Little Fear in action

[Mike Holmes]

Uh, Ron, if you didn't feel that way about a realistic child character, I'd be worried. Yes this is evidence that the game works. And one of many reasons I can't play it. I think the game is too good. I really don't want to become that emotionally invested in an RPG. Given that I'm a relatively new father, I think the game scares me (heck, just being a father scares me). I do own a copy, but who knows when I'll be able to play it.

Mike Holmes

[trelliz]

I think that the issue of being worried about your character depends on how realistic to YOU they seem. if you make a character, give them a name and that's it, they're not real and so you don't care much to what happens to them. but if you try what I have tried (as well as a few other people, which is to base the character on what the player was really like at whatever age you decide the character to be. If i made myself as a 10 year old i would have to give myself Big for my age, loud, artistic, curious, etc. Try basing your LF character on what you were like at that age, or ask your parents what you were like, so you can get another person's perspective of you as you seemed, not as you remeber.

[Ron Edwards]

Trelliz,

With respect, I don't think many people at the Forge need instruction about how to identify with their characters. Furthermore, I would be surprised if the behavior you describe - making up oneself at 8 or so - is not THE single most widely-practiced use of the Little Fears rulebook, on first reading.

Let us take my latest player-character - Ysidra Xo, an Obsidian character. This an action game, and PCs are violent, dangerous individuals; getting waxed and smacked and kicked about is part of play. Does this means that the PC is a game-piece, that all of us players are in Pawn stance, and that there's no particular identification going on? No. The identification is present, but it is not morally tinged with outrage.

A Little Fears PC - and I specify, NOT one based upon myself - has a different effect on me, at least upon gazing at the sheet, and I presume during play (soon to come).

It has nothing to do with identification. It has to do with what the fictional character Ysidra Xo is capable of dealing with and enduring, and what she is "about." She may grow and learn, but she is past adolescence, and as a viewer/author of the character, I and the other players are not protective toward her development during early life.

Whereas a Little Fears PC, as a child, is entering the creative role-playing arena as someone who is developing into an adult, eventually. We as people are protective toward children, most of us; we accept the context of some shared responsibility toward their welfare. Even a fictional child prompts this response, and to INFLICT terror and fear on a child, even as an author/player/GM, is uncomfortable for us.

Best,
Ron

[Jason L Blair]

Ron,

Bingo. This is exactly what I was hoping to instill in players (which, in turn, will heighten the sense of terror). As far as the question at hand, I'm interested as well. I'd answer, but I think my view of it would be a bit skewed (and understandably so).

[Knight]

To clear up the Changeling/Cybergeneration thing - Epoch explained it well.  Both games seemed to me to have a very specific, limited idea of what childhood and children are*.  IMHO, Changeling is as equally focused on childhood as Little Fears and Cybergeneration. My question about South Park was to do with determining the width of Little Fears's conception of childhood.    









*And both had other important problems.

[Tyrant]

As for Cybergen, I have played, and run it extensively, and while fellow purist Cyberpunkers tend not to like it, I think it depends on how the game is run/intended..

While Little Fears is a game intended to run as Playing REAListic children, Cybergen is about high powered kids vs a system their parent abandoned them to... Two very different Genres...

One game of Cybergeneration made me burst out in tears it was so... terrible... but then it was run by a very good GM