Adults with their Own Kids

Sometimes as a GM you realize that you're the dude playing music with a dancing monkey not David Lynch or Steven Spielberg. When it comes to adventure gaming, please do not expect a game-master or event organizer to be a part of some village, especially one full of denizens with Masters in developmental psychology.

Run this in a Barny suit at 9am?

First off, adult GMs should know better. Now I don't want to speak for others, but at 1pm I am a little less randy in my speaking habits than I am at 1am. You know, it's kind of biology, the tireder one gets the more hungry, horrific, and horny a person becomes. Everyone in the world knows this, why else are there bedtimes for our kids? Back when I was an adult, I personally always hated sending my kid to bed at a certain time if she wasn't tired, but momma-bear usually wouldn't have it, after 8:30 pm it was time for sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll (on low volume).

The "age" slot at most event submission forms really needs some changing. Go where ever you will for a convention and its organizers want to know what age is your event appropriate for. Why do convention organizers not know this? Why don't convention goers not know this?

If I run a role-playing scenario called "Foul-smelling, but Delicious, Pits of the Goddess of Kinky Sex" at 8am exactly how many players should I expect to have? Of the few players that I would get, how many of the "OSR sorts" showing will more than likely have a newborn that needs to be breast fed during the session? Judging from my morning "Hunting Bigfoot" (hopefully much less less risque sounding) scenarios at various conventions over the last two years, the answer is more than a couple. Breast-feeding is a serious consideration that I need to take into account doing early games. The around 1pm, that guy that brought his pre-teen kids to the table after buying tickets for them as well. I even labeled my event "Adult." Now if I run an event "Uncle Tom's Toddler Fun House" at midnight, exactly what crowd am I expecting? Perhaps I am offering to babysit from midnight to four AM for some really outstanding parents? Or maybe I am promising some really devious horror? Which do you think?

I have attended way too many "Adult" convention events in my life to think the label means anything too mature for anybody under the age of 17 should be uninvited. At a recent convention I was watching a group of women down whip cream canisters competing to show how big their mouths were on a Saturday night, while a woman changed the diaper of her six-month old while her husband played with their older son two seats down from me. Why? It was only 8:30 pm, but the show's organizers were all in their 70s and not wanting to be over doing it past 11pm. This young couple next to me were the Standard-bearers for the convention for the decades to come. I think I might be able to find something to fill the 10pm slot, myself, so I shouldn't complain.

When it comes to reading material, the "Adult" barrier for the reader does not ensure any sort of graphic details based off of the understanding of trauma or even much pornography (including the illustrated kind). More than likely, what the purchaser is going to get is a lot really simple puns with words like "fuck" and "shit" not used as verbs. What the author is going to get is usually 70 cents on the dollar and satisfaction that words using like "fuck" and "shit" indicate cleverness. 

So we're here, I'm still stuck with filling out "Age" slots for events and dudes and dames,  go around swearing for shock value. This is because of a certain impracticality where event organizers and game producers have applying movie markets to games. At the same time, most of us deal with, or have dealt, with own children as we see fit.