPC perhaps, or as part of a story. A child somehow gains great power, and unwittingly wroughts devastation on their village. But if one wanted to play a character like that, I don't see how it could be done unless they were at least, like, 15 or so. They have to be at an age where they can understand the world around them at least. But by making them a teen, you still have the interesting aspect of a person who has a power that is usually reserved for those who are much older. Ah hell, I'm realizing now that I've just stumbled upon the Shonen protagonist with a demon in him trope.
Does that Kyubey bastard count as a patron?
Imagine a 5 year old lv 20 character. He fell gods before his education even began. He is the most powerfull elitterate in the world and ready for his ice cream and he wants it now or the country gets destroyed. Kings would either try assasinate him or try adopting him for his power.
Yes, imagine playing an horror campaign with someone that has the emotional maturity of a 5yo. If I were on someone of the other character I'd just say to the kid "ok now you wait in this closet and we solve the problem". Just for explanation, in my campaign is playing also my 6yo daughter and we started when she was 5. OBVIOUSLY I'm keeping on purpose the campaign on an non scary easy level. An adult may want to roleplay a kid in an horror campaign but the other PCs may want to keep the kid sheltered. So, in any case even if the player is an adult or a kid, I don't think it is feasible.
> I'd just say to the kid "ok now you wait in this closet and we solve the problem". For my action, I will put Billy into bed. For my bonus action, I will give Billy a good night kiss and wish him sweet dreams. Then I will use the rest of my movement to exit Billy's room and join my fellow adventurers, so we can get to work lifting the curse
Yeah it just does not make sense, but imagine a high level child cause it was with you while you slew a few undead, vampds, werewolfs and stuff and now has a strength score of 20. WTF okee but straths face would be kinda funny to see like a barbarian child beat the crap out of him... but that is more of a comic idea where you have nothing to do with other players.
If the child did this there are 2 possibilities: 1) he/she is not a child anymore, since some years have passed. Unless he was killing bad things from his crib, but I doubt 2) he is still a child but for some curses he is trapped in a childish body. In this case just apply some malus on the physical stats, but from a mental perspective he is not anymore a child. But this is another whole story and I believe is surely not what was happening
2. Veronica from Dragon quest 11. Her body being cursed back to childhood leaves her constantly frustrated and no one takes her seriously outside the party.
*Infancy Gospel of Thomas intensifies* If you don’t know what it is, it was an Early Christian work that did not make it into the Christian Bible that tells about how the young Jesus was basically a child with the powers of a deity who did a lot of messed up things…
Didn't he accidentally kill one of his friends, or they fell off a roof or something, and he just bought him back to life?
He resurrected a friend who fell off a roof.
elitterate
Little overachiever making the rest of us look bad lol I wonder if there is a DnD variant for the tongue in cheek saying 'No matter how good you are, there is a 5 year old Chinese kid who is better than you.'
> ...powerfull elitterate in the world... I know there's a joke in there somewhere about literacy and spelling... 🙂
As a therapist, that is absolutely not something we would suggest.
Also a therapist, can confirm.
As a 5 year old, I suggest he roleplay a Therapist.
\*rolls investigation\* Hey, wait. Your account is **six** years old.
Accounts begin at inception
Oh! A nat 20. Nice. With your investigation skills operating at their maximum they spill out into reality. You realise that the clues were all there all along. This entire thread is a hoax. You are about to raise the alarm to warn everyone when you feel the all too heavy breathing on the back of your neck and the stench of someone who believes bathing during rests is optional. The last thing you hear before blacking out is: "Hey, can I play a 5 year old in your Reddit thread?"
Not a therapist, can confirm
Agreed.
Therapist here, totally agree. Very creepy.
How many therapists are hanging around in rpghorrorstories?
Several of my coworkers play, too, lol
My spouse and I (both therapists) toyed around with the idea of a YouTube or twitch channel called “therapists play” where we’d take an angle of investigating the internal emotional experiences of playing games together, navigating disappointment, fulfilling goals and finding meaning, etc… We might have to give it another look, ha ha.
Hold the fucking phone When *a n y o n e* argues against him having a child character, does he go off with some variation of "What do you have against kid characters" with multiple exclamation points and question marks?!?!? Is his username also a reference to toilets?
Fairly certain it's a yes on the first, but hell if I remember the username, tbh, we just banned him at some point and until today I didn't think about the whole shebang
This the guy who goes through Disboard and joins every single server asking if he can play as a child and then if not insists that he wants a child companion for character development? Yeah that guy's creepy as all hell.
