I had a recent interaction on a MU** with a child character. The character was, by description, in the range of 7-8 years old. She had been in game long enough to know quite a few spells and move up in the games Temple system. My relatively new (couple months old) character was lower ranking in the Temple, has far fewer spells, and is generally less “powerful.”

Here is the challenged I was faced with and I found troubling as a devoted RPer: My middle aged character with no particular fondness for children was expected to be deferencial to a very young, apparently genious calaber child. My character has no reason to believe a young child who is developmentally at the stage of learning about the grays in life, understanding death, and figuring out proper social behavior and self-control, can possibly be truly and deeply devoted to a god in the way an adult is able to. She also finds it rather dangerous that powerful magic is in the hands of a young child. How are such situations properly responded to? I have a hard time looking at such situations from an IC perspective, particularly when there are a number of powerful child characters in the game. Without the game providing justification for why children can acheive great status and magical/fighting prowess, it removes any element of reality and jars me out of the world.

I tend to like the magically gifted youths in games or television or books and things. It makes so much sense when you consider a kids ability to learn new languages and things is almost 300 times better when they are young.

It is one of those concepts that is becoming a serious cliche, but its always fun. I mean a kid would have such a clearer mind and enough innocence to master things that a confused and older person wouldnt.

I guess it goes to my thinking about people like Bastian from the Neverending Story, or the little baby-looking guy in Yu-Yu Hakashu, and stuff like that. And I think that it is okay. Your character just shouldnt be so closed minded when considering them.

And it goes against the normal mage thinking of the old sage like character, (Gandalf, Merlin, etc.). If an old confused man can be some master magician, why not a child.

Anyways, just get over it... there will always be things that seem freakish, and you'll do best to just avoid them.

It sounds as though you've got a good understanding of how your character would react right there. She'd be dubious and worried by the implications. Might be fun to play that out - I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to.

In my view, the person playing the child wants to have her cake and eat it to.

For some reason, she wants to be a 7-8 year old child, and at the same time wants to be a powerful being who is treated with respect.

I think those two concepts are mutually exclusive.

Hmmm, I simply can't agree with your logic Threshold of them being mutually exclusive. But if I remember correctly most muds (speaking from ROM/ROT perspective) the starting age of a character is 17-18 yrs old so the matter of character depth and history is essential. Why not have a prodigy that is quite powerful, depending on how its played there are alot of roleplay options.
One thought that crossed my mind is this: the ability and knowledge is there but a certain innocence, needing guidance of an older person. Depending on who becomes their "advisor" many things can happen.

In my opinion, if you are closed to an idea, you limit the possibilities for rp. But everyone has their own thoughts on this. just have fun!

While I can accept that the possibility of a child possessing a lot of power it really should only happen in extremely rare occasions imo. That's what child prodigies are... children with the mental ability of an adult (higher than the average adult even) but only in extremely rare cases IRL. Even in such cases child prodigies can't be just turfed out into the real world to fend for themselves as they haven't developed many other qualities to be able to get by on their own (emotionally, etc.).

I guess it depends on the type of mud. If it is an RPI mud where realism is important I would like to see the Imms having some sort of control over the numbers of this type of character that can appear in the game as many players won't stick to the role of 'power child'. My experience is that the majority of them are all childish, innocent and playful in unimportant situations and then mysteriously adult, insightful, calculating and serious when the situation changes where the innocent nature of a child could be taken advantage of. That's where I would agree with Threshold in that many of these players do want to have their cake and eat it. Of course if it's a high fantasy mud where anything goes then I wouldn't worry about personally.