Wanting a young girl as a follower

They're little shits sometimes, but you can't imply that children don't have better ways to cope with loss compared to adults.

>Oh wow, more violence in a game of power fantasies and violence.

The only thing worse than an edgelord is an edgelord who doesn't even enjoy it.

Kill yourself.

Some adults never let go of their bad coping strategies.

Why expect an adventurer child to be exactly like a real child?

It's not like adventurer adults are exactly like real adults.

>adventurer child
They arent you stupid fuck, its just some brain dead child following them around

My friend tried to do this and and used all the children as disposable body shields and child soldiers. I highly recommend this tactic

I've never asked for one, but throw one my way and I'd make he a great hero and die trying.

Well first, dialogue. It's hard to toe a line between "too childish" and "too mature" but babytalk and euphemism definitely isn't the way to go about that. I've never heard a real child talk in the terms of "why is nice lady's eyes wet?". Children can be quite eloquent, and if they lack knowledge and vocabulary, they're more likely to compensate it with being very literal and trying to come up with relatable terms (even if they're only relatable to themselves).

So let's imagine your child character follows the paladin to spy on an orc ambush. Instead of:

>Me and niceman went up the big rock thingy and saw lots of scary badmen! Badmen no good!

They'll probably say:
>I went with Sir Lightknight up the mount, the one near the river where we used to catch fish. We saw a lot of ugly creatures that looked like those monsters from dad's books!

Babytalk is more how parents talk to their childrens than how children talk themselves.

Also the idea (that OP seems to buy into) that children are innocent fonts of wisdom and conscience. That's not true at all. A young child is still developing morally and psychologically. They are HIGHLY unlikely to make some grand stand against an adult or question the morality of their actions, especially if they're their parents or handlers. If a child is traveling with murderhobos, he/she is likely to stay out of conflict, quietly observe and eventually internalize some kind of a fucked-up child soldier mentality.

Good advice would be to observe children before writing children. Even if you have no children you can talk to, Youtube is full of parents filming their children doing this or that. Reading child psychologists' notes can help immensely too.

>As a teacher, I can tell you right now that children SUCK ASS at absolutely everything, and they don't even realize it.
This, and they SUCK ASS compared to regular, ordinary adults, who already suck ass at just about everything.

>My assumptions about your game are better than your ideas about your game

People in this thread are doing an excellent job pointing out the potential pitfalls of something like this. It really is rife with opportunities to be awful. But it's also neat and with a decent enough GM, group, and especially the player in question (a high standard, I admit) I can see it working out very well.

This guy gets it

...

I just want a genki loli Redemptionist to follow my Dark Angel around and piss him off with her overly enthusiastic and frequently mispronounced hymns. Is that really so bad?

>They are HIGHLY unlikely to make some grand stand against an adult or question the morality of their actions, especially if they're their parents or handlers

Kids are pretty prone to make "why are you doing [thing]? Isn't that bad/painful to them?"-kind of comments
If anything, they are blunt as fuck and eager to make observations about their enviroment and the people around them

Children are not Zen masters or self help gurus but the way they think can snap a cynic or bitter person out of their normal behaviour. At least force them to face how their actions look like from truly innocent eyes

From the OP description, that is what he is looking for. A veteran soldier that has seen some shit and been forced to do said shit might be a little too quick to reuse those skills again. Havind a child that never went through such experiences simply asking if doing so isn't wrong might make the grizzled veteran ask himself the same question, even if he still intends to torture a prisoner for information, for example.
On the other hand, the veteran might not want to expose said kid to the horrors he has seen and chooses to tone down his methods or force himself to be more friendly, if only for the kid's sake.

It CAN work if OP learns how to roleplay children and finds an excuse to keep the kid around instead of leaving her in a safe place

You're just gonna use her as an onahole, OP. You can still have one but come on. We both know those morale bonuses ain't coming from her cute speeches.

>dark angel
CRAWLING

If you play it as John Wayne in True Grit, it's a-okay.

You're not a story-telling experts, I'm afraid.

>how does one RP a child?
>how does one RP a girl?
>there's one trick to roleplay any member of a group of people
This meme needs to die.

>using her as an onahole
It'll be quite the opposite actually.

If the child is following along and participating in adventures, I'm going to say that qualifies that child as an adventurer.

get a fucking gnome or something instead.

>discuss
I don't see anyone asking for a single trick. Children have severely different tendencies and reactions to situations than fully grown, experienced, rational adults.
Do you not like other people improving their character crafting skills, user?

Well shit.

I'm partial to The Dude's rendition of Rooster Cogburn, as opposed to The Duke's.

So long as she can pull her weight with the party she is an asset. it also needs not be combat related.

