[Major Doom]

Drawing some creative inspiration from the book "They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children", I thought it would be great to portray how children are exploited for use as cheap combatants.  With Shadowrun spotlighting a dystopian future, having PCs encounter Ork or Troll kids that have been abandoned, facing them down in an alley or the Barrens, is an opportunity not be left unused.

So since the books never specifically gave stats on child versions of NPCs, has anyone created or have ideas on what their stats (Attributes and Skills) would look like?  Also would it be extra creepy and exploitative to have them augmented too?  What about making them uncontrollable Awakened, similar to Drew Barrymore in Firestarter?

[The_Gun_Nut]

Basically, virtually any street gang you run into will be filled with young to older teens.  Essentially still children, just not the wee anklebiters kind.

[Kot]

This is hard stuff. And i'd approach it carefully. Motives like that tend to take their emotional toil on players. But if you play with people who want something more than fun and profit, and expect you to include morality and difficult situations in your games, this is it. I bet most gangs and organizations use kids. And there can be a child gang, that'd be even more cruel and ruthless than those 'adult' ones. As with Lord of Flies, things like that tend to be really grim.
But it's a great theme for a whole storyline. Like:
The team is slowly getting more experienced, wealthy and famous in the shadows, as 'those new talents'. Life seems to be great, when... Well, runners always have enemies. And those enemies find their homes and start harassing them, even launching attacks and setting ambushes. It quickly becomes obvious it's time for a change of scenery, at least in favor of one they could easily defend, and/or hide. One of their fixers offers them a great place - some kind of mainly underground abandoned governmental complex. The only problem with it - as he says - is in the gang, that has residence in that part of the Barrens zone, which has to be coaxed into accepting their presence. As they probably won't take it as a difficult task, and because the place is really great for a shadowrunner base, they accept.
Only to find that the gang is composed of kids, up to the age of fifteen (the older kids are cast away, and join other gangs; and metahuman ages are respectively adjusted - they're kids; kids are smart). Now they have to deal with almost two hundred kids, ages from four to fourteen, with a few toddlers. Now what? How will they react, when they notice those kid-gangers sport tatoos, scars, knives, guns, and even occasional second-hand cyberware? And that they steal, kill, peddle, and prostitute themselves, and other kids to get by. Will they just accept the fact, buy the kids off, and focus on their Secret Lair? Or will they do everything they can to change something, even if just a little?
Off course, they will have to deal with lots of problems. Like the gang's leader, a troll with human cyberarms that start to fail as she grows up (and make her scared and cranky). Or the conflict between two of the gang's magic users - a shaman, who's influenced by his mentor (a member of another gang), and a hermetic, who follows the advice of his 'imaginary friend'. What will they do, if they find both magicians fighting over a prospective student? And what if that horribly shy dwarf girl is problem is being a technomancer in a mosty dead zone? And maybe there are worse things to deal with, like their 'mom' - a twelve year old elf girl, who takes care of the youngest... because she's a but, that found a great new place for a hive. And to get rid of the players she simply orders some of the younger kids to kill them? What will they do when they face seven year old 'assassins' aiming at their heads?

Heh. I think i went overboard a bit there. Well, that should give a slight idea what can be done with the theme. Responsively. It's as much of a difficult theme as child prostitution, and slave labor. So, yes. It's doable. But only if you're sure your players can stomach it. And even then, be ready for difficulties.

P.S. I might sound a bit oversensitive there, but that's because i have a few bad experiences with really difficult topics. Take it as a bif of advice from a GM who did three months worth of research to play a game of Call of Cthulhu taking place in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. And which ended after a little over an hour. With one player killing his character on purpose, and leaving the table with tears in his eyes. That game was one ow my worst ideas. It took me some time to recover from it.

[Major Doom]

Thanks for ideas, but I was actually looking for any stat adjustments for child NPCs.  I mean I can cook something up myself, but I figured I'd ask and see if anyone else used such resource in their games.

[Dead Monky]

I've never used child enemies in ShadowRun, but I have attacked the players with child zombies (D&D) and cadaver men (EarthDawn.)  As Kot said, you have to be careful because it gets nasty, grim, and unpleasant pretty quickly, but it can be a great tool for shocking the players and driving home just how messed up evil or flat out desperate the adversary is.

[Kot]

As for the stats, you have a good overview on how much is a skill score worth in the rulebook. As for stats, 3 is an average for a human. So, children get 2 on most (besides Intuition, which is their strong point - kids are very perceptive and insightful, even if they don't have the knowledge, or pure intellect to match an adult. Cut the BP in half. And use only Professional Rating up to 2 for 'big kids' and individuals like kid mages.
Just use pure logic. That usually works.

