re: 3e children & youth questions

[Curmudgeon]

Yes, 3e is officially dead but I'm still hopeful for some answers with canonical authority and no, I don't expect to be making a habit of these sorts of 3e questions.
21 was the age of majority for much longer than 18 was. For those times when 21 was the age of majority, should the Youth advantage top out at -12 points and reduce at 2 points/year or should it still top out at -6 points and reduce at 1 point/year.
I've always presumed that if the age of majority were 15, say for an Ice Age campaign, characters can't take the Youth disadvantage because it hinges on there being a discrepancy between being physically adult development and being recognized socially as an adult. Is this correct?
Finally, how would the point difference between an adult and child scale up in a 500 point supers game?
Would it be:
1. 250 points (children have half the points of an adult).
2. 150 points (children are 2 point levels [3e B11 sidebar] lower than adults).
3. 450 points (children are a flat 50 points lower than adults).
4. something else (on some other basis).
As a final question, for adolescent characters (age 12-14) would a 75 point build be the more appropriate standard?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Yes, 3e is officially dead but I'm still hopeful for some answers with canonical authority and no, I don't expect to be making a habit of these sorts of 3e questions.
21 was the age of majority for much longer than 18 was. For those times when 21 was the age of majority, should the Youth advantage top out at -12 points and reduce at 2 points/year or should it still top out at -6 points and reduce at 1 point/year.

The answer would be "no". While the full age of majority may have been 21 at one time, even in the dark ages of the 60s at the age of 18 people were wandering off to go to college and get wasted or joining the military to get wasted in an entirely different way. Being technically debarred from voting or legally drinking in some places didn't mean the full slate of restrictions that people in parental (or orphanage institutional) custody experienced and which were what you were getting the points for.

I've always presumed that if the age of majority were 15, say for an Ice Age campaign, characters can't take the Youth disadvantage because it hinges on there being a discrepancy between being physically adult development and being recognized socially as an adult. Is this correct?

Yes.

Finally, how would the point difference between an adult and child scale up in a 500 point supers game?
Would it be:
1. 250 points (children have half the points of an adult).
2. 150 points (children are 2 point levels [3e B11 sidebar] lower than adults).
3. 450 points (children are a flat 50 points lower than adults).
4. something else (on some other basis).

I would not consider that rule to be necessarily relevant to supers. If you take Spider-Man for example, at 16, he was a total peer to Daredevil at 26. Daredevil had more training and skills, but Spider-Man was a boy-genius who got a better draw in the super power lottery and that's all there was to it.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I would not consider that rule to be necessarily relevant to supers. If you take Spider-Man for example, at 16, he was a total peer to Daredevil at 26. Daredevil had more training and skills, but Spider-Man was a boy-genius who got a better draw in the super power lottery and that's all there was to it.

Yeah, Superboy (any version) is going to be vastly more points than The Question.

[Curmudgeon]