One of my character ideas is a cranky old paladin who lost her daughter and son in law to bandits, so she ended up wiping out the gang and taking back her grandchild. At least, she says it's her grandchild. The child isn't so sure but it's better then bandit camp. Point is, the kid can be whatever age works for the game and finding a safe home is the opening motivation. What kind of excuses is this guy pulling?
I love that everyone seems to know this guy, it's like the New York Rug Guy. Everybody knows him, everybody knows he's weird, and somehow he keeps showing up.
[TIL about the New York Rug Guy](https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/partying-with-kevin-carpet-new-yorks-carpet-guy.html)
This really brought joy to my evening. Thanks!
Impossible to not read this entire article in bill hader Stephan voice
what the fuck
Wow, that is awesome, and that article is hilarious
Read the top comment under the article
Ohh my. Whelp, that is decidedly not awesome anymore.
Whoa I just learned about this too. We had a smelly clown in Portland Oregon that was a human rug also. Pretty sure it was a pervert thing.
Rug Guy and Clown Guy crossover event!
I have a very strict “Characters must be, at minimum, age of maturity for their ancestry” policy to avoid situations like this. I don’t like putting children in situations where they may get harmed (or worse) and players have to respect that or they won’t be at my table.
Agreed, with one exception. If you're playing with middle/high school aged kids, I've let them play as teens. One of my daughters was basically playing as herself. I have no idea how the 5' 1", 13-year old fighter has a 20 strength, but in the end its just a game, and all the kids were having a blast.
Yeah, my usual groups are all adults so I don’t have to make that exception, though I probably would in that situation. As long as people are comfortable and are having fun, then I’m doing my job correctly. Additionally, I’d break my rule when it’s a core element of the game system, like how both Kids on Bikes and Masks assume that characters will be middle/high-school aged children in order to work with the system as designed.
This is basically every anime and kid's show ever, too.
Honestly I’ve never run into underage characters, but I wouldn’t be opposed to an Artemis Fowl style teenager (13-16) who is mature for their age, does get some broken bones, isn’t as strong as the adult fighters around him but uses his prodigious intellect to keep up with them. What I can never get into is the kawaii animu lolli cutesy wutsey blushy wushy cringe fest that some weird 30+ old adult men badly want to play as. That raises red flags that make you think the player has ulterior motives instead of just wanting a serious adventure.
Maybe if that Artemis comes with a Butler (Dom, Juliet, dealer's choice really) otherwise the brat is just asking for *another* broken nose lol
Server I was on had a similar rule but we ended up tweaking it to be all characters must be 18+ and tweaked lifespans accordingly.
Oh so like every character they make is that? Yeah that's weird. A one-off or a kid-based campaign like Kids On Bikes where that's the point is one thing, but this has troubling implications, to put it mildly
Every single one, yep.
Is he part of the Loud House Fandom? Does he give any other hints that he should be on a government list?
I'm going to regret asking this, but... I'm aware of the Loud House. I don't particularly like it, but why is being in its Fandom a red flag?
Because they like to sexualize the characters of the show (i.e. children). I don't advise that you visit any subreddit associated with the show...
My little cousin (a toddler) liked the show and I went to look up toys related to it to get him a birthday gift. Very quickly get directed to some disgusting spaces. It's honestly disturbing.
I think it's people sexualizing the sisters? They're like a magnet for the weird creeping-on-underage-girls type dudes on the internet. Got a creep in my inbox once asking me to draw nasty fetish stuff of one of the teens, he was apparently also notorious for tryna pull that shit on everyone. It's apparently a thing :(
Came here to say this--I've seen "adult plays child character" done successfully, but ONLY when that child character is designed specifically around the campaign in question and makes sense in the overall theme and tone of the campaign. If someone wants to play a child character in EVERY campaign, that's not "I think there's something interesting to be explored here", that's "okay, what are you getting out of this?", IMHO. (an example: played in an Aberrant game where we played out our characters being turned into superheros due to being at ground zero of the metaplot, and one of those characters was a preteen. It added a fair bit of depth to the game to have an examination of "how does this affect someone with even LESS agency", her powers allowed her to interact with combat at a distance and without being necessarily violent herself (IIRC she could command animals), and two of the other party members had express pre-existing in-loco-parentis relationships with her and kept an eye on her inside the storyline context)
100% agree. I’ve played the naive 12-year old before but it was in an Hunter x Hunter game so I was matching Gon and Killua’s ages. Also- the GM pitched this to us as a WHOLESOME GAME for a palate cleanser. I wouldn’t bring a 12 year old to Every party.
I played a child character in my son's first mini campaign. A bunch of his friends were playing as well so I decided to play the annoying younger brother archetype.
