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Pinjata
2018-12-10, 08:27 AM
Hey guys,

My players want to play as young adult elves and they are starting their adventure in an elven tribe in a large forest. And they want to linger a while, before they depart for a great world. Now ... It makes sense for them to have parents. I can't have it for all of them to be just orphans. I wonder if you guys have any advice on how to handle the parents situation? I mean, it's logical for parents to be present and to care about their children, so no interaction between them and my PCs makes no sense. Did you run any similar games in your settings? How did you handle these things?

Also I'm not saying this is a problem, just a bit ... weird as far as I go. I have never run such a campaign before.

thanks

Faily
2018-12-10, 09:02 AM
In some settings for elves, the parental role is more of a communal thing than individual thing as the birth rate among elves is very low (making each child a blessing to the community). So you could potentially have it so that they don't have a specific parent figures, but rather view all the adults as their parent figures, which might make things more interesting?

Otherwise, parental figures in a game means you have a platform for creating incentives for them to go out into the world. Think of it as working together on what would normally be the backstory of a PC.

- A family heirloom has been stolen and parents are too old/frail/sick to go find it on their own. It's up to the healthy young progeny to do this family task.
- Test of adulthood to travel to some place and face certain challenges.
- A loved one is dying and needs a special herb for a medicine. The PC has a vision of what it is or where to find it.
- The village seer has foretold that a destiny awaits the PC outside in the big world.

Having the PCs spend more time in their home with NPCs that they are close to opens up a lot of possibilities for the players to get more attached to their origins and their purpose. Depending on how you want to do the community, there could also be local intrigues between families vying for influence and power, which could also be a motivator or a story-point for PCs.

Geddy2112
2018-12-10, 12:22 PM
It is not uncommon for my group to play characters with extended families. Parents, siblings, even children. These of course are easy plot hook bait as Faily said; you can even go for the throat and kidnap or gank the parents=instant adventure.

Let the players know in advance they should have extended families prepared and give you a rough bio of each. Name, gender, age, race, class, physical description, 3-4 interesting bullet points at most. If they don't want to, let them know you will create parents for them.

Also let the players determine how much they want their families in the story. Some players never want to mention family, others might become a key theme.

RazorChain
2018-12-10, 11:56 PM
Uh..yeah 4 of my 6 PC's have parents who are still alive. Nothing unnatural about that and it offers some great roleplaying opportunities. Just let the your players make their parents and describe their relationship with them.

EdgeOfTheAbyss
2018-12-11, 01:32 AM
make shore they are not just in the background, have them care for and worry about their dangerous life style, gi ve them home baked goods.
Make sore your PC know how much their family does or doesn't love them.

snowblizz
2018-12-11, 05:56 AM
If the players are supposed to be young adult elfs obviously they'll want the parents to step meddling in their lives that they can very well screw up on thier own dammit and get that knitted scarf away from me gosh mom you are so embarrasing and tell dad to stop spying on our adventure groups secret meetings.

Pinjata
2018-12-11, 12:49 PM
Great advice! Two already picked the Orphan option :D

Warlawk
2018-12-11, 02:19 PM
The question seems a little odd to me in the first place. I mean, everyone has a family. Some people are going to just keep them very far in the background or prefer to be orphaned or whatever but the situation should be pretty normal.

That said, avoid the temptation to make parents or siblings mighty retired adventurers or something like that unless the PCs specifically want that. Unless that is an angle they want to play, it will really overshadow the more normal familial interactions that the players want out of it.

Jay R
2018-12-11, 04:49 PM
Parents (or other relatives) often fall into one of the following categories:
1. Designated hostages, to be taken prisoner by the BBEG to force the party to take the quest,
2. NPC abilities for the players to abuse,
3. Non-adventurers with no useful skills to abuse,
4. 1,000 miles away, or
5. Full-time active people with quests or tasks of their own, and therefore usually unavailable, but who might intersect with the party's goals once or twice as an interesting encounter.

1 is a cliche; 2 is power-gaming by the players. I've usually used 3 or 4.

5 is a new idea I came up with while answering your question, that I might try to use sometime in the future. It sounds like it could be interesting.

noob
2018-12-11, 06:15 PM
Parents (or other relatives) often fall into one of the following categories:
1. Designated hostages, to be taken prisoner by the BBEG to force the party to take the quest,
2. NPC abilities for the players to abuse,
3. Non-adventurers with no useful skills to abuse,
4. 1,000 miles away, or
5. Full-time active people with quests or tasks of their own, and therefore usually unavailable, but who might intersect with the party's goals once or twice as an interesting encounter.

