Children Stats for a Horror Setting?

[wothbora]

I just bought Innocents : World of Darkness. It is designed for Adults to play Children in a Horror Setting sort of like "Little Fears" (which I've never seen). Imagine playing a 7 - 12 year old in a horror setting (not something you'd do with your kid, but with adults it looked intriguing enough to purchase). Anyway, the source book is excellent for setting the stage; however, I find the Storytelling RPG System absolutely horrific.

Dice Pools, pages and pages of rule sets and combinations of statistics + skills + props + equipment, and just a general distaste of trying to run a game with their rules. Nice setting, but the ruleset just doesn't seem to flow like BRP.

My Question is this:

Has anyone come up with what the standard Stats would be for children? Things like Strength, Size, Intelligence and skill bases for things like Brawling, Education, etc? I'd really like to run this setting, but would like to use BRP/Call of Cthulhu as my RPG Engine of Choice.

Any pointers would be helpful and very much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Dredj]

I just bought Innocents : World of Darkness. It is designed for Adults to play Children in a Horror Setting sort of like "Little Fears" (which I've never seen). Imagine playing a 7 - 12 year old in a horror setting (not something you'd do with your kid, but with adults it looked intriguing enough to purchase). Anyway, the source book is excellent for setting the stage; however, I find the Storytelling RPG System absolutely horrific.

Dice Pools, pages and pages of rule sets and combinations of statistics + skills + props + equipment, and just a general distaste of trying to run a game with their rules. Nice setting, but the ruleset just doesn't seem to flow like BRP.

My Question is this:

Has anyone come up with what the standard Stats would be for children? Things like Strength, Size, Intelligence and skill bases for things like Brawling, Education, etc? I'd really like to run this setting, but would like to use BRP/Call of Cthulhu as my RPG Engine of Choice.

Any pointers would be helpful and very much appreciated.

Thanks!

I haven't done anything like you're asking. Is this something like a 'young Van Helsing' type rpg? I don't see children having a large skill base unless it's about very precocious or talented kids. It would seem that a 100 year old vampire would be able to make a quick meal of any one of the characters unless you have some rather clever players.

One person suggested, in the "Vampires that don't suck" thread that each dot in character skills should represent 5%. I think each dot should represent 10%. If I weren't so busy, I would dig out the FUDGE, Mythic convertions for traits, which would probably help you convert them over to BRP.

[Aycorn]

I just bought Innocents : World of Darkness. It is designed for Adults to play Children in a Horror Setting sort of like "Little Fears" (which I've never seen). Imagine playing a 7 - 12 year old in a horror setting (not something you'd do with your kid, but with adults it looked intriguing enough to purchase). Anyway, the source book is excellent for setting the stage; however, I find the Storytelling RPG System absolutely horrific.

Dice Pools, pages and pages of rule sets and combinations of statistics + skills + props + equipment, and just a general distaste of trying to run a game with their rules. Nice setting, but the ruleset just doesn't seem to flow like BRP.

My Question is this:

Has anyone come up with what the standard Stats would be for children? Things like Strength, Size, Intelligence and skill bases for things like Brawling, Education, etc? I'd really like to run this setting, but would like to use BRP/Call of Cthulhu as my RPG Engine of Choice.

Any pointers would be helpful and very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Hmmmm ... I had toyed at one time with a fantasy campaign with the characters as children. I referred to it as "The Children's Crusade."

As I thought about it, the main thing that would change would be SIZ (obviously). Possibly CON, but not necessarily (kids can be quite hardy and the much lower SIZ would impact hit points, etc anyway). INT and POW would be normal as would DEX. STR would be roughly the same as SIZ. If you figure (as I do - and I'm not looking at any SIZ table which I never believed in anyway) that 11-12 is a normal-SIZ adult, then a kid is going to be around SIZ/STR 6-8. That's a guess. CHA (I don't believe in APP) could be normal or even a little bit higher).

Knowledge skills would be lower barring some special education or training or experience. In my copy of the COC rules (which are old - I don't believe in constantly buying the latest edition) a year of education = a point of EDU, so a pre-high school kid's EDU would be in the 1-8 range. Skills depending on DEX could be pretty much as for an adult character, and certain communication skills could be pretty high - or you could add new ones - instead of Fast Talk and Orate you could have Whine and Cajole, or something. Seriously!

Just off the top of my head.

[wothbora]

Ah, that helps. I think that I will try to use 10% for each dot (Excellent advice, I had not even thought of approaching this in that manner). They will have an extremely small Skill Base as they'd be 2nd to 8th graders; but still, it's really going to be a challenge for Adults to role play children... Like I wrote earlier, I purchased this more out of the intriguing environment than anything else.

Yes, the children are meant to be "normal and vulnerable" in this game. So I am simply wanting to use BRP as a means to run the game and give the characters a chance for success with Adult Allies and Magical/Ordinary Weapons (think of Voodoo Dolls or "Salt" on a gigantic Slug) to give them the opportunity to defeat the dark minions.

What is this Fudge/Mythic Conversion you referred to? Sounds interesting.

Thanks for the advice!