Well there is a distinct lack of Camp followers in the adventuring buisness. Someone to help set up tents, cook meals, collect firewood, mend clothing, help dress wounds, feed the horses/other animals.

Its a great way to have an in game reason to gloss over stuff that generally gets gloss over anyhow.

Yeah, no. Childrens usually shutdown emotionally, go catatonic then hopefully get better, or form a mental block when trauma happens.
Adults can logically analyze what happened and actively cope with it possibly as it happens. Its part of why shellshock happens then we get better, hopefully.

In real life terms, not in TTRPG terms. You wouldn't call your mercenaries and hirelings in a TTRPG (you have those, right?) adventurers either.

could be worse. user could be a Blood Raven

think about the implications

Why not?

>This is actually a good skill to discuss. How does one RP a child?
I have an education degree with a focus on child development, which helps. People tell me that my child NPCs are "creepily realistic".

>Almost every single kid failed because they can't really grasp "reward later for action now".
It's actually only about 50%.

It depends on the age of the child in question. I've taught every age from Kindergarden through 7th grade (though 3rd and 4th are what I've taught for the past several years, so my knowledge of the others might be slightly rusty).

Kinder through 1st are an interesting mix. They will never question your actions and assume their caretaker to be some sort of God. They are much more concerned with their own environment and learning how to interact with it than learning, for instance, social interaction. They are more likely to ask questions like "why does this hurt" or "what's that for" than, say, "will this hurt my friend." Hence the "Tommy stabbed me with scissors!" que Tommy: "I didn't think it would hurt them!" followed by unreasonable levels of screams and crying.

2nd Grade is when most kids start to develop some level of Theory of Mind (as in other people are different than me), and will as such start to be curious about their friends and the people around them, this is when they'll start asking "Mr/Mrs such and such, why are you doing that?" because they're much more comfortable in their own environment and can now begin to question the actions of the people around them.

3rd Grade is when most kids become little fucking shits. They've spent the last year internalizing conflict and grasping the concepts of social interactions, now they're experimenting with real lying and manipulation. Every child from age 2 up will lie ("Did you break the bottle?" "Noooooooooo," "I literally saw you break the bottle" "nooooooooooooo *eyes well up with tears*"), but around here is when they actually start learning HOW to lie. As in one girl I taught last year lied about her father abusing her because it got her whatever she wanted (there's more to the story than that but that's the gist of it).

(cont.)

Reccommend me a book please, I've got several pre-teens in my close family and while I don't have contact with them regular and often, I'd like to not be a negative impact on their lives.
I was considering Zimbardos "Why Boys are Failing" after finishing my current series.

(cont.)
4th Grade is when kids start developing a sense of self. They're comfortable in their environments, sort of comfortable with basic social interactions, now they're trying to find a place for themselves in their environment. This continues basically for the next decade of their life, but it starts around here (age 8-9).

5th Grade is the beginnings of the preteen age. Kids here are very good at playing the maturity and "adult" card. This is the age most people start saying "you act much older than you seem!" because they're wanting to become part of the "tribe" so to speak, and Adults are part of the tribe, therefore they want to act like adults.

That's basic child psychology in a nutshell.

> the preteen age. Kids here are very good at playing the maturity and "adult" card. This is the age most people start saying "you act much older than you seem!" because they're wanting to become part of the "tribe" so to speak, and Adults are part of the tribe, therefore they want to act like adults.
But surely this is when a lot of youngsters are really questioning the attitudes and beliefs of the adults around them, the individual child has improved their understanding of the world by a huge amount compared to a few years ago, and so they seem to overestimate their insight and start really looking for flaws in the reasoning of the people around them. Leading to teenage rebellious trends.

That's right, depending on the child. Some of them retreat into quiet observation (the "introspective" ones) and merely judge the actions of those around them based on developing personal morals. The others do as you described where they actively question the actions of their "superiors." However, they still view their superiors as caretakers here, so even during the questionings it's usually with the assumption that the caretaker is in the right and they are simply confirming this here. It isn't usually until middle school age where they begin to put two-and-two together and realize their caretakers are only as human as them.

Also know this is all a drastic oversimplification and every child is going to be different and have their own quirks and develop in a slightly different pattern, but that is the norm and is a good jumping off point for attempting to roleplay/create a child character.

For instance, homeless children are forced to learn social interactions at a much earlier age than others, and different societies and etc etc etc.

>Also know this is all a drastic oversimplification and every child is going to be different
Meh, no model is ever going to be perfect, but a flawed model can still be very useful.

Any advice when it comes to making child NPCs? Whenever I try to make one it always ends up on the "too mature" end, even if there is no real justification for that,

Never include NPC children with happy lives. Always make sure that they have Seen Some Shit.
If they end up too mature, you now have a reason for it.