Some games, such as Dungeons and Dragons, come with ratings/recommended ages before they can be played. Are those accurate? Beyond the ratings, are there any general guidelines I should follow when deciding whether to allow my children to participate in an RPG game, unsupervised?
[RPG] My children want to start playing RPGs; at what age should I allow them to participate unsupervised
kidssocial
Related Solutions
"A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?" The Pirates of Ersatz, Murray Leinster
From your question I noticed a few things. Nominally, I completely agree with @mxyzplk's answer, so this should be in the way of an addendum.
It sucks to be the leader
In a RPG, it just completely sucks to be the leader. Most players when confronted with a plan, remember about fifteen percent of it for the first fifteen minutes. But they'll certainly remember when you deviate. Leaders get no additional responsibility and no perquisites, but they get all the blame.
In the military this is mitigated with the clear distinction between commissioned and non-commissioned officers. Not least because the isolation provides both support structures and necessary emotional distance (to a degree, of course). Being "elected" leader, especially with the pack dynamics of typical werewolf games is an extremely dubious honour that I'd flatly reject.
The fact that while you may be leader in character but not dominant over the player group makes things even stickier. You need to assert authority within the realm of the narrative without actually having that authority in reality. Again, something that will cause friction and resentment any way you cut it.
Depressing environments bleed emotions into play
The world of darkness does what it says on the tin. Having played in a horror game myself recently, the iconic themes of the world of darkness do not make for "happy" or, for that matter, validating game experiences in the main. (And, if they do, it's a violation of genre.) When you are faced with the stresses of being "leader" which are compounded by the stressors of the philosophies baked into the setting, no wonder you're having a rough time.
Some solutions:
On leadership:
Fundamentally, a gaming group is a relationship. Bad relationships that do not provide validation are a drain on mental and emotional resources. When they don't work, cut them off or change them. In your case, I'd play a game that's a bit lighter in tone and focus: a nice traditional dungeon crawl or similar heroic fantasy.
I'd also reject the leader role for all the reasons I outlined above. Or, if they force it upon you, demand the perquisites and authority that is concomitant with it: they can't have it both ways.
On the group:
I've found that group character creation creates a far more cohesive group. By having entangled backstories, the group can draw upon a deeper understanding of each others' characters, creating the basis for empathy and respect within the characters, instead of the necessary simulacrum imposed by players.
By articulating desired tropes, a "palette" (as Microscope) calls it, before the game begins, you'll be able to shape the narrative of the group in directions that you want to play. This allows you to avoid the nominally depressive tropes that come default with the setting (not limited to world of darkness) and describe a source for future characters to connect with the current group. Replacement characters, if they tie into the shared narrative, will continue to maintain the tropes and social trust.
Be practical:
As players, we shape our narratives to an amazing degree. Emulate Bron Hoddan in the Pirates of Ersatz. While playing, you will be aware of the desired practical outcome that will provide validation and satisfy your personal goals. With that outcome in mind, you then frame it in terms that suit both your character's narrative and the expected narratives of the other players such that they will act to reinforce your framing and thereby your outcome. If you fight their narrative control by "being a loner," it is difficult to achieve your own goals. If you help them work as a team and appear to sacrifice nobly on their behalf while executing your own goals... the entire process is smoother and more effective.
Note that I am not saying to lie. Instead, consider the causal constructions of your actions, the explanations for those actions to be an aspect of the role * separate* from the actions themselves. By manipulating the framing as well as the actions, you can provide the necessary hooks for the other players to support your version of reality, rather than rejecting it and, by extension, you.
Postscript
Looking at your comments to other questions, you should absolutely give this group two last tries. In the first trial (of one or two games), try a heroic romp where you can be "Big Damn Heroes." Require the players who need the spotlight be leader. In the second trial (again of one or two games), try a game where players can intrigue against each other (I'd recommend Ars Magica, but then again I recommend it for most things. Most games support PvP intrigue quite ably.) If neither game provides the validation you need and the spotlight the other players need, move on. Before you do anything, take a month break, sit down, relax, and try to game with some strangers. I'm pretty sure that if you go looking for games in the chat section of this site... someone will oblige. For more on the framing problem, I'd quite recommend Rule 34 by Stross, as it describes it in a delicious narrative context.
I can't give you a full list of the occurrences, because they are sprinkled throughout, so I'll focus a bit on why those two examples are expressly called out as deciding them before play.
The reason these are called out is because they have the potential to hurt feelings and cause heated discussions at the table.
Lawbreaker example
First example being the lawbreaker rules. If you break a law of magic, you immediately gain a stunt that costs 1 refresh: Lawbreaker [law number]. Many wizards are probably skirting the line with only 1 refresh remaining, so if they break a law, they are immediately in NPC territory. Thus it's a really really good idea to hash out in your game what precisely constitutes a law violation.