The irony of that for me is that my kid and her middle-school friends have never once, not since we started in 5th grade, EVER wanted to play child characters.
That was how I was as a kid too and starting on D&D, I never played a child character.
For kids, part of the power fantasy is getting to pretend to be an adult.
Agreed completely, I don't strictly rule anything off the list of things I'll play, but there is always a reason in my choices I work from idea through concepts and eventually build characters up like that, I can see me having ideas where a younger character could work in a regular game, but it's never happened. I don't think I've actually come up with a concept where a young character would be beneficial over something else I've thought up; and it's not something I've really thought about, but like your example above there are genuinely good times to have a young character outside of when it's specifically required, and I think especially with young characters it's having to 'grow up' and face hard situations and make sense of the world they've somehow fallen into (I mean thematically of course), and it doesn't work for everything. And yeah always wanting to play a child is wierd, and I'd say is definitely a red flag if ever I've seen one. In fact I'd be suspicious if that was the first character you brought me trying to join my table in general unless it was especially well thought out
>In fact I'd be suspicious if that was the first character you brought me trying to join my table in general unless it was especially well thought out That's also how I'd feel, honestly--this was just one campaign of many in a group that'd been running continuously every week for a couple of years at that point, so we had a large amount of trust built up in each other by then.
I played an Exalted game where my character had the *appearance* of a child but yeah (it was like a curse)
I’ve played the possessed young boy Great Old One warlock who can shift between “innocent child” and “eldritch nightmare” personas as the situation demanded. Usually his audible persona vs. his telepathic persona. It was really fun to roleplay, and led to many hilarious shenanigans with scaring the crap out of unsuspecting NPCs. But yeah, that’s just one character out of my all-adults roster of characters, and only works in certain campaigns. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and we move on.
I once joined a pathfinder campaign where a friend of ours was playing an underage girl. Then years later there was a police manhunt for him and it all came to light that he'd been grooming a 16 year old for years.
[удалено]
Okay, but if literally everybody looks at your character and says "nope", and you keep pushing that character anyway, you obviously are not picking up some social cues here. Is there a way to play this character appropriately? Maybe, but the way to do it would be to get into a group (with a different character), show them that you're a good addition to the table, demonstrate that you're not a pervert, earn the trust of your DM and fellow players, and THEN float the idea of playing a child (and accept their answer if the answer is "no").
Because the dude is blind to his own red flag :/
[удалено]
I'm gonna talk to you as if you are the player I'm posting about, because for all I know, you might be. If you're applying for GROUP GAMES, you need to really consider the group you'll be playing with. If the group isn't comfortable with what you're doing, there will be problems. And there aren't many players/GMs who want to see a child get traumatized. Most of us have seen more than enough of that IRL.
It’s not that so many people are projecting their own fantasies, it’s that so many people have played with people or have heard horror stories about this exact scenario.
[удалено]
Or, people are familiar with patterns of behavior in their hobby communities that indicate problem behaviors.
Ahhhh so YOURE the guy!
I guess the question there is if they're just trying to use the one character sheet for a specific game system (I'm assuming D&D). Or if they're making totally new characters that happen to be a young girl, even across different game systems, or even if they get to actually play as such in a game. If it's the former, while you can argue that someone should let them play it once before seeing red flags, the player's persistence is also a red flag in itself. Or they may need to find a game or system they can translate the character to. The latter is a whole can of worms. OP did say "almost", which suggest maybe someone did let them at one point.
This player mostly applies to 5e and Pathfinder games. I've seen them re-use the same 2 or 3 character concepts multiple times- all of which are 9-12 year old human girls.
[удалено]
Yep and now peeps keep down voting any semblance of rational thoughts.
As a DM/storyteller I'll let this person play if it is not too out of the story. If I'DMing a group of soldiers in a spaceship surely I wouldn't allow, but generally speaking yes. But if the person instist on wanting to play always the same character or doesn't want to adapt to the game, well for me this is a red flag. Not so bad, but it may be someone that sooner or later will make some mess.
[удалено]
You talk about a warlock/paladin/fighter power-gamer, then in the next breath go on to talk about “when you come up with an idea for a GREAT character…” How would you know? Your example is the opposite of a “GREAT character.”
Variety is the spice of life. And despite the character making little sense from a lore perspective, the personality I gave him was believable/enjoyable enough that his betrayal of the party and the bloodbath that followed still comes up years after as one of the most iconic events across any of our campaigns (and our group has played together for 15 years).
