And then us elderly people can go and play something decent somewhere else that same weekend.

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IRL: Edwin Hofstra

- mostly crewing at the moment

The things that annoy me which may be associated with 'young' larpers are:

 - Limited costume due to lack of funds and little time to get decent kit together

 - Inexperienced play styles such as tendency to name characters after characters on TV or films

 - Dropping OOC to talk about eastenders in the middle of a really intense roleplaying scene and therefore 'spoiling it for others'

 - Inability to take their alcohol leading to rowdiness, tendancy to collapse, be unsafe in combat. 

Now, I think most of these are largely associated with young LRPers. Many of them are 'rookie mistakes' or simply something you cannot help because of age. For example, the alcohol thing - most 18 year olds go through a stupid binge drinking phase, for many this starts at 16 or younger. As you get older you learn more about how much you can take, your tolerance rises and you generally get better at holding your beer. Most of this is because alcohol is a new thing that you are/were not allowed to have.

However, all of these are also things I have seen over 30s do. I have equally seen many under 30s who are incredibly mature and who I beleived to be older because of this. Some of these were 17 - 19.

A few points about why I think age mixed events are better:

 - We are trying to simulate a world. There are few worlds where one age group predominates and while you can play any age amd most people will accept a 30 year old playing 20 or 60, belief tends to collapse if someone 30 tries to play 15. Therefore it is nice to have a few fresh faced youngsters about as well as some elderly types.

 - Education. If all the over 30s buggered off to their own private little game, who is going to be there to tell the 'little 'uns' what is right and wrong in LRP? I think older, more mature LRPers should take it upon themselves to teach by example. If you want a game with excellent kit, good prosthetic standards and high standards of characterisation then you need to turn up demonstrating those standards and hope that others follow that example.

Finally, I think it is already natural for certain games to have an intrinsic but unofficial limit anyway. Most small scale games tend to attract older players because they are more expensive to book (£50+ compared to the £30+ for advanced booked Maelstrom), have high standards of kit necessitating more expense to 'keep up with the Jone's' and explore more mature and complicated plotlines. None of them explicitly say 'No one younger than a certain age' (apart from Riftworld which has an over 18's policy purely because of the levels of horror, swearing, sexual content and so on) but most of them have average player ages in the upper 20s/lower 30s simply because that is the sort of person attracted to that sort of game. To put in a limit would immediately make you 'the game that only allows...' creating an image which may be detrimental. It is better to not state an age limit but to simply pitch the game at the age limit you desire.

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester

  Sorry, balor, I can't help but feel that this is a bit disingenuous.  There's a big difference between saying "I'd be MORE comfortable playing with group of people X" (which is not necessarily the same thing as saying "I'm seriously uncomfortable with people who are not X") and saying "I dislike not-X, for reasons A, B and C."  I feel more comfortable knowing that everyone I'm roleplaying with is over 16- this is not the same thing as saying "I hate children because they're stupid and snotty and they smell."

  I'm sorry, but I really think you've gotten the wrong end of the stick here.  To me it sounds almost as though you're saying "banning black people from an event would be terrible- it's better for us to attack attitudes.  The attitudes which annoy me which may be associated with black larpers are..."

  I know that's NOT what you're saying- but so far you're, ironically, the only person on this thread who seems to feel that the idea that there's something wrong with younger larpers is a concept which deserves serious consideration (which means that I'm finding it difficult to avoid feeling offended by your posts, even though I know that's not your intention).  No one else seems to be suggesting that young people are shit roleplayers, just that over-30's might sometimes feel happier interacting with over-30's (an idea that wouldn't normally be controversial).

  I have to disagree with this, because I regularly go to events which don't allow children, and I don't find that effects suspension of disbelief.  All you have to do is come up with a reason for why there are no people below a certain age in the immediate area.

  Firstly, it's not impossible that the little uns might be able to work it out for themselves.  Secondly, we're not proposing permanently segregating the entire hobby- a couple of events with unusual age restrictions will not have any effect on the vast majority of larpers in this country.

I think the most abhorring aspect of a 17 year old, is that he/she is a 17 year old, and not just 17 years old. I once had a conversation with someone who`d just played an incredibly powerful vampire, complaining about his inability to stare down a 17 year old (take my word it wasn`t because of any roleplaying inability):
"You don`t piss off an ancient vampire! It`s suicide!"
"Have you seen the mortality rates of 17 year olds? Not to mention the stupid caused of death involved?"
"Nobody in his right mind..."
"We`re not talking about people in their right minds, we`re talking about a teenager. It`s totally realistic."

As for people playing someone not their age, I`ve seen people in their late 30s early 40s believably mimic the behaviour of a young teenager, never mind the physical inconsistencies. I scoff at physical correctness, unless it has functional grounds. (At which point it becomes functional correctness. )
On the other hand there`s this 17 year old and he`s telling me (40 at the time) that his character has been around since time immemorable. The conversation went something like this:
"I`ve been around since before your grandfather was born."
"I very much doubt that you are."
"That`s because you don`t know what you`re talking about. I repeat, I`m older than your grandfather."
"Highly unlikely. On the topic of knowing what you`re talking about: you may want to consider your words before you utter them. You`re not."
"Stop mocking me, or I`ll have you for dinner! I am! You`re a fool."
"I`m an elf. Apart from the fact that I myself am already 650 years old, my people grow on trees. I don`t have a grandfather."

