Well, I'm not quite sure if this is where to put it, but I can't find anywhere else... and if I've overlooked it, I'm terribly sorry.

Now, my questions relate to your attachments to the main protagonist(s). I, 16-year-old girl, like to see young males around the ages of 10 to 15 in the main character helm. But what I also like is a mature, grown-up game world. Were I to follow my ambition of game design, I really would like to discuss this sort of thing.

Most of all, I would like to know: Would a child lead, regardless of rating, regardless of setting, put you off? Or would you give it a shot anyway? I'm not really talking about RPGs in particular, but any sort of genre.

Thanks for any feedback~

Often, the age of characters is not specified and is left to the player to guess from the character's art and social role. The anime art style is somewhat known for having characters look younger than they are supposed to be. The major identifying activity of childhood is school, but adventuring party characters aren't likely to be going to school unless the story is specifically set in a school and the adventures are school assignments, competitions, etc. Even if the story does have characters attending school, the story may not specify whether the school is more like a high school or more like a college or military boot camp, or might have a mix of child and adult students if schooling begins whenever some event happens to that person (e.g. getting chosen by a mythical beast, having their magic awakened, beating a difficult entrance exam which anyone may attempt) instead of by age.

Personally I don't mind high school-aged characters, especially in comedy, but if the story is more serious I prefer characters to be at least 18 (nominally adult). Rating-wise, I'd avoid putting an under 18 character in sexual situations, and it's not much of an adult story if there's no mention of sex as a normal part of life and motivating force for the characters. I'm not personally interested in dark stories but if you want to write something where a character gets tortured, it's again best to do that with an 18 or older character.

The definition of "adult" has changed a lot over the last few hundred years. Prior to our industrial period a 13 year old was old enough to be on thier own. This was inpart due to the limited amount of knowledge needed to function and the rather short lifespan of the time. Romeo and Juliet were 16 and 14 or so I believe.

While having a young Hero is realistic, in our current society it is also somewhat unbelievable. We judge the world by our own normals and most I think would expect the hero to be in thier early 20's nowdays.

This does not preclude a child hero for your storyline but it does require extra care when you develop it. If you want a great example of this try out a book called "Enders Game" by Orson Scott Card.

I don't think you'd put off many people just by having a child protagonist. It may predispose them to expecting a childish game, so starting off with a bright pastel world, and a gossipy school yard could be enough to drive off players wanting something more mature, but if the rest of your game is thematically dark or 60's sci-fi or high fantasy or whatever, I think players will tend to react to those genre expectations as opposed to the protagonist.

Earthbound pops to mind as an excellent (SNES) rpg featuring a party of children. And there's a long history in literature: Oliver Twist, Harry Potter, Lord of the Flies, Sword in the Stone...

I think it's an extremely promising direction from a game design standpoint. So many games fall into the super-soldier-vs.-the-world model, but a child communicates a lack of combat ability. You could go with the Home-Alone model of child using traps against adults, or use a larger group of children as a child-society-coming-of-age thing, or avoid combat altogether in more of an adventure story. Whichever way you go, it's an opportunity to do something unique.

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Original post by BrianLarsen If you want a great example of this try out a book called "Enders Game" by Orson Scott Card.

Seconded. Also see Harry Potter, Pinocchio... there are lots of great stories with preteen, tween antagonists. Works in literature, works in games too.

And moving to Writing.

I think that setting depends upon whether or not you can use a child in your protagonist role. Disney did a great job in its classic cartoons, one example of a good child-leading film being the Home Alone series, but now with such films as Race to Witch Mountain and TV shows like Unnatural History, the role of the leading child has become watered down and somewhat changed.

Now, maybe as an RPG this could work. Your child would grow in age along the storyline and would eventually transform into a man.

But put a kid around 13 in the shoes of Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2 and you've got yourself one hell of a predicament.

The thing is, it's trial and error. Most writing is. Some ideas work out, others don't. It's up to you to decide what to try, and mainly, the community will tell you if it doesn't work. You've just gotta build up on your skills and sometimes write outside of what you want to write about.

It really just have to be believable. For me Harry Potter was not... it's great writing, just not a great story.

I think that, if you want to use a younger character, like ones of 15ish... you should use the settings that has them as adults, like another person said. In medieval times and such, people got married at 16 or 13 even, the "men" of those days are just "boys" now.

There are many reasons for why a child or teenager would be the main protagonist in an "adult" world. The "adult" world that most people refer to means one of two things: mature or "adult" in the sense of the word of overtly sexual. In terms of mature, it really just means the real world.

The real world isn't pretty and censored and full of roses and fairytale endings. I think a younger protagonist like how you explain it would fit perfectly into such a world. Many good examples, some of which have already been mentioned, exist in the realm of a child or young adult being the protagonist in a mature type of story.

On the one hand, you should write the story that you want to write. But on the other, having a certain type of character be the protagonist just because you like that type of character doesn't always work. They need to fit the world.

So could a child or teenager be the protagonist in a much more mature game? Yes. Would you catch a lot of flak for it from some people? Yes. Would you be praised for your innovation from others? Only if the game is worthy of that sort of praise.

If you do want a young protagonist you have to have them fit the setting and fit themselves. A young fifteen year old is not going to go around jumping into bed with random women ala The Witcher, nor is he going to be a theoretical physicist ala Half Life.

As I said before, write the story you wish to write, but make sure you're doing it because the character fits the setting and not just because you want to place your favorite character into a new setting. That's what fan-fiction is for.

I've read a book called The name of the Wind in wich the main character is a 12 years old boy who lives 3 years in the streets of a horrible city filled with thieves, prostitutes and junkies (just a part, the rest of the book is in other place). He has to steal for living and gets busted and beated by guards. I think that book was very well written, and the story was less generic than others (no elves and such so common in fantasy).