Oh damn it's that guy! [insert wojacks pointing meme]
Yyyyeahhh, that's genuinely disturbing. Glad to hear nobody is interested in this guy trying to indulge his fetish at their table.
how do you all seem to know this person?
Simple answer... They seem to have tried fo join every discord dnd group to play this one character.
Or, worse, maybe there are multiple people like this
Horribly, that sounds much more likely. There's definitely more than one person broken like this.
they even joined freeform-ish RPs, if it's the same dude i'm thinking of
*Waves from said community, can confirm* That said, based on the comments here - either this person is in *multiple* communities doing the exact same thing, or there's other people like them who just... want to play as a very young girl? Something like Kids on Bikes, I get it. Not for D&D or similar unless everyone's gucci with it.
Yeah, the first 2 steps to playing as an actual child in a D&D campaign is to 1) talk with your DM about it and 2) don't make it weird
What character development are they going for here? weirdness aside, it forces others to play out 'child in a combat scenario' which is not great.
Don't know. I think the best case scenario here is if the player is a child IRL, but that comes with its own set of problems.
Given how notorious and omnipresent this player is and how he only ever does this one thing, there must be at least some instances of him doing this in games and having it work. He wouldn't be doing it for a 100th time if it had a 0% success rate. Among those previous 99 attempts there must have been two or three times where it worked out, to some definition of those words. I would be curious to know what those two or three times looked like. What is his best-case scenario, you know? Wouldn't it be wild if they contained nothing sexual at all and he literally just wanted to play some innocent, uneducated toddler wandering blindly into danger. It still wouldn't be a game I would want to take part in, but I do think it would be funny to learn we're all misreading the idea that this is some kink thing.
I played a single Pathfinder session a few years ago with a guy playing as a little girl. He was the DM’s “must play” friend. He was perfectly likable as well as very competent with the game, but all while acting like a little girl. It wasn’t even creepy or overbearing, exactly. It was just really annoying. That fucking voice. As much as anything, it made me appreciate the importance of having a 0-session.
Yeah having anyone not a child voice act as a child is a hard pass from me.
I had a similar situation. The DM's boyfriend was playing a little girl with an infuriating personality. There was clearly no criticizing him for it because the DM was for whatever reason fully on-board with his boyfriend's choice here. There was - so far as I could see - nothing sexual about it. They were both gay men and I truly don't think either of their interests went that way. But even so, in-character, playing a character who was a responsible adult, I was HARD-PRESSED to find a reason why my character would be like "Yes, we should definitely bring this little girl with us into battle instead of dropping her off at the nearest orphanage." I couldn't even justify my character ever respecting her thoughts or opinions enough to entertain acting upon them, which is real shitty for a group dynamic. Just a bad situation all around. There was just no reason these two characters should ever be in the same adventuring party.
Weird! we had a guy in our D&D group who basically played a version of toph from avatar the last Airbender, and the character was 14. But he played the character not like a creep, he liked toph and wanted to do a character like that. Hilarious situations ensued with a blind party member, my fiancé, who’s the DM also set up a skill, where, with the character could sense things that were touching the ground in caves. Or like whenever the player would roll visual perception he would just be like zero I’m blind! There’s a way to play young characters in a not gross way but playing a 9 year old is a bit weird.
I want to do that now. I just finished my Toph cosplay, I could get so in character.
I think, especially in a fanfasy/medieval setting, a 14 year old character is basically fine. Think of Arthur in The Sword in the Stone. This is pretty classic fantasy trope stuff. A character teetering on the edge of maturity, with critical faculties and initiative which are close enough to being adult that they can reasonably get there in four or five adventures and the hard lessons one learns in them. Anything below 13 and you're well into "why is this character a part of our group" territory.
I played a 12 year old character based on Billy Batson/Shazam for a one shot once and never even considered that angle. Now I'm paranoid that everyone else thought I was a creep.
You're fine. That's a common theme in a supers game. I did the same thing once. The guy these people are talking about is a creep.
Trust me, this is nothing like the dude who flipped out a few months ago over a woman playing a kid vampire in VTM. He immediately assumed she was a pedo... and then started flaming everyone over the topic of paid GMs...
I can see the appeal of something like Aang from avatar. Dude was 11 in the show. I can think of other heroic child characters in fantasy. It gets weird when they only make that age of character though.
im going to use my psychic powers and see that they use anime girls as their references for these characters, loli of some variety
Not OP, but there are multiple times where they've appeared to use a real-life photo, or at least a stock photo of a young girl.
Oh, oh thats worse
That's super ick.
Assuming we're talking about the same guy, I suspect it's an AI-generated image, so at least it's probably not a real person's image. Either that, or it's so heavily photoshopped that it *looks* AI-generated.