[rust]

BRP Edition Zero has these informations:

- "For every year below the minimum age (18) ... subtract 20, 30 or 40 skill

points (based on level of campaign) from your character's professional skill

points." (= a "normal" character would get 250 professional skill points, redu-

ced by 20 skill points per year below 18)

- "For every year below the minimum age above, subtract 1 point from one

characteristic of your choice. The gamemaster may require that you make

SIZ one of these lowered characteristics."

[Dredj]

Ah, that helps. I think that I will try to use 10% for each dot (Excellent advice, I had not even thought of approaching this in that manner). They will have an extremely small Skill Base as they'd be 2nd to 8th graders; but still, it's really going to be a challenge for Adults to role play children... Like I wrote earlier, I purchased this more out of the intriguing environment than anything else.

Yes, the children are meant to be "normal and vulnerable" in this game. So I am simply wanting to use BRP as a means to run the game and give the characters a chance for success with Adult Allies and Magical/Ordinary Weapons (think of Voodoo Dolls or "Salt" on a gigantic Slug) to give them the opportunity to defeat the dark minions.

What is this Fudge/Mythic Conversion you referred to? Sounds interesting.

Thanks for the advice!

The FUDGE 10th edition has conversions for the most popular game systems. BRP (for sure) and WoD (I think) are two of them. You can download the basic FUDGE rules for free on the internet (Grey Ghost Games probably still has them), but there's a mistake that was corrected in the 10th anniversary edition.

Mythic RPG has some rules for conversions--I'm pretty sure, but it's been awhile since I looked at the RPG itself. I stick with the GM Emulator. Both Mythic and FUDGE are adjective-based systems. (I think you posted that you used Mythic in your intorduction to the website. Or am I thinking about someone else)? Basically, you just find the range that the adjective "good" or "great", or whatever, fits and do the same for another system and then compare the two.

I'm very busy today. But if I have time tomorrow, I will post them, then. I'll make an effort to post them by Wednesday.

[wothbora]

The FUDGE 10th edition has conversions for the most popular game systems. BRP (for sure) and WoD (I think) are two of them. You can download the basic FUDGE rules for free on the internet (Grey Ghost Games probably still has them), but there's a mistake that was corrected in the 10th anniversary edition.

Mythic RPG has some rules for conversions--I'm pretty sure, but it's been awhile since I looked at the RPG itself. I stick with the GM Emulator. Both Mythic and FUDGE are adjective-based systems. (I think you posted that you used Mythic in your introduction to the website. Or am I thinking about someone else)? Basically, you just find the range that the adjective "good" or "great", or whatever, fits and do the same for another system and then compare the two.

I'm very busy today. But if I have time tomorrow, I will post them, then. I'll make an effort to post them by Wednesday.

Thanks! Believe it or not I own both of these as well. I wondered if you meant the Mythic RPG (I own all three incarnations, love it but forgot all about the conversions).

I'll have to do some digging as well, but I also have the Anniversary Edition of Fudge as well.

Again, thanks for the pointers. I believe that I'll be able to pull this off with you help!

[wothbora]

BRP Edition Zero has these informations:

- "For every year below the minimum age (18) ... subtract 20, 30 or 40 skill

points (based on level of campaign) from your character's professional skill

points." (= a "normal" character would get 250 professional skill points, redu-

ced by 20 skill points per year below 18)

- "For every year below the minimum age above, subtract 1 point from one

characteristic of your choice. The gamemaster may require that you make

SIZ one of these lowered characteristics."

Wow, that simplifies the process and will work great. I simply cannot wait for BRP to hit the shelves. It is going to make things so much easier.

Thanks!

[Dredj]

I remembered that I posted a conversion from FUDGE to BRP in a different thread. Here's what I wrote:

Some adjective-oriented rpgs, such as FUDGE and Mythic do this. Here's the FUDGE conversion for the "typical" D100 game with stats ranging from 3-18. You can judge if this fits BRP well, as I think that's the system they most had in mind.

ADJECTIVE / PERCENTAGE / STAT

Superb / 98-100 / 19+

Great / 91-97 / 16-18

Good / 71-90 / 14-15

Fair / 31-70 / 12-13

Mediocre / 11-30 / 9-11

Poor / 4-10 / 6-8

Terrible / 1-3 / 5 or less

[Dredj]

Here's something interesting: someone trying to convert CoC to WoD. But there are no attribute conversions that I can discern

http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/pdf/Misc/wocrules.pdf

And here's a whole page of FUDGE conversions for different settings

ConversionList < Guide < The Fudge Guide

[Dredj]

And someone was good enough to translate CoC over to Vampire :

Vampulhu: Vampires in Cthulhuland!

It's a very exhaustive conversion, I might add.

[TRose]

One thing that would be different with children would be how sanity works. Kids can often be more fragile and more resilient then adults Kids might not be freak out over meeting a Yeti thinking he is an overgrown teddy bear. Yet watching some one get their head ripped off could leave trauma that would remain in the subconscious for years.

[seneschal]

Despite their apparent fragility, there has to be a way for the kids to win, too. Underage heroes have battled and beaten monsters from the Brothers Grimm to Jonny Quest.