1. Age of oldest child:
2. Style of play: When you defeat an enemy, do you:
(a) Kill him/her/it on the spot?
(b) Keep him/her/it alive for "questioning", then kill him/her/it?
(c) Question him/her/it, and based on his/her/it's answers, either let him/her/it go, turn him/her/it over to the proper authorities, try to redeem him/her/it, or give him/her/it a clean execution?
Background for these questions
I was complaining about the bloodthirstiness of my group in another thread and had the sudden realization that my group fell into three distinct categories:
- Those with children under 4 were utterly ruthless: All captives must die, period. (4 of 4). Type (a), or with great reluctance (b).
- Those with children over 8 were merciful: All captives should be questioned and their fates based on their answers. Letting low-level thugs go on their own recognizance is O.K. (3 of 3). Type (c) through and through.
- The rest of the group (an adult with no kids and two kids, 9 and 12) were all over the map. The 9-year-old was ultra-merciful, the adult was semi-merciful, and the 12-year-old wanted to be merciless, but wasn't nearly as adamant as the parents of small kids.
So it raises an interesting social/gaming question: Do parents of young kids have a natural 'protective instinct' that extends into their gaming lives such that they have no tolerance for enemies?
Since our sample is so smalll, and the Paizo boards have such a thriving and interesting community, I thought I'd throw it out there to get a larger result and see whether there are any patterns at all.
EDIT: Age isn't much of a factor: The youngest of us is around 38, most of us are early-to-mid 40's, and the 'old timer' is early 50's.
When I GM I'm heartless, and I have a very young child and am in my late 20s. When I play I try to stick true to the alignment and character. I've had evil characters recently who killed good clerics and felt amazing about themselves because of it. I've also had good characters go way out of their way to protect a village and costing them tens of thousands of gp to do so.
Excellent! Thanks! Do you have a "preferred alignment" you like to play most? (One of our parents is ALWAYS Lawful Neutral. He likes rules, and he likes rules that say, "You attacked me, and therefore your life is forfeit. Nothing personal.")
On the other hand, one of the aforementioned, "Kill 'em all" parents insists on writing "CG" on this character sheet, but then always insists that prisoners be executed, and is the first in line to volunteer to do so. He finally elicited a GM warning about alignment shift last session. We'll see whether he prefers the shift or a kindler, gentler PC.
To answer your questions: 1) 10 years old , 2) c (depends on what I have captured and what character I am playing)
I find that if the baddie has harmed or endangered a child my group skips straight to A though. Might have something to do with 5 of 6 of them being parents. Infact this made GMing Reign of Winter intresting to say the least, I can't think of one group that my players hate more than the winter witches.
Excellent! Thanks! Do you have a "preferred alignment" you like to play most? (One of our parents is ALWAYS Lawful Neutral. He likes rules, and he likes rules that say, "You attacked me, and therefore your life is forfeit. Nothing personal.")
On the other hand, one of the aforementioned, "Kill 'em all" parents insists on writing "CG" on this character sheet, but then always insists that prisoners be executed, and is the first in line to volunteer to do so. He finally elicited a GM warning about alignment shift last session. We'll see whether he prefers the shift or a kindler, gentler PC.
I tend to favor good alignments. The evil one I mentioned has been my first evil PC and has been such a bastard taking the NE alignment philosophy hard and not looking back. It's been such a guilty pleasure playing him.
1. Oldest child is almost 13.
2. Style of Play is definitely merciful, (c), so I fit right in with your experience, OP.
Right now, I am playing both a NG Witch and a LG Paladin, so I kind of feel (c) is appropriate for the characters, too.
I wasn't actively gaming when my kids were <4, so although I'd like to be able to contrast my playing style over the course of my kid's childhood, I can't. Those early years are a blurry haze of parental exhaustion. I've only gotten back into gaming since my son (the eldest) showed an interest in gaming, so we joined a local group together.
My son is playing a CG elf, and likes to play up the C part of that, but he tends towards mercy, too, although probably is not quite as far along on the spectrum as I am.