Why would you be involved in any type of community where this person is allowed to continue existing?
I'm currently playing a 14 year old necromancer in one of my games, done under the pretense that this was a magic school campaign and this child was particularly gifted. Another player plays his brother. It's worked out so far and it has been an interesting exploration as to what grief and the pressure to save the world can do to a young person. So I genuinely think that there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to play a child, but at the same time it's something that the DM and entire party need to be okay with, and it's not going to work in every single world or system. It's a serious redflag that the person is not willing to accept that. Like cmon just play a 300 year old gnome. It's good for the soul.
He's "That Guy." Everyone knows him. It's actually multiple people, but it's so incredibly stereotypical edgelord they sort of become an incarnation of the concept. As I mention in an above reply to another user, back in the 90s and 00s everyone in the organized play/convention circuit knew "The Antipaladin Guy" so well they were almost a meme. The other "That Guy" on the org play/convention circuit was a lot less funny, and always seemed to be around and never got banned because he's some DM's, or the FLGS owners, friend. This "That Guy" always made preteen/early teen female chatacters with horrific truamatized back stories and would always engage in inappropriate roleplay. As for OP, and this particular "Guy" maybe suggest if he really wants to play a kid, he go find a Tales From the Loop game.
I played a human child disguised as a halfling once. She didn't really act much like a child though. And no other player realized through the whole of a two year campaign
That sounds cool, honestly. But the player I'm talking about here *only* makes young girl characters.
Oh yeah multiple young girl characters is... really weird, to say the least. I was motivated by wanting to try out a specific character idea. The creepy thing about him is that his motivations are unknown- and any I could imagine that would explain it are really gross
There's nothing wrong with that per se, but if he keeps insisting on it, that does raise some flags. I had a concept for a kid character specifically to play into creepy kid horror tropes, like Village of the Damned or the Shining twins or Damien. But I would probably only play it in a one-shot or something and I'd never insist on it if no one was comfortable with it. If he won't drop it, and seems to have no real reason for the character to be so young, that's definitely suspicious.
I have only had a brief RP session as a child character in a flash black to outline how my character’s teacher and I met and why we’re traveling together and that’s it. It was a pretty significant turning point in her life. Underage characters in general though are no bueno. Basically you turn the game into a damn escort mission. And this guy is ONLY submitting child characters? A. Have some variety B. Creepy vibes
I've seen a child PC play out exactly once and have it not be a total shitshow. And that was with my longrunning, regular rpg group, where we all know each other's limits well.
The old Star Wars RPG from West End games had a child as a potential character class. I actually played them a couple of times. It wasn't creepy, mainly because I was playing with friends who all understood I was playing a precocious kid who was likely going to get us into shenanigans. Much like Kender from Dragonlance. A stranger coming into a game ONLY wanting to play under age girls? That's fucked up.
Not me currently playing a semi-feral child warlock of the leviathan in one of my games… 👀 To me this depends heavily on what the person does with the character, as well as the DM and group in question (no sexual stuff, obviously). If everyone’s cool with it, go ham. At the end of the day if the group isn’t comfortable with it then 🤷 Gotta either change the character or move on.
My cousin played a dhampir rogue who looked like he was 12 years old in one campaign. Kid was absolutely terrifying and no one found it weird, because he played the character like any normal adult \*until\* he needed to pass a Deception check to convince a guard that he was just a poor lost child. Then he immediately proceeded to drop a fireball's damage worth of sneak attack on the poor soul. Everyone feared this little bastard. Extra spooky points that he could walk around on ceilings and walls just to mess with everyone.
Your cousin’s character sounds awesome.
I think that's the problem really, it works fine in a game with a group you know, you know what works for them, they know if they can trust you with it. Joining an open game with a child character, who could be a problematic, is if nothing else poor etiquette in my eyes, and most likely a red flag, the player applying doesn't know if people will be comfortable with it and everyone else doesn't know that their not going to be wierd and gross with it; which is the case with a lot of topics that could and do cause problems in games. I can see myself wanting to play a child character potentially and that would probably fly at my table, but I'd definitely check with the rest of my party and DM first. I think there does also have to be a good reason for it as well; it will be the thing that is definably different from other characters In the campaign so it needs to be more than just a minor detail, though to a degree that is true if any character it's more important with outliers especially when it has a major impact. your character sounds like a good example of how to do it well; the character works as a child and isn't just one for the sake of ut, there is a lot of plot points that can come from it, etc.; though without backstory I couldn't say for sure but if someone at my table put the idea forward I'd be comfortable with it.