Of course, the main problem of any characters older than the dawn of creation - regardless of the age of their players, I can say from experience - is that creation itself is still so young that none of those immortals have made it out of puberty yet.

The general life expectancy was about 45 years, until the agricultural revolution, when it dropped to 35 years. (Nomadic hunter-gatherers, contrary to settled farmers, leave their filth and parasites behind them, and 70% of the diseases that plague mankind crossed over from domesticated animals. Being able to produce food allows for more lives, not longer ones.) So the under 30 age group would have been predominant in most settings being played today. Anyone over 30 was a veteran, anyone over 40 was truly old, and anyone over 80 incredibly so!

The heroic attitude is, in large, the damn-or-be-damned attitude of younger people. To some, LRP suffers from the 'I`m going to last forever'-attitude of the over 30s. Political LRP especially, suffers from the 'too many kings and not enough pawns' syndrome. Add to that the often encountered reluctance of candidates to weed out the competition - after all, kill off one older character and you`ll get another older character in return.
Players should be encouraged to play younger characters. For starters, play for immediate gain, and leave the long view to the plotwriters!
Of course, people over 30 can play teenagers and young twents with far more sophistication than young people can.

I once envisioned a system in which society was to change noticeably over the course of the campaign. The idea was to play one season more or less in real-time, and the next season, everybody who wanted to keep his or her character, would be one generation older. (A simple sigil, probably of concentric circles, would suffice to tell who is playing which generation. This sigil would then be placed on a part of the player that would be clearly visible in social interaction, or at least in a formal greeting, like the forehead or hand. Outside social interaction, recognising generation is unimportant.)
Players would start out playing Young Folk, who are looking for a) a mate, and b) a party to throw their lot in with, eager to get things their way and willing to give it all up if they can`t have it all.
Next would come the Parental Age. The age where people are mainly concerned with the survival of the family-group, and are willing to make compromises and sacrifices for that.
After that comes the Post-Parental Age, where players are now dealing with a younger generation trying to make a name for itself, played by other players (possibly, but not necessarily, their own IC offspring), while they themselves have reached an age in which they`re either content of being supportive, or have finally accumulated enough power and resources to actually have a good chance of changing the world to their liking (or are close to getting there: now, if only those iron deposits were controlled by their family, and not any of the others.)
The Final Age is the truly olds, both the wise and the wicked. The rare players who reach it - and want to play it - might become DPCs here, `staying at home', i.e. crewing, when the youngster go on expedition, dozing off at any time and getting visional dreams. Then again, they might be politically skilled enough, and involved enough in the plot/gameworld to play `by remote'. (Anyone attaining lychdom would be stuck in this age.)
All of course arbitrary to whatever personal plot unwinds. Anybody killed returns as Young Folk. You can`t play an older generation if you don`t have an IC history, and you can`t `park' characters for a season - or at least, that would be strongly discouraged. It would be very much an intermingling clan-thing, and since it ties players together in all sorts of interesting and possibly hierarchical ways, it should be quite involving. I don`t think a maximum character life span of four seasons would be a problem.

I can also envision an over 30s game, although it would be more an IC over 30s than a OC over 30s. It would have a modern day horror feel, linked to the professional society where generations get seperated into working units, potential working units, and possibly breeding units and redundant units, with too little interaction overall. But it would play well in a fantasy setting, something like 'Quest for the children'?

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IRL: Edwin Hofstra

- mostly crewing at the moment

I am not saying that the person with that preference is prejudiced nor that a game/system which expressed a preference is prejudiced in any way. However, I am saying that there is a possibility that others (particularly the group being excluded) may see it that way. That sort of perception is one that most groups may want to avoid. GD and NWO did suffer unwarranted negative press for thier 'invite only' attitudes and I think standing on an 'over 30s only' platform would attract similar attention. The public tend to see things in simple terms and subtleties between 'not comfortable with' and 'more comfortable with' tend to get lost in these black and white perceptions.

I still think you need to consider the reasons why young LRPers may make people uncomfortable and solve those problems rather than the age thing. The only reasons I can see people having a problem with 'under 30's' are problems which I consider to actually be age independent factors and therefore solvable by different, less confrontational means.

OK, a few events with age restrictions may not affect the hobby as a whole, fair enough. However, I think the danger is not to the hobby as a whole but to the event with the restriction itself. My argument is more that there is no need for an individual event of this type, that such an event would not get much interest as a result and that , in addition, making a statement of 'we are only interested in you if you are a certain age' would polarise the LRP community in such a way as to cause problems in the long term - a backlash aimed squarely at the event which made the ban. It is better to, as stated above, pitch your ideas at a certain *type* of person, a demographic of LRPer which happens to contain a significant number of older LRPers, and leave off the blanket 'age ban' idea. By this means you would (as a number of events already have) acquire the type of person you want by default - the others, the LRPers who are younger or with a 'younger' mindset, going elsewhere - without significantly pissing anyone off. Let the LRP community vote with their feet. Most people will tend to congregate where they feel comfortable anyway.

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester

* - On the other hand, thanks for giving me a valid reason to use this phrase 

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LT - Captain Iolanthe Swan

Riftworld - Jenna Neraid, Clan Sceptre

Brighton Below - Drizzle

As the old robot saying goes "does not compute"