RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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A father brought in his two sons and a few of their friends to play PFS. The kids are around 10, and just picked up the beginner box last week. I told the dad where to download the basic PFS rules, but I wasn’t sure how to handle getting the kids info set up in the paizo system.
Is there an age limit on creating an account on the paizo website, so they can register a PFS membership number on their own account?
If the children can’t create their own account, how do their parents set up PFS numbers for each child on the parent’s paizo account?
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I'm not aware of there being any age limit, but whoever set up the event can log into their "My Pathfinder Society" page and print out a sheet of 10x PFS card numbers to hand out to new members. A GM, the store or event coordinator should probably keep a sheet of these cards on hand, just in case someone new turns up.
The player then needs to log in (or sign up if they don't already have an account) and type in the code provided on the card, and that PFS number will then be assigned to their member account.
If a player, for privacy concerns, doesn't have an email address, or whatever reason, doesn't assign that number to their account, they can still use that PFS number for their character, it should be recorded at the top of every Chronicle sheet handed out at the end of each session, and the player should keep these Chronicle sheets in a folder accompanying their character sheet, so they should be able to refer to their PFS number easily enough.
GM/organisers can still report that number having played each session, the player just doesnt have a means of logging in and checking their reported games online.
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As Mark has said
From a practical point of view:
In our house I'm the accountant for all the family.
The first half year I just kept the number and the code for my kids for safe keeping. I then generated the accounts when they played more often and added their first character.
Lately I've added a few more.
Sending of e-mails is turned off for the children. I expect them to take over themselves once they really use e-mail.
All that is needed is an e-mail account and you need that for many aspects at an early age. Having the children using an e-mail account unsupervised at an early age is a different issue.
I know some purist here might object that managing accounts for kids (aka for someone not your own) could invite cheating. All I can say is - as a parent you are used to fill in a lot of forms, etc. Not a week passes by that you fill out something for school or club. This isn't much different.
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I'm just retreading the OP.
I just described how I handle my own children. I also have a group of other children where the parents don't play. Each of them also got a number. I can't expect them to register themselves. Their patents registering them straight away is unlikely.
In this case I take care to jot down the number and code safely. They are part of the background on HeroLab. So if they register later, I will be sure to find the code if it has gone missing.
The number is important so they get properly reported.
That leads to the last part - young GMs. My son now started to GM for his friends. This actually is simple. He GMs as part of the Sunrise Lodge UK which I organize. Therefore I'm responsible to report the games. No difference here to other guest GMs - no matter how many stars they have.
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As Mark has said
From a practical point of view:
In our house I'm the accountant for all the family.
The first half year I just kept the number and the code for my kids for safe keeping. I then generated the accounts when they played more often and added their first character.
Lately I've added a few more.
Sending of e-mails is turned off for the children. I expect them to take over themselves once they really use e-mail.All that is needed is an e-mail account and you need that for many aspects at an early age. Having the children using an e-mail account unsupervised at an early age is a different issue.
I know some purist here might object that managing accounts for kids (aka for someone not your own) could invite cheating. All I can say is - as a parent you are used to fill in a lot of forms, etc. Not a week passes by that you fill out something for school or club. This isn't much different.
This is how I do it.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Thanks for the replies everyone. This is the first time I have encountered having kids so young. Like I said they were around 9-10. Since they were so young I started thinking of issues like parental permission and possible user minimum age requirements for some of the online resources. I tried searching the forums for any earlier threads but didn’t see any, so I posted this one.
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My understanding is that there are laws in the US (and therefore on the internet) which state that you have to be 13 in order to agree to terms of service, so legally a child who is younger than 13 can't even register an account at Paizo.
I would suspect that if you felt it was necessary for your children to have their own PFS numbers, and you created accounts on their behalf, the powers that be would be likely to turn a blind eye to your breach of the "no multiple accounts" rule - especially if the only thing you used those accounts for was registering and posting PFS characters.
Please don't take that as an official approval; in this instance, I'm sharing my opinions as a player and member of the community, and not necessarily in my capacity as Venture-Lieutenant.
Unofficially, I'd love to see the ability to link accounts together to form "families," so that my wife could log into her account but still have access to the things that I've purchased and are in my downloads. However, I recognize that this might be abused to share things with non-family members, so I resign myself to disappointment. :)