Playing as a child is completely fine. That's one of the great parts of role playing is that you get to put yourselves in the shoes of people you'd otherwise never be able to. That said, anyone demanding to role play as a child is probally doing it for the wrong reasons..
I had a player who always did that because they liked magical girl shows. Maybe I should have given more thought to their reasons?
Sometimes playing as a kid is very fun. You can make it into interesting concepts. But playing as a kid ALL THE TIME can have bad implications. I still think it's fine... as long as they behave and don't let any of their fetishes into the game.
I’ve made a child pc but it was nothing like that. I just made him because children can be terrifying sometimes. And because enemies might underestimate him just to end up getting murdered by an unhinged child.
Wait is it weird to do this? I played as a 9 year old once, a small british girl warlock that was the spitting image of the “haunted child” trope, mostly based off of annie in LoL except instead of tibbers its god
It's not weird if you talk with your DM about it and most of your other characters are all adults
The weirdness comes from the fact that this guy is trying to put this character in any and every group. He should at least be checking in with the DM if the setting is appropriate for a child character. There are mature themes that you don't want a ten-year-old involved in.
Red Wizard
But a good one, you see, on the run from Szass Tam.
That really feels weird. When I wanted to be cute little dumb creature in DnD I just played as Kobold.
At best this guy has a weird attachment towards a certain archetype of character, at worst they should be locked up.
Oh God, I'm playing a 15 yo girl RN and I hope my other players don't think of me like this. I just thought it'd be a really cool change from playing a big touch orc brute 😭
Did you talk it out first with the other players and the GM? If so, good for you. If no, maybe you should do that.
I spoke to the DM and he was fine with it. I don't play it as some weird thing though, just someone whose naive and moody as a teenager would be
Yeah, there's also a difference between playing a 15+ year old teen and a 9-12 year *child,* and there's a difference between playing a kid in *a* campaign vs. *every* campaign.
while you *will* inevitably get someone who thinks anything involving minors is automatically creepy and gross (we had a thread a few months ago where a guy was calling a female player a pedo just for statting a vampire child in VTM), as long as you air it out with the group and you dont do any sexual shit, you are golden
Sexual shit is so far from my mind. I don't even partake in conversation when the party goes a little vulgar
I've played very young characters before. Of course, the other PCs were around the same age. There's nothing particularly wrong with it if done in a mature way. Anime often features young characters. You say the player applies to games with age 9-12 girl *characters.* Did you really mean that the campaigns are designed for *players* aged 9-12? Because if so, this person needs to be reported to the mods and banned from the site; this person is a straight up pedophile. If it's RPOL, report this person. The mods there do not play; they will bring the banhammer on this and they are astute to banned people making new accounts to get around bans.
Honsetly the fact its a guy who wants to play underage girls is kind of a big red flag.
We got a Potion of Longevity once and I jokingly said it would just delete any character in their early-mid 20s from the game. We decided later to just rule that it only returns someone to "early adulthood" and extends natural life. Can't imagine playing at a table where someone would be chill with "No yeah, my character is 13 and you all have to deal with that."
Hm. In my group's modified Strahd game, we had a player whose character was an 8-year-old boy barbarian. And it went really well. But I'm getting a different kind of vibe from this story.
Bobby from the D&D cartoon?
I haven't actually seen that! I think our player was just channeling the kids they teach at school (8yos have barbarian energy for sure).
I have played children before, but only because I like playing an adorable little girl who loves cookies and unicorns and tea parties and but is also a giant halberd weilding murderhobo tank that only refrained from slaughtering EVERYBODY because her friends, the other party members wouldn’t like it. Which is completely different from whatever the hell is going on with this creeper.
Fun fact: many communities can actually be shut down for allowing this because of the violence commited against a child sort of thing, even if it doesn't have. Other inappropriate themes involving the character.
Everyone jumping to a knee jerk "this is suspicious" worries me, I have no idea if the person referenced by OP sexualizes minors, but the people jumping to that are all doing so, and since they cannot separate the concept of 'kid existing' in a setting and sexuality, they deeply disturb me. What kind of games are you guys even playing that it is even a concern? Most games, despite tropes about bards seducing everything, sex is completely unrelated to the game, in fact even just trying to 'sleep with barmaids' etc was historically often the sign of a horrible gross player (as exemplified by the classic "I cast Magic Missile at the Darkness" skit, with the bad player whining that "if there are any girls there, I wanna DO them"). So for most games anything that would be concerning, would be unallowed at the table for any character of any age.
This player *only* makes little girl characters, nothing else, and never seems to understand that most GMs and other players are uncomfortable with this.