Thank you both re: the child/supers question and David re: 15 yr old majority question.
However:
David Johnston2, I have to take exception to your even in the dark ages of the 60s comment. I grew up in the 50s and 60s and I was one of the first people in my province to hit the age of majority when the federal government lowered the age of majority to 18 in 1972.
Far from being a dark ages when the age of majority was still 21, the 60s were a period of benign enlightenment for children aged 18 to 20, when the major bars were just not being able to vote and the vast majority of businessmen not wanting to enter into any kind of a contract with you.
Popular culture from the thirties to the fifties, such as the Hardy Boys, the Dana Girls, comic books, TV and movies reflected the way society thought of children in real life, except the children were more obedient and the parents more benign than real life, i.e., at 20 you were still expected to do what your parent or guardian told you to with no back chat.
College instructors and university housing deans, and this is at secular, not religious instituitions, were still perfectly comfortable telling 20 year old students where they could go, what they could wear and how they should behave and punishing them when they disobeyed because they legally stood in for the parents of the children attending their institutiions.
That's how it was when my mother was attending teacher's college and relatives who attended university during the early 50s say it was no different for them.
When my mother was growing up, if you were a 20 year old and out working for a garage or for a farmer, you didn't get your pay envelope at the end of the week, your father did. Why? Because you were a child and the law protected you from yourself y requiring that your pay be turned over to a responsible adult who was assumed to have your best interests at heart. The reality didn't always match up to the theory but there were known instances of employers paying the 20 year old employee directly and then when Dad showed up to collect the pay envelope, the employer had to pay the wages a second time. That usually only happened to an employer once and then you didn't see another pay envelope in your hands until you turned 21. Employers couldn't sue you to recover the first pay envelope because you were a minor and couldn't be sued.
The best that could be done was to sue your parents for what you did because you were legally their agent, i.e. anything you did was considered to be at their prompting.
Businessmen didn't want to enter into contracts with you because any contract wwith a minor over the age of 15 was voidable on the part of the minor. What that meant was that if you were the minor, you could repudiate the contract just by saying so and keep whatever you had gotten because the contract was null and void but the contract was fully binding and couldn't be voided for any reason except one that would apply to another adult opn the part of the adult. So, for example, if you wanted to buy a car that you would need to make payments on and entered into a contract to make a downpayment and so much a month, if you drove off the lot with the car and the ownership papers, you could void the contract, keep the car and the car dealer might sue you for the monthly payments but the courts threw the suit out the window because you were a minor and the contract was voidable.
To get around voidable contracts, business men would only enter into contracts with one or both of your parents.
Want an employment contract, send your parents on over and I'll be happy to talk to them. Want to lease or buy a car, send your parents around. Want a bank loan to go to college or university, we'll be glad to talk to your parents about one.
If your parents didn't want to sign the contract, and a lot of them didn't if it involved making payments because if you didn't make the payments they had to cough up the money, you were out of luck. And this was in what were and still are considered modern times.
Go back to my grandmother's time and parents and teachers and other in loco parentis persons could take a horsewhip to you as a matter of discipline.
That's the sort of thing that I'm talking about and it was the case for at least the period 1600-1970 and probably for a good thousand or more years before that.
That's a good reason IMO for wanting some idea of how the disadvantage should be handled. It's not a trivial disadvantage, except in very modern post-1970 culture.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Yes, 3e is officially dead but I'm still hopeful for some answers with canonical authority and no, I don't expect to be making a habit of these sorts of 3e questions.
21 was the age of majority for much longer than 18 was. For those times when 21 was the age of majority, should the Youth advantage top out at -12 points and reduce at 2 points/year or should it still top out at -6 points and reduce at 1 point/year.
I've always presumed that if the age of majority were 15, say for an Ice Age campaign, characters can't take the Youth disadvantage because it hinges on there being a discrepancy between being physically adult development and being recognized socially as an adult. Is this correct?
Finally, how would the point difference between an adult and child scale up in a 500 point supers game?
Would it be:
1. 250 points (children have half the points of an adult).
2. 150 points (children are 2 point levels [3e B11 sidebar] lower than adults).
3. 450 points (children are a flat 50 points lower than adults).
4. something else (on some other basis).
As a final question, for adolescent characters (age 12-14) would a 75 point build be the more appropriate standard?

Really the whole age based point is questionable but if you keep it it should be kept at -2 a level. You could expand how many levels it allows I suppose.

I don't see how the discrepancy is relevant at all. It's a disadvantage to have a the social disadvantage of being considered a youth. Your physical development is irrelevant.

There shouldn't be a point difference betwen adults and children at all. If you can't play a realistic child at the point value of the game you shouldn't play one at all. Also... it's supers.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Thank you both re: the child/supers question and David re: 15 yr old majority question.
However:
David Johnston2, I have to take exception to your even in the dark ages of the 60s comment.

Please use page breaks to help peoples eyes and readability. Please.

I am almost certain that the dark ages comment was humourous.

Concerning the rest of your post, yes there were social disadvantages related to being considered a youth. That's what the youth disadvantage represents. No one disputes this or considers it a trivial disadvantage. It might be reasonable to have varying levels of severity based on the culture.

[Curmudgeon]

Sorry about the lack of line breaks. I'll try to do better now that you've pointed out the problem.

The reason I'm thinking about a point difference between child and adult supers is to reflect the difference in powers/abilities that comics showed between heroes and their child sidekicks, particularly for those supers that are really just highly trained humans with no powers, such as Batman and Robin. It's not limited to just super-normals though, Kid Flash was distinctly and canonically slower than the Flash, Wonder Girl wasn't quite as powerful as Wonder Woman and on and on it went. Even Superboy wasn't as powerful as he was as Superman, though you can argue increased experience for that case. It might be argued that it was just the difference between having child attributes vs. adult attributes for the super-normals but that doesn't explain the differences in power levels for characters whose powers weren't supposed to be tied to their attributes. And a fair number of these sidekicks did start off as children, not youths. The very first Robin from the 1940's was ten years old.

As for the relevance of the discrepancy, it was canonical that you did not take the Youth advantage for characters under the age of 15, they were just children and that wasn't represented by a formal disadvantage, they just had lower base attributes at 0 points that increased until they reached the norm of 10 as the child aged up to 15. The youth disadvantage states that you are underage by your culture's standards (by 1 to 3 years) and suffer a -2 reaction whenever you try to deal with others as an adult. The disadvantage has to be bought off when you reach the legal age of 18.