1 is a cliche; 2 is power-gaming by the players. I've usually used 3 or 4.

5 is a new idea I came up with while answering your question, that I might try to use sometime in the future. It sounds like it could be interesting.

Some stories have the option 5 but not a lot of them.

Knaight
2018-12-11, 06:23 PM
Parents can be incredibly fun to play as NPCs. Harranguing adventuring characters about how they worry about them, about settling down and having children already because the parent wants grandkids, so on and so forth is just fun. Embrace the opportunity.

Morvram
2018-12-11, 06:32 PM
Option 5 is an ideal situation in my opinion, but it is also pretty intimidating to run, so I can understand not wanting to do that with all the PCs - and also you don't want to give focus to one PC's family but not others, unless the other players are OK with not getting as much spotlight time.

Pauly
2018-12-11, 08:00 PM
Most ‘young adult’ fiction has absent parents. Mainly because the full power adults would solve the problem more quickly than the kids. Ways of solving:
- straight up murder (i.e. orphans). James of James and the Giant Peach had his parents kllled by a rampaging rhinoceros in Picadilly.
- parents obsessed with work. Classic anime trope such as in Evangelion.
- parents are evil/neglectful. Often used with a step parent, of course Cindarella is the go to reference.
- parents have commitments that take them away. Enid Blyton’s books such the Famous Five series often use this. Home Alone is a different take.
- kids are sent away from home on an adventure. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped is an example of an involuntary adventure.
- being sent away to learn a trade. Not used much these days but it shows up in Dickens.

lightningcat
2018-12-11, 11:54 PM
Parents (or other relatives) often fall into one of the following categories:
1. Designated hostages, to be taken prisoner by the BBEG to force the party to take the quest,
2. NPC abilities for the players to abuse,
3. Non-adventurers with no useful skills to abuse,
4. 1,000 miles away, or
5. Full-time active people with quests or tasks of their own, and therefore usually unavailable, but who might intersect with the party's goals once or twice as an interesting encounter.

6. The parents are antagonists to the character and/or the party. If secret identities are used, then one or both parties might not even know it. Star Wars used a version of this, as does the Runaways comic.

1 is the primary reason PCs are orphans in my experience.
One example of 5 is from ST:TOS, when Spock's parents are introduced.

Quertus
2018-12-12, 10:09 AM
So, am I the only one concerned that this thread about PCs having parents was preceded by a thread about the PCs being amnesiac children rescued by more competent adventurers, and what it portends for the horror stories of a controlling GM who always made the PCs take second fiddle to the NPCs that the players will tell?

OP, ask yourself if you are psychologically capable of running a game where the PCs are the big shots, and, also, if you are psychologically capable of running a game where the PCs are the stars of the show. I've seen plenty of GMs who, if they were honest with themselves, would answer "no" to one or both questions.

If you answer "no" to one or both, then make sure that you bill your game accordingly; otherwise, see aforementioned concern regarding horror stories.

If, however, you believe that you can have the PCs be the big shot stars of the show, think carefully about the tone that you are setting. Sure, you've got noob players that need to be taught the system now, but... how do you expect them to transition from that to being BDHs once they have cut their teeth? What's your game plan?

With the overpowered GMPC of somewhat overstated concern in these parts, you can always get Gandalf killed, or have them retire to make room at the top for the PCs to put on the big boy pants.

But with parents, it's a bit more... ever-present. A system like Vampire has this baked in, and the players should expect it, but something like D&D, most people didn't sign on expecting their 20th level High Priest of Bendeth/Pelor/Catbert/Corellon Larethian to be nagged to come over for dinner, and what about that cute elf girl in the choir, I'll bet if you two tried, you could make me some grandkids in a hundred years geesh.

IME, "escapist power fantasy" describes, in part, what the bulk of players desire and expect from an RPG. Violating their expectations without clearly changing those expectations up front is what horror stories are made of.

Rukelnikov
2018-12-13, 03:08 PM
When I read the thread's title, I wasn't sure what the problem was, then I read the post, and still couldn't get it, and now reading how many of the answers are basically:

"Find a way so that the PCs parent's are not there"

I'm forced to ask, why is it so much of a problem that characters have parent? It's the most common thing in the world, people have parents.

