Methods of Adult Obliviousness?

[WildElf]

I have an idea for a story that would include steadily vanishing children.  Everything seems like a good plan...except for all the adults.

I know that I could set it in a place where there is little or no adult supervision (like a camp), but I don't want to.  The game is to be set in the kids' neighborhood, school, and surround areas.

What methods can I use that will keep the adults convincingly in the dark about their own missing children?  I don't just want to have them say "Who's Timmy, I've never had any kids," or "He's around, I just heard him in his room."  Having the adults deluded seems to be cheating, and go against the spirit of the game.  And I don't want to use dopplegangers or other replacements.

One of the scenarios in the book mentions that the parents of a missing child might not even notice, but it doesn't really go into why or how they could not notice their kid is missing.

So, in what ways might parents in the Little Fears world not notice their children vanishing?  How would a community not go into a security panic if a few kids from the same school or neighborhood suddenly went missing?

Am I going about this the wrong way?

[Fabrice G.]

Hi WildElf,

You're right when you say that there's no rules about parents not noticing their missing child.

Then the solution might be in setting up the situation.

When did the kids disapear ? Was it a matter of hours, days or weeks ?
Where were they ? In the same group ? scattered over the neighbourhood, the town ?
How do the character ear of what's happening ? Does one of the child is a sibbling/friend/etc. ?

That's some basic questions you'll might want to answer before considering how rationalizing the adults'attitude.

BTW, the only concern about a "security alert" is that it's a strong limiting factor for what the PC can do. But you may turn this as one off the obstacle of the scenario.


Just my two cents,

Fabrice.

[Jake Norwood]

One of the things that makes LF great (and hard to run "just for fun") is that you can take from real life. In Florida, for example, they have just realized that around 1000 kids have been missing for quite some time, and no one knew about it. The deal is that a whole bunch of kids across the state are in temporary state custody, but physcially inthe hands of a relative (for example, one of my good friends had a drug dealer mom, so when mom went to jail the kid became "custody of the state," but went to live with Grandma). Well it turns out that there's a couple of guys with convincing looking government documents showing up at these households and "in the name of the state" requesting to take the child. Some papers are filled out and off they go with the kids...and are never heard from again.

Check out CNN.com for more on this. It's really creepy stuff, and as soon as I read it I thought "Little Fears," but then worried that it would be making light of a real problem (even though playing soldiers and killing isn't...oh well).

For your Scary Story it could work just like that. There is a disproportionate number of State-custody kids in town and two mysterious men with gov docs are going around taking them away...or at least that's what the parents see. The PCs/kids know better...

Jake

[WildElf]

When did the kids disapear? Was it a matter of hours, days or weeks?
Where were they? In the same group? scattered over the neighbourhood, the town?
How do the character ear of what's happening? Does one of the child is a sibbling/friend/etc.?

That's some basic questions you'll might want to answer before considering how rationalizing the adults'attitude.

I guess I may have to modify my plans to accomodate that.  I wanted kids from the same school (kids the characters would know) that would disappear over the course of a few days.  One every day or three.  I'm trying to figure out a way to defeat the kids running to nearby authority figure (parent, teacher, whatever) and saying "Billy's missing!"  I suppose, to do the scenario I want, I would have to stretch it out, possibly, let the adults freak, put up posters, and get no results.  Over time, the adults are clearly (to the kids) in their world of putting up posters and talking to news stations, but aren't actually going after the creepy stuff the kids think are the cause of the problem.

I'm not looking for rules, just creative ways around meddling grown-ups :) without resorting to mystical mind control or something similiar.

Thanks, Jake, for the pointer to the CNN article, although I've already got a story idea for this game, but more cool stories never hurt.

[Fabrice G.]

Hi WildElf,

then I think everything is ok, right now.

See, if the kids disapear and the adults go searching them, alert the media, whatever...; and if a kid come to them saying "oh yeah, I know what appened...the bogeymen took 'em !", my bet is at best he'll be ignored, at worst it's gonna be punishment time !

You can even turn this as a complication in the scenario. Who the adult are going after is they're searching for boogeymen..? Streetperson, the odd-looking guy, etc (who are of course innocent).

This could be a great way to show the children that adults cannot be relied upon inthis kind of situation.

Hope you'll have a good game ;)

Fabrice.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Wildelf,

I think that's the right solution - having the "missing kids" mystery occur entirely without adults seems ... impossible. It also struck me that this phrase is revealing:

"I'm trying to figure out a way to defeat the kids running to nearby authority figure (parent, teacher, whatever) and saying 'Billy's missing!'"

In my experience with playing Little Fears, kid-characters are notoriously difficult to channel into pre-planned paths of play. The notion of "defeating" one or another possible behavior of the players/characters is probably not a useful one for this game.

It seems to me that the solution is for the authority figure already to know Billy's missing, but that the mundane/parental/adult solutions to such problems are completely inapplicable to the situation. The situation is only resolvable using kid-logic and kid-fantasy - ie, Belief Magic and access to the "inner world" of terrors, ignorance, and innocence.

So who cares if the adults know the kids are missing? In fact, it makes sense for them to know, and for their efforts and concern to be ... ineffective.