Now three years under the age of 18 (the maximum allowed by the disadvantage) makes you 15 years old. At 15 years old you are an adult in all your attributes, not just the physical ones ST, DX and HT but mentally, IQ, as well, i.e. you are an actual adult human being. You get the disadvantage because there is a discrepancy between what you are, an adult human, and what you are treated as socially, a human child. Clearer?

I'm pretty sure that the dark ages comment was meant humorously as well, however what I was responding to were the three thoughts that seemed to be accompanying it, though only one of them was explicitly stated. The explicitly stated one was that the only real limitations of the Youth disadvantage were not being able to drink and not being able to vote. As I was making explicit in my response, even for historically recent times, a minor who was physically an adult, i.e. the real-life analog of a character with the Youth disadvantage, was far more circumscribed than David's response supposed. Not everyone is old enough to remember how things were back then. So the long response was simply setting the record straight.

It was the two implicit thoughts that ticked me off, as my original post said the age of majority was 21 for a far longer period than it was 18. First of all, there was the seemingly dismissive attitude that the 60s, the period when attitudes were changing the most rapidly towards treating older minors more like adults, were normative for the period when the age of majority was higher. Secondly, though I admit I bear a good part of the blame for not stating it explicitly, was the seeming neglect that the age of majority was 21 for a period close to four centuries long versus the mere fifty years for 18.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Sorry about the lack of line breaks. I'll try to do better now that you've pointed out the problem.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

The reason I'm thinking about a point difference between child and adult supers is to reflect the difference in powers/abilities that comics showed between heroes and their child sidekicks, particularly for those supers that are really just highly trained humans with no powers, such as Batman and Robin. It's not limited to just super-normals though, Kid Flash was distinctly and canonically slower than the Flash, Wonder Girl wasn't quite as powerful as Wonder Woman and on and on it went. Even Superboy wasn't as powerful as he was as Superman, Though you can argu increased experience for that case. It might be argued that it was just the difference between having child attributes vs. adult attributes for the super-normals but that doesn't explain the differences in power levels for characters whose powers weren't supposed to be tied to their attributes. And a fair number of these sidekicks did start off as children, not youths. The very first Robin from the 1940's was ten years old.

Yeah I think that's pretty much a combination of sidekicks, experience, and that it would be really strange if a hero lost power when he stopped being young.

Plus it's not like the rule would actually do anything. Everyone would always choose the necessary age to have maximum points. I suppose it could limit allies.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

As for the relevance of the discrepancy, it was canonical that you did not take the Youth advantage for characters under the age of 15, they were just children and that wasn't represented by a formal disadvantage, they just had lower base attributes at 0 points that increased until they reached the norm of 10 as the child aged up to 15. The youth disadvantage states that you are underage by your culture's standards (by 1 to 3 years) and suffer a -2 reaction whenever you try to deal with others as an adult. The disadvantage has to be bought off when you reach the legal age of 18. Now three years uder the age of 18 (the maximum allowed by the disadvantage) makes you 15 years old.

I'm just going by my third edition basic revised but the youth disadvantage allows you to be up to years underage and has to be bought off when you aren't underage. 18 is mentioned but only as an example.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

At 15 years old you are an adult in all your attributes, not just the physyical ones ST, DX and HT but mentally, IQ, as well, i.e. you are an actual adult human being, you get the disadvantage because there is a discrepancy between what you are, an adult human, and what you are treated as socially, a human child. Clearer?

It's clear but I still don't agree. GURPS doesn't care whether you should have a disadvantage just whether you do. You don't get it as an apology because you have a disadvantage even though it makes sense, you get it because you are disadvantaged. Also see above with respect to ages so you can be younger then 15.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

I'm pretty sure that the dark ages comment was meant humorously as well, however what I was responding to were the three thoughts that seemed to be accompanied, though only one of them was explicitly stated. The explicitly stated one was that the only real limitations of the Youth disadvantage was not being able to drink and not being able to vote. As I was making explicit in my response, historically a minor who was physically an adult, i.e. the real-life analog of a character with the Youth disadvantage, was far more circumscribed than his response supposed. I presumed his statements were based on ignorance of the facts rather than malice. After all, not everyone is as old as I am and therefore able to remember what it was like. So the long response was simply setting the record straight.

