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.