Which is pretty much exactly the way your solution seems to be headed, so I guess this post is more of a "Yeah! Go!" cheerleading post than anything else. It sounds like you're going to have a fun game.

Best,
Ron

[WildElf]

Hey Wildelf,
In my experience with playing Little Fears, kid-characters are notoriously difficult to channel into pre-planned paths of play. The notion of "defeating" one or another possible behavior of the players/characters is probably not a useful one for this game.

Yeah, I guess I was really trying to brain storm a way for them to not defeat me! :)

And I thought I'd throw it out to see what sort of ideas people have had (and of course discover something I would have never thought of).  And it's a very good point people raised; the adults' solutions are rational, which doesn't have any effect on the evils from Closetland.  I just was afraid I'd make the adults invisible--and I was completely overlooking the middle road.

Thanks for all the input! (of course if any one has other ideas they've used, or even examples of gameplay, feel free to add to this).

[magistrate]

Hi. Im new to this room and to Little fears. Its a great game and does offer a lot of challenges to a DM. I read your post and thought that I would offer my two cents. If your looking for a great way to keep adults somewhat in the dark, take a look at the tv show Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Sunnydale sits on a crack in fabric of Hell and nobody seems to notice mainly because, as adults will tend to do, they are preoccupied with their own lives. When something does happen that they cant ignore then they look to normal problems. (My son wasnt eaten by a vampire he was kidnapped). When adults do this then they feel like they have in some way solved the problem. So when a little kid shows up and tells them that their kids werent kidnapped by some strange man but that they were stolen by a monster with big claws and big teeth, well the adults will usually reply with something like "Stop it. you shouldnt joke around about something like that. Your not helping the situation." After this a kid (Or someone who can really role play one) will do the next logical thing (Child logic anyway). They will try and help, and since they know the real story, then they know where to start looking. ClosetLand here we come. Hope this helps.

[Comte]

On the same note of buffy, and if you are looking for a bigger over arching uber enemy.  In Stephen King's book IT, (not the movie) the creature that was IT was in some form or another contoling the entire town.  In Dery Maine things would happen, children would disapear by the dozen every 40 or so years and no out side atension would be attracted.  Horrible crime of violence could be commited and no one would notice.  This of couse was due to the effect IT had over the town.  You could do something like this, it isn't very hard and with decades of beleife magic filitering down into this thing you could have a lot of fun.

One time my little sister didn't come home as planned.  At first my parents were annoyed they walked around gumbled a lot and muttered about the punishments they would inflict upon her.  After hours passed thier mutterings turned to worry and phone calls started being made.  There was still no luck, so my parents took to the streets driveing around and calling out her name.  Eventualy other neigbors started to get involved and we eventualy found her.  She had walked up to a compleat strangers house, went inside and was haveing a very pleasent conversation with some retired grandmother.  Huzzah for happy endings, but this just goes to show from a real life perspecitive how this sort of things happens.  The period of time from annoyance to mounting a search was several hours.  If the search yeilded nothing we would have gone to the police, more hours would have passed.  They would say that she needs to be missing for 24 hours before a thingy could be issued...more time wasted.  During all of this the parents are so sick with worry and grief that I could go set fire to the neighbors dog, and then plug in a penny with out being noticed.  The parents are around but they are nerve wracked and generaly useless.  Also in a suburban setting (ie houses for miles and miles around and a main shoping road somewhere far away) an increadable amount of things can happen without me knowing about it.  An army of kids could disapear from the houseing complex acrost the street and I wouldn't know about it untill they started turing up dead.  We aren't very freindly twords each other.  You could run a setting like that as well.

[WildElf]

Thanks for the input Comte, that's exactly the sort of brainstorming I was looking for.

This helps a lot!

[Mike Holmes]

I'd go so far as to say that the adult's reaction to the missiong child, and their inability to address it, should be a part of the horror, something not to be missed. Allow the children to go to their parents and plead their case. When the parents dismiss their wild stories as trauma induced delusions, the characters will realize that they are without their primary means of problem solving. Children rely on their parents for everything, and losing that relied-upon means of adressing things should come as a shock and a huge dissapointment. I'd think that this should happen to most LF characters at least once in the course of playing them. It's the point at which they realize that they are the only solution, that they will have to personally face the terrible thing. Something that they may have never done before.

That's horror.

Mike

[Comte]

Yes that is also a very good way to do it.  I like that one.  On a seperate note you could also just messily kill the parents right in front of the children.  I had that happen in the latest senario I was cooking up for my own sadistic pleasure.

Also for all you Stephen King fans out there you could have a younger sibling who has Tak in thier heads and he is the one keeping the parents at bay.

For everyone who hasn't read Desperation and The Regulators the book's villian is a demonic entity known as Tak.  Tak is a right bastard who can take control of people and cause them to do horrible things.  He can also exert a great deal of control over the people around him.  For example in the regulators Tak was possesing a little boy.  When the mother did something to annoy him he would make her slap herself or twist her nipples very hard, so that she would scream out in pain.  Take that situation and throw in a younger sibling...and his freinds and you got a little fears adventure.