@MisterBoring said:
For me, it’s safer to just avoid using Children as NPCs / PCs in a MU because it seems to always attract really crusty people before too long,
This.
I like child PCs, actually. I’ve played one and had fun. I’ve played with them and had a lot of fun watching how my PCs respond to children.
The game I ran that was a success allowed child PCs. This was actually a deal between myself and the person who hosted it. He agreed to host on the conditions that I, one, allow them, and two, keep the banhammer in arm’s reach and not hesitate to remove pedos. He liked to play child PCs and wanted a game where he could play one and not have to spend a bunch of his hobby-fun-times fending off pervs.
Certainly it’s not cool to pass the fending-off-pervs responsibilities to players, and the fending has certainly got to be done, so it’s a gamerunner’s task. Avoiding this gross job by disallowing child characters is a reasonable solution.
I am with you on the complaints about the child NPCs and pets that get posed as immersion-breakingly unrealisticly angelic and perfect. Babies are cute but mostly they don’t croon cutely, they scream and puke at inconvenient times or are unconscious, and if your pet is a perfect circus-and-service dog you need the skill to train that.
