Mike Curtis has run some Skirmish scenarios for kids, some for real little ones. I think that works well when it’s designed around their needs.
I used to run Portal Games events that included some young teens (13-16), and I know what you mean about some of them being a pain. I think maturity is the main problem.
Mordavia set a bottom limit of 16 years, and I’ve found we haven’t had much in the way of maturity issues with that limit.
Nice to know.
We might have to try again.
Yeah, we do a couple of Kids Skirmishes a year for the 5 - 12 set (which is the demographics of my kids). Adults = NPC, kids = PCs. We set out to make it a fun and challenging game. Kids can’t die (but they can be knocked out until the end of the encounter), and the adventure takes place between 9am and noon.
Our regular Skirmish has some older kids (11+) and that works OK. They need a bit of marshalling and they tend to play crew.
Ryan’s right, you have to work within the constraints of the kids. Since Skirmish is played in the afternoon, we don’t run into bedtime issues. Still, it’s good to breed larping into the future rangatahi.
I know what you mean.
Because Quest has been around so long we have been through several pulses of characters. What happens is after a few years you start losing the more experienced players to work or leaving varsity or whatever, but often there is a bit of void. Part of the problem is I have found that Older players tend to intimidate newer players, not intentionally, just in reality, therefore you miss the new generation of players.
Part of the thing that puts off the new players is that the older players are better at playing than them. This may seem obvious, but when LRP is often an open game it is interesting. Having younger person games let them get up to speed before they get thrown to the sharks.
We have an interesting way to get around this in the SCA. We use peerages (Royalty, Chivalry, Pelicans and Laurels) and fealty. The people who hold the peerages are without exception experienced players who are skilled at whatever specialist area they are in. They take on newer members in student/teacher roles (knight/squire, laurel/apprentice, Queen/lady in waiting etc).
It has a lot of benefits, including the obligation for the experienced players to pass on knowledge, the sharing of the usually greater resources of the experienced player (armour, costume, research books etc) and a feudal hierarchy.
So, while you have cliques of players based on when they started, you also get households of players in the opposite direction where you may have 1-2 very experienced players and 3-4 people who joined a few years back and some complete beginners.
The culture is such that there is usually some small amount of pride in being in a good household.