Quertus
2018-12-13, 09:10 PM
I'm forced to ask, why is it so much of a problem that characters have parent? It's the most common thing in the world, people have parents.

I guess I'll take a stab at shoving my gaming religion at you.

So, at one layer, the existence of the PCs' parents is not only a good thing, but the lack of it strains versatility.

However, where was Aragorn's mother in LotR? Legolas's? Gimli's? Parents of the PCs rarely have any valid role to play in even the low-level fantasy of LotR, let alone in higher-level play.

Also, as I tried to explain in more detail in my post, if I'm not mistaken, the OP seems to have a habit of creating disempowering scenarios for the PCs, and that runs counter to the standard escapist fantasy RPG.

That's about half some my reasons - heard any that resonate with you yet, or should I continue?

Knaight
2018-12-13, 09:35 PM
However, where was Aragorn's mother in LotR? Legolas's? Gimli's? Parents of the PCs rarely have any valid role to play in even the low-level fantasy of LotR, let alone in higher-level play.

Where's Jon Snow's parents? What about Jaime Lannister's? Sansa Stark's? All at least partially present. This is more an indication of the specific work than anything, and even then we see Eomer and Eowyn, Faramir and Boromir, and even Frodo, all of whom have parents or at least older relatives who have effectively adopted them.

Pauly
2018-12-13, 10:05 PM
When I read the thread's title, I wasn't sure what the problem was, then I read the post, and still couldn't get it, and now reading how many of the answers are basically:

"Find a way so that the PCs parent's are not there"

I'm forced to ask, why is it so much of a problem that characters have parent? It's the most common thing in the world, people have parents.

- if the parents are interesting you will have a bunch of level 10 or so adventurers handy who will come rushing in to save their babies whenever the party find a goblin with a pointy stick that’s a bit too pointy.
- if the parents are boring they become spiderman girlfriends - they exist only to be put in peril to compel the heroes to rescue them.

The easy solution for starting adventurers is to somehow remove the parents from the story. Once the adventurers have skilled up enough then the parents can be put into the story

Knaight
2018-12-13, 10:15 PM
- if the parents are interesting you will have a bunch of level 10 or so adventurers handy who will come rushing in to save their babies whenever the party find a goblin with a pointy stick that’s a bit too pointy.
- if the parents are boring they become spiderman girlfriends - they exist only to be put in peril to compel the heroes to rescue them.

The easy solution for starting adventurers is to somehow remove the parents from the story. Once the adventurers have skilled up enough then the parents can be put into the story

NPCs can be interesting without being powerful though, let alone being adventurers.

Quertus
2018-12-14, 12:40 AM
Where's Jon Snow's parents? What about Jaime Lannister's? Sansa Stark's? All at least partially present. This is more an indication of the specific work than anything, and even then we see Eomer and Eowyn, Faramir and Boromir, and even Frodo, all of whom have parents or at least older relatives who have effectively adopted them.

I may be mistaken, but I think that they could well be PCs themselves?


NPCs can be interesting without being powerful though, let alone being adventurers.

Sort of. As mercurial as 3e leveling is, it hurts verisimilitude if any but the least interesting of individuals are centuries-old Commoner 1s.

Pauly
2018-12-14, 01:07 AM
NPCs can be interesting without being powerful though, let alone being adventurers.

I’m not saying it isn’t possible, just that it’s easier to handwave them away. Hell in Pokemon they don’t even bother to handwave, you’re supposed to accept 12 year old kids roaming all through the world getting into all kinds of shenanigans without parental supervision as normal.

The natural way of the world is that parents will intervene and protect their children. For an adventure story about starting adventurers it would cramp their style, so the easy way out is to remove the parents somehow.

Tvtyrant
2018-12-14, 01:11 AM
I may be mistaken, but I think that they could well be PCs themselves?



Sort of. As mercurial as 3e leveling is, it hurts verisimilitude if any but the least interesting of individuals are centuries-old Commoner 1s.

That doesn't make them adventurers or soldiers though. Billy's mom is an Artificer, sure, but she does all of her work at and sells her wares to a shop so she doesn't have to worry about security.

And Susie's dad is a barbarian but he faints at the sight of blood and wrestles on weekends. He's been sober and rage free for 30 years.

Justin's grandma never got out of commoner but she lived a long, rich life as the town water carrier.