The two implicit thoughts were the part that ticked me off, as my original post said the age of majority was 21 for a far longer period than it was 18. It was first of all the dismissive attitude that the 60s, the period when attitudes were changing the most rapidly towards treating older minors more like adults were normative for the period when the age of majority was higher and the second, though I admit I bear a good part of the blame for not stating it explicitly, was the seeming neglect that the age of majority was 21 for a period close to four centuries long versus just fifty years for 18.

Ahh I see. Yeah the Youth disadvantage does include reaction as well as legal problems. It's worth noting that minors can still repudiate contracts.

Also note that GURPS can play ultra-tech games and fantasy games with non-historic ages of majority as well as historical and I'd say the majority of the ultra-tech settings at least use 18 which at least balances the scales.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

The reason I'm thinking about a point difference between child and adult supers is to reflect the difference in powers/abilities that comics showed between heroes and their child sidekicks, particularly for those supers that are really just highly trained humans with no powers, such as Batman and Robin. It's not limited to just super-normals though, Kid Flash was distinctly and canonically slower than the Flash, Wonder Girl wasn't quite as powerful as Wonder Woman and on and on it went. Even Superboy wasn't as powerful as he was as Superman, though you can argue increased experience for that case. It might be argued that it was just the difference between having child attributes vs. adult attributes for the super-normals but that doesn't explain the differences in power levels for characters whose powers weren't supposed to be tied to their attributes. And a fair number of these sidekicks did start off as children, not youths. The very first Robin from the 1940's was ten years old.

There pattern your obersveing has little to nothing to do with them being children, but the fact they are sidekicks. Even adult sidekicks were less points than their hero. Kid sidekicks were just a reason for them to be less powerful.

But look at other troupe setting that hive child characters as major charcters if the main characters are of compatible points then the child character is built on as many points like Lucas form Seaquest DSV.

[Curmudgeon]

Thank you all.

A couple of points for Sindri. Ultra-tech balances the age of majority balance as regards 18/21 for now by assuming 18 as a universal rule ifor the future. It doesn't really provide firm guidance on how to cost the Youth disadvantage for cultures that have higher ages of majorities. It's a presumption that may not even be true for a future Earth, if the notion of raising the age of majority back up to 21 gains more traction than it currently seems to have. But there are politicians, notably in the U.S. who are advocating it.

I'm not so sure about the argument that GURPS doesn't care if you should have a disadvantage. In a broad sense that's true, just as GURPS doesn't care if you use all of the tactical combat rules or not.

However, the argument starts to break down once the GM has to consider the implications for the game he wants to run. It's true that GURPS doesn't mandate that a character who is under 15 and is underage by his culture's standards has to take the Youth disadvantage. However, not taking the disadvantage also means that by the rules, the character isn't taking a -2 reaction penalty when dealing with adults as if he were an adult.

Clearly, while at a meta-level some players regard PCs as entitled to breaks that NPCs don't necessarily get from the GM, the characters aren't walking through their society with a great big "I am a PC" stamped or embroidered on their foreheads. It then starts to be relevant to the GM why the character is being treated by society in general, in a fashion that is different from the fashion that it is treating other characters who are essentially in the same boat but who did take the disadvantage of Youth.

While the disadvantage is clearly a game mechanic, it can be assumed that like Social Stigma: minority, if the disadvantage is available to be taken within the GM's campaign at all, then the penalties the disadvantage implies are being applied across the board to all the people who meet the conditions for it. i.e., if Social Stigma: minority is available for players whose characters are blacks in the U.S. within a campaign setting, it implies that within the campaign, black NPCs are subject to some form of discrimination which justifies the availabilty of the disadvantage. In effect all NPC blacks in the campaign have taken Social Stigma: minority on their character sheet.

Consequently, for our youth, who isn't disadvantaged by his Youth, the GM needs a reasonable explanation for the phenomeon and should be able to require the player to build the character in accordance with the justification and categorically reject it if the player refuses to do so.

As an example, if the player claims that the character is well-known for his skill as an inventor (like Tom Swift) and is treated as an equal because of that, then I'd expect to see a reputation reflecting that on the character sheet and if the reputation isn't universal within the context of the campaign, say for eg., not international in a 1930's globe-trotting campaign, I'd feel perfectly justified in having adults in those areas where his reputation doesn't extend treat him as if he did have the Youth disadvantage, even though he didn't take it, because they do see him as a youth by their standards.

[Sindri]

My comment about whether a character should have a disadvantage was actually aimed in response to "I've always presumed that if the age of majority were 15, say for an Ice Age campaign, characters can't take the Youth disadvantage because it hinges on there being a discrepancy between being physically adult development and being recognized socially as an adult." My view is that if he is treated as a minor he should always get a disadvantage representing that and that it doesn't come bundled with his physical development.