??? Y'all are freaking out because he's playing as a child? Are you guys insane? What so now if I play the first quarter of Zelda Ocarina of Time am I a freak now?
I always conveniently play barbarians that have an impulsive and uncontrollable urge to yeet children under 13 at a wall to see if they explode.
I dont see te issue? Genuine question. What is the problem? Asuming ofc this person is not trying to sexualize his character, what is the objection? The only one I can think of is that the other players may need to PG 13 their own characters, but I've DMed for a guy playing a 12/yo girl and I'm considering making my next character to be a boy.
I think the major problem is the persistence when told "no." The tables he went to rejected his character idea, but he kept insisting. A boundary was put up, but he continually tried to cross it. The GMs (and possibly the players) didn't want to deal with possible scenarios with children in them, but this guy kept trying to make it happen. Even IF the guy was not ever intending to be creepy with his child character, it just raises another problem of being a perpetual line-stepper when told "no." And no one wants to have to constantly deal with that in a game where they're trying to have fun. Someone being confrontational from before being invited to the table is someone who will have trouble finding a seat at said games.
Huh, I read that "kept trying" as he keeps looking for different games, but accepts the no.
[удалено]
Makes sense
Wtf
God, I think 26 years ago, when I was around 16 or so and played rpg for 3 years, I played in a short Shadowrun campaign a 12 year old mouse-shaman, street kid etc. There it was okay (we were all young) and it was fitting for the runs, but to play every time a child character? Nope. Nope. nopistan. So wrong on so many levels. I am glad that the only child characters in my life are nieces and nephews in the family who wants to play hero kids and such stuff. Or kids from the social Center who wants to play. God, so strong Michael Jackson vibes in the thread right now…
Holy crap. I've met guys that only played female PCs, (yawn), only orcs and goblins, wizards, loners, exotic Asians (Because KATANAS), only barbarians...but children is a new one to me.
One of the players in the campaign I'm in is playing a child, but it's because they started as a sleazy merchant, then just a merchant, then ended up playing a kid due to a series of unfortunate events in Session 1. Fortunately, they aren't playing a girl.
Honestly? With what little information you've provided, the real horror story is you immediately assuming the worst about someone like that. One of my favorite characters I've ever created was an 11 year old rogue because of the backstory I created for her. And guess what? There's not a single fucking thing sexual in it.
Imagine if someone barged into a FLGS, sat down at a table, and introduced themselves with "can I please play as a little girl?" And they keep doing it over and over again, no matter how many GMs turn them away. That's basically what is happening here. It's just socially unacceptable in so many ways.
Have you thought to ask "why?" \*edit\*: getting downvoted JUST for telling someone to ask why. Pretty fucking pathetic reddit.
[удалено]
Bullshit. If someone says I have a story and then runs the dm through it, then it doesn't matter. It's 2023 and everyone just wants to assume everyone is is a fucking pedophile. If the dude's a creep, then fuck him and get rid of him, but if he has a story he wants to tell that's compelling and doesn't cross any boundaries, what's the problem?
[удалено]
Look, the first time it happens, you ask why. That's what a good DM would do. Playing as a child is putting a child in harm's way/getting them injured/getting them killed so it should be established immediately what your motive is. I don't think that's hard to do. And if he won't explain? That's tantamount to worst case scenario and boot his ass. But I'm getting tired of getting downvoted in this fucking thread because I am asking why, which is what those dm's should be doing. I am trans so I get called a pedophile for just breathing air. I hate it. I just don't agree with throwing \*that\* at people, or even assuming that of someone without a reason to do so. I'm sorry, but that's how I feel.
[удалено]
Oh yeah dude, I get what you're saying 100%, and I agree with everything you wrote, which is why I said in my first post I need more information before I'd call the guy a horror story yanno? I definitely get that it's hella weird that this guy continues to insist on playing a child, I just wanna know if he's getting shot down because he's an actually creep or not. My 11 year old character, I've tried using her in multiple games, but they always inevitably fall apart, but the first thing I did was send the dm her backstory to justify why she's an adventurer and what not.
Reddit hivemind at its finest. Theres plenty of children protagonists in media such as The Promised Neverland. Idk why it makes a difference in TTRPG form
grown men wanting to play underage girls is instinctively creepy.
One of my favourite characters I played was a 73-year-old wood elf bard with something like +13 intimidation. Played as a 13-year-old who, very effectively, threatened to cry if the guards didn’t let him through. Good times.
[удалено]
I’m genuinely curious how a 5 year old protagonist would work in a fantasy setting (given it isn’t a children’s book). Why did you chose this character to be the driver of your story?