Pinjata
2018-12-14, 03:03 AM
To tell the truth ... I do not understand, what the problem is here. The example of lvl 20 character is especailly silly. My PCs will not even start as lvl 1, they will start with commoner stats to learn the game. I have several similar campaigns behind me and in all parents were a non-issue, with some particular players making a really interesting story out of PC-parent relationship. One might take a hint from my note that two players already decared their characters as orphans. My players do what they want. NPCs are there just to enrich the experience.

Mystral
2018-12-14, 08:17 AM
Hey guys,

My players want to play as young adult elves and they are starting their adventure in an elven tribe in a large forest. And they want to linger a while, before they depart for a great world. Now ... It makes sense for them to have parents. I can't have it for all of them to be just orphans. I wonder if you guys have any advice on how to handle the parents situation? I mean, it's logical for parents to be present and to care about their children, so no interaction between them and my PCs makes no sense. Did you run any similar games in your settings? How did you handle these things?

Also I'm not saying this is a problem, just a bit ... weird as far as I go. I have never run such a campaign before.

thanks

Have Orks kill them in the first session.

noob
2018-12-14, 09:28 AM
Have Orks kill them in the first session.

what happens if the orcs die to a fire(adventurers are around and everything seems more flammable) before they can kill the parents of the adventurer.
Does the adventurer then moan about the its cruel fate of having his orphanmakers dead thus making them unable to complain about their cruel fate of having dead parents?

Slipperychicken
2018-12-14, 12:14 PM
It sounds to me like your players want the standard "Hero's Journey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey)" model, where the 'normal world' is established before they hear the call to adventure.


A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

They want that "world of common day" to exist. Basically you should be working with them to make a social and physical place for them to begin the story and depart from, which contrasts the "region of supernatural wonder" where the main conflict takes place, and which also serves as a place to return at the end of the story.

Quertus
2018-12-14, 05:32 PM
To tell the truth ... I do not understand, what the problem is here... My PCs will not even start as lvl 1, they will start with commoner stats to learn the game. I have several similar campaigns behind me and in all parents were a non-issue... two players already decared their characters as orphans.

OK, piñata, I'll happily poke at you until candy comes out. :smalltongue:

So, sure, extreme player disempowerment is one way to try to teach the players a new system. Video games do it all the time, limiting the player's options to a "manageable" subset, and carefully guiding them through specifically crafted encounters to teach specific lessons and skills.

Personally, I'm not a fan.

Teachers have to teach to the pace of the slowest student, or, if they exceeded that, go back and give that student remedial lessons. Single-player videogames have no such limitations, and therefore have no reason to teach the fastest student at the slowest student's pace. Thus, I greatly prefer videogames whose "tutorial" leaves all options available from the start, and lets users learn a) as quickly as they are able, and b) in an environment as close to the "real thing" as they can manage.

-----

Anyway, if you haven't heard the vast array of player disempowerment horror stories, or don't grok the likeness between them and what you're describing, well, I'll leave it to someone more charismatic to explain it to you, or someone more knowledgeable to point you at some of the better ones.

However, extreme player disempowerment need not be a bad thing. Like all tools, it's a question of how you use it. You say that you've run several successful games like this before. While that makes me question what value you then expected from this thread, I'll ignore that for the moment in favor of what seems more relevant matters. So, how high level did these other games go? What did the PCs accomplish? And what role did their parents have in these games / accomplishments?

Many GMs cannot transition from such extreme player disempowerment to having empowered PCs. Did you? If so, what did that process look like?

Candy?

AceOfFools
2018-12-21, 12:29 PM
Parents (or other relatives) often fall into one of the following categories:
1. Designated hostages, to be taken prisoner by the BBEG to force the party to take the quest,
2. NPC abilities for the players to abuse,
3. Non-adventurers with no useful skills to abuse,
4. 1,000 miles away, or
5. Full-time active people with quests or tasks of their own, and therefore usually unavailable, but who might intersect with the party's goals once or twice as an interesting encounter.

1 is a cliche; 2 is power-gaming by the players. I've usually used 3 or 4.

5 is a new idea I came up with while answering your question, that I might try to use sometime in the future. It sounds like it could be interesting.

Also good: Parents as questgiver or reasonable authority figure. They are directly involved in the PC's goals by sending their children to deal those problems.

Yes, such parents may be personally or institutionally able to get other high-level assets to cover for the PC if they screw up, but then the PCs have to deal with having disappointed their parents and set themselves up for being failures unable to follow in their parents prestigious goals.

Also comes with tons of "child of authority" hooks like diplomatic marriages, generational politics, etc.