Alternate/Reworked Aging

[jqavins]

I'll join the chorus singing "It's too complicated." And here are a few specifics:

• There are too many age brackets at both ends.
  
  • A student of early childhood development, or the parent of a former child, will tell you that there are many changes in a short time and the many categories here represent a simplification. But those changes by and large will have no effect on game play. For an RPG, as opposed to a real life simulation, infant and toddler might as well be the same, and likewise child and pre-adolescent, if you mean by that what I think you mean.
  • By pre-adolescent, you seem to mean pubescent. In modern western society, an adolescent is someone past puberty but before adulthood.
  • Alternatively, infant, toddler, and child could all be combined, and pubescent rolled into adolescent.
  • Speaking as 53 year old, and someone who's known a few old folks, I expect only one or two more noteworthy phases in my life: old, and (if I live long enough) very old (also called venerable).
  • What's the difference between post-adolescent and adult?
  • What do you mean by "mature adult" and "senior"? Mature truly means grown up, not childish, though recently it has become a media euphemism for old. Senior is a long standing euphemism for old. So two categories in between middle aged and elderly seem like something you made up.
  • I don't see any game benefit to more categories than Baby/child^* → Pubescent/adolescent^* → Young adult → Middle Age → Old → Venerable.
  
  
• As we gain experience, we can choose what things to practice and traits to develop, which are represented by skills and feats. But we do not get to choose what age will do to our bodies and brains. I can see how having a few different possibilities makes sense, but having the opportunity to pick and choose them does not make any sense to me.
• I don't know about other editions, but as I recall the AD&D DMG states explicitly that the stats you determine by dice (or other method) are for young adulthood, where most PCs begin. If your character is some other age, make adjustments forward or backward. You rarely have to do this at all, and very rarely more than one category. Even with the expanded range of possible effects, this same starting point would greatly reduce the ungainly complexity of this proposed system as described.

* Or Baby/child/pubescent → Adolescent → Young adult → Middle Age → Old → Venerable. Take your pick; it makes little difference.