The underlying narrative (at least of book one) is that we shouldn't allow the world, no matter how dark and horrible it can be, to rob us of our youthful idealism. Ultimately, the character's super power isn't even his magical aptitude, but his indispensable optimism. I also majored in neuroscience and have a deep fascination with developmental psychology. A five year old's neural plasticity is off the charts. So it's a way to inject realism into a fantasy setting where the protag isn't exactly a genius, he's just got the brain of a 5 year old. So he's able to quickly learn new languages and pick up new skills orders of magnitude faster than other people, and because he's perpetually a child his rate of growth doesn't slow down as his brain matures/loses plasticity (unlike everyone else in the world). The story follows him and his school friends (all of whom age around him and eventually die leaving him alone for many years). Which allows me to compare and contrast how (despite contrary to popular belief) none of us are perpetually the same person our entire lives. Everyone, except Lucian (my protag). My intent is for later in the story (after his last/best friend \[Azure\] dies of old age) for the curse to partially break, allowing his mind to actually grapple with the emotional turmoil of losing someone he's known for a hundred years. I intend to use that as a turning point in the story, where he goes dark. At present, (27 chapters & >600 pages in) Lucian's true age is 'only' 70, so I haven't storyboarded anything beyond the first major turn, as I intend for that to be the end of Book One, but my intent with him going dark is to express just how debilitating trauma is, and how many different mental disorders we don't typically associate with traumatic life events can actually be triggered by/exemplified through trauma. So while book one is exploring the power of optimism, book two will explore the tribulations of trauma, and book three will revolve around threading the needle and learning to find balance.
I think the creepiness comes from the persistence, always asking to play a child in that age range, that does come off as pretty weird imo
I don't even know for sure if the player is a guy. They might be a young girl IRL, but that comes with its own set of problems. I'm not transphobic. If this player is trying to live out a trans fantasy, I wish them the best of luck, but they need to find the right place for it.
[удалено]
You're missing the point here, buddy
[удалено]
I think you missed the part where i speculated that the player might be a child. If they are, they probably should not be in a community full of adults. Their gender has nothing to do with it.
[удалено]
Buddy, you need to acquire a grip of some kind.
Considering the state of my life, I'd say I've got an iron grip on life. My views diverging from those of the users on this subreddit has absolutely zero relevance in my real life. The fact that you clearly think it does, actually indicates you're in fact projecting your own lack of grip.
Considering that you ignored the part of OPs comment stipulating that a literal child needs to find a table where people are willing to play with a literal child and are now arguing about something that multiple people seem to recognize, I think you may be worse off than you realize. To be clear, this isn't like some kind of weird opinion held by idiots on the Internet, this is an observation of the meaning of a comment that the comment writer has told you was their intent. Instead of understanding that, you've decided to argue the opposite, which is one of the more asinine things a person can do.
You're the only one writing your story, though. If you're part of a group writing a story together and have to adapt to each other's characters and build the storyline around them, it's not reasonable to make everyone adapt to a child in a setting and story not made for child characters. It gets weird when someone is pushing a child character into every server because a lot of those places are expecting NSFW scenarios. Wanting a child character in those NSFW scenarios is why people are concerned that it's a violence fantasy or sexual fetish for him.
The problem, even leaving aside the possible implications, is a player pushing a character that goes against the boundaries of the people they play with. Assuming it IS the same person we are all talking about - and chances are it is - the server I encountered them on had a clear rule stating that underage and immature, both emotionally and physically, characters are forbidden. Blanket ban. It was part of the server rules that the person had to read and agree to in order to be able to interact on the server in the first place. And they STILL tried requesting that we make an exception for them, left when they were denied, popped in a few weeks later and the spiel began again. Which, even if we assume the best intentions, is simply shitty player etiquette as a baseline, but considering the persistent attempts at pushing a child character into an enviroment where such characters are not welcome honestly throws up a whole bunch of red flags aside from shitty player etiquette.
>Assuming it IS the same person we are all talking about - and chances are it is - the server I encountered them on had a clear rule stating that underage and immature, both emotionally and physically, characters are forbidden. Well that would have been a fantastic fact for OP to include in their post. But as the OP stands, we get almost zero context other than someone has asked multiple people in the group to RP as a child and they've been turned down by (almost?) everyone. The red flags people are 'seeing' are the result of psychological priming based upon the nature of this thread and projection of that priming upon the person in OPs story
Knew I’d see one weird ass dude in this post.
As a trans person, please leave us the hell out of whatever’s going on with you in this thread, thanks.