For example, if you burn a building to the ground that might have humans in it, and some of them perhaps died in the crossfire, does that constitute a violation of the 1st law of magic?
Now, you can probably get away doing this during play, so long as you warn the player that he/she is about to become a lawbreaker, and that no further warnings will be issued, yadda yadda. However, I feel that everything goes more smoothly if you hammer this one out before play. Even if you do this, though, you will need to make sure the group is okay with a single player being the final arbiter as well.
Death as a result of being taken out
This is less important, I think, as you generally as a courtesy should inform the players that a given conflict could wind up being lethal before the dice are rolled. That gives them the chance to offer a concession before they, you know, die. You might want to lay out some ground rules with your players first like: "I'll let you know if you think you're likely to die in a combat." Or "I will not inform you if you are going to die as a result of combat, so please keep your wits about you." That way you don't run into any issues when some of Johnny Marcone's thugs come to beat their heads in with baseball bats.
Some other examples
- City and Story themes: These are explicitly defined by the players in the first session, and thus have to be done before play begins.
- How nasty a sponsor for sponsored magic is likely to be: That way the player knows what they're getting into...or that they really have no idea what they're getting into.
Best Answer
There's a variety of dimensions to whether an activity is appropriate for children of a given age or not.
Activity Appropriateness
There's no inherent age limit for the activity of roleplaying. Kids roleplay from a very young age via "cops-and-robbers" (though nowadays it's more likely ninjas vs Transformers or something). Group imaginative play as kids is RPGs without the pedantry of dice and rules. Frankly, kids roleplay more than all adults put together. My daughter and her friends basically roleplay with Littlest Pet Shops for hours on end, just without dice or formal rules. So I don't believe there's any specific age limit or recommendation for the pure act of roleplaying.
Content Appropriateness
You should check out the content of a given RPG and see what ages you think it's appropriate for. Something like D&D may not be content appropriate for certain ages in some people's minds (violence, magic). There's other games with even lighter content (Toon, the cartoon RPG, or other games aimed at children). So there it depends on the game.
The RPG industry is bizarrely conservative, however, so most RPGs don't go past what I would consider a Y7 show on TV (with some exceptions like oWoD, but even those don't meet TV-MA level). The cartoon "Adventure Time" is basically D&D, they even use D&D terms in it. So many games are pretty kid friendly, unless you're of the "Harry Potter is evil" contingent, and even then there's other games that probably omit whatever specific content you object to. So content wise most games are OK (unless you have specific requirements around that different from day time cartoons').
Ability Appropriateness
When Hasbro puts an age rating on D&D they're not likely doing it out of content concerns, as all the content in D&D is way less objectionable than an average episode of "Billy and Mandy" - they're probably doing it to indicate what age a kid likely can perform the activities required, like they have on all their board games. If you try to play Parcheesi with a 5 year old everyone will end up crying. Kids of age X probably can't do the math/read the books/understand the rules.
Of course, there are games much simpler than D&D that even younger kids could play. I made up a basic minis game I played with my daughter when she was 6, "high roll wins" on a d6 is understandable down young. If your kid is comfortable reading chapter books, they'll do OK with less complex variants of D&D and other simple games. If they're still into picture books, you'll need something lighter and maybe customized to kids. If they're reading board books, don't bother. (If you don't know what chapter, picture, and board books are you're not a parent, why are you reading this?) It's not just about the math - are they going to be disruptive; can they participate in a group doing something for a couple hours in general without flipping out? This varies by kid.
Group Appropriateness
RPGs are a group activity. What do you mean by "unsupervised?" You mean gaming with their siblings at home with you around and just not participating in the game per se, which will be fine as long as they are not so young they'll be disruptive and generate a lot of intra-sibling screaming? Or do you mean just dropping them off at the local gaming store to play "D&D or whatever" with the 15 (heck, and 25 and 35) year olds that hang out there while you go to Walmart? Or something in between? Are they going to play in a generally safe environment, and, if you're not picking them up/dropping them off, are you comfortable with their means of transportation to and from there?
RPGs are little different from any other group activity in this regard; there's a certain level of supervision and mix of kid ages and relationship distance (sibling, relative, friend, schoolmate, stranger) any parent has already decided is appropriate for their kids whether the activity at hand is playing an RPG, playing Pokemon cards, playing soccer, going to the mall, or whatever. Different people are different here and times change - when I was a kid, at seven I and whatever kids were loose on our street would go disappear into the woods nearby and pursue our own shenanigans all day; today most kids are on lockdown and aren't let out of any adult's sight for more than 5 minutes until they're 13. Whatever your deal is there, you'd apply the same standard of supervision to a group of kids playing an RPG.
Don't think an RPG group is any safer than any other group - I wouldn't send my kid to go hang out with an arbitrary group of older people without myself or an adult I trust around. Use good judgment about any group your children hang out with.