I spent 10 years LARPing with kids professionally. Age may be "irrelevant", but kids imaginations are special.
This meme reminds me of two very specific incidents.
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We're running an adventure about zombies. A coworker has a group of six year olds. One of them is late getting picked up and we're all hanging out together sword fighting with this kid pretending to be zombies. When the kid's mom finally shows up, he runs up to my coworker, gives her a huge hug and says "I love zombies!"
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I'm running a group of 8-10 year olds and they're traveling to a big "good aligned" city in a big "good aligned" kingdom. One of them randomly decides to bust into a farm house, tie up the family, load them into their own donky cart, drive them into the city, haul them out in the center of the town square and start shouting "Slaves! Slaves for sale! Get your slaves here!" At every step of the way, I keep asking the rest of the group if they're going to do anything about this and they don't care. So the city watch shows up, overwhelms the party, claps them in irons and they spend the night in jail. When they're dragged before the magistrate the next day, the rest of the party is indignant, protesting "Why are we in trouble?? We didn't do anything!" I took great relish in (playing as the magistrate) squinting at them, nodding my head and saying "That... is why you are in trouble!"
Can I ask what system you use?
I used to work for this company:
I would like to believe this to be real but I've known so many parents that would quite literally sue your company for putting their child in effectively jail overnight
This is going to blow your mind but RPGs don't have to use a 1:1 time scale
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Gods, kids do go over the top.
But I'll say that teenagers are worse than the little ones because they get specific. Like, details of the horrors they unleash.
Source: was DM in my teens, and have DMed for all ages since.
My kid? Jfc. Wants to play a dragon. Why? " 'cause then I can burn everything". That was at 5.
He wants to play a dragon, you say? I've been working on something that might be to taste. It's still a bit of a Work in Progress, but I've been refining the balance for a good few months now. It's built for adventures that start at higher levels.
Missing the swirl option: child befriends zombie, then convinces zombie to commit war crimes. That's the child you must fear the most.
Oh, I had a table of mid-twenties absolutely war-criming the shit out of a slave driver one session, and befriending the lich that was supposed to be their act boss like a half-chapter before that fight was supposed to go down two weeks later. Age is absolutely irrelevant.
EDIT: The fix action for the lich was I pretty much made his 'non-combative' personality into Uncle Death from Let It Die, and the party got a fun 'call in a favor' flavored DMPC to deal with a new fight to take the place of what was SUPPOSED to be the party's lich fight.
Well if there's one person who deserves war crimes it's a slave driver. A lich has nothing on that.
How I knew my party had their priorities straight tbh
Can confirm, our party of 20something year olds collectively adopted the Young Black Dragon our DM threw at us because she's like. Yeah she's trying to be mega evil but she's really pathetic and we love that for her. We're trying to convert her to good
*watching the Clone Wars
Past a certain age and you have the potential of a 3rd, horny Bard, solution.