P.S. Monky, one of my creepiest ED ideas was a group of cadavermen children singing in a single-minded blasphemous choir praises to the sweet, sweet agony their master brings, and not much beside that - no physical combat or spells, just pure CoC-like sanity loss. They were to be the final enemy for the in-Kaer campaign prologue. I just never managed to get players devoted enough to start playing the game.

[Fizzygoo]

As a quick and dirty young'n stats. If the average Attribute rating for humans is 3, then average for around puberty (12 years old +/1 2 years) would be 2, and prepubescent is 1. If I remember correctly human physical maturity is reached around 20 years of age (younger for women, older for men, averages to ~20). Though doing a quick search on the subject there doesn't seem to be a consensus on this and the only thing that's certain is when puberty is reached and that depends largely on environment, diet, society as well as some genetics and add to that women start puberty earlier than men...on average.

So my ad hoc average human attributes by age would be

	Ages
Attribute	<7	7-14	15-20	21+
Body	1	2	3	3
Agility	1	2	3	3
Reaction	1	2	3	3
Strength	1	2	3	3
Charisma	1	2	3	3
Intuition	1	2	3	3
Logic	1	2	3	3
Willpower	1	2	3	3

(I did the table because I thought, hey, I bet there's some mental attributes that could be adjusted differently, or even like agility or reaction reaching 3 earlier than others, but then looking at them, and realizing that these are inherent averages (and to keep tracking these things to a minimum) the 1, 2, 3 progression works just fine even though saying a 15 year old has the same developmental level as a 25 year old, physically and mentally, doesn't sit quite right with me. And the differences between a 7 year old and a 14 year old are quite huge. So maybe doing it as <11, 12 - 15, 16+ as the 1,2,3 would fit better for actual game play.)

Then, after adjusting for sub-species ages (orks and trolls maturing hitting puberty early than humans etc.) I'd use those same categories and for the <7 range give the species-bonuses to attributes at 1/2 or even 1/3 maybe, then 7-14 at full or 1/2, and full attribute bonuses after 15.

And of course a whole range of negative qualities could be / should be layered on as "inherent" for the various ranges. Like <7 would be uneducated (don't have my book here so I can't go through them, but I know there's more that would fit an average 5 year old, hehe, like Uncouth - saying what's on his or her mind with no social control, picking noses, throwing tantrums, etc.). And so on.

Otherwise...yes, including children in the game, especially as enemies, brings a level of dark to an already mostly-dark game (NERPS!). For a fantasy game I was going to run I did my own age categories for the various species and included average stats for them (stats based on age category and species). I showed it to a fellow gamer and he just asked "why? Why include this. I mean, having the stats for a 1 or 4 or 8 year old is just extra work you don't need to do, because really who's going to want to play in a situation/encounter where you have to worry about the stats of a kid, or an infant even. I mean, if it comes down to it and we have to try and save the kid but the monster gets there first...the kids dead." This hadn't even occurred to me...I just like statistics and seeing how to make a world somewhat internally consistent within the rules.

On the otherside, I did start a campaign where the PCs were just post-pubescent, living on the edge of the barrens, and having to find their way in the world. I did the campaign with two different sets of players. One didn't take to it. The other did. The one that took got into it, the mage used a pokemon deck as a source for inspiration for his character's abilities, the other a technoshaman playing games, etc. Then slowly introduce elements to pull them into the shadows. A ghoul that wants to bring the kids into his organlegging gang, another "standard" street gang, a P.I. that would use the kids to keep an eye on targets, the Lone Star cop that used them to get info on anything going down, etc. It didn't last long, but that was mostly because of other events. My plan had been to "have them grow up" into 400 BP equivalent adults over the course of about 4 - 8 missions.

[Kot]

Heh. And you can always check out the nWoD Innocents for guidelines. It's basically World of Darkness in which you play kids.

[Dead Monky]

P.S. Monky, one of my creepiest ED ideas was a group of cadavermen children singing in a single-minded blasphemous choir praises to the sweet, sweet agony their master brings, and not much beside that - no physical combat or spells, just pure CoC-like sanity loss. They were to be the final enemy for the in-Kaer campaign prologue. I just never managed to get players devoted enough to start playing the game.

Damn.  I like.

[etherial]

As for the stats, you have a good overview on how much is a skill score worth in the rulebook. As for stats, 3 is an average for a human. So, children get 2 on most (besides Intuition, which is their strong point - kids are very perceptive and insightful, even if they don't have the knowledge, or pure intellect to match an adult. Cut the BP in half. And use only Professional Rating up to 2 for 'big kids' and individuals like kid mages.
Just use pure logic. That usually works.

P.S. Monky, one of my creepiest ED ideas was a group of cadavermen children singing in a single-minded blasphemous choir praises to the sweet, sweet agony their master brings, and not much beside that - no physical combat or spells, just pure CoC-like sanity loss. They were to be the final enemy for the in-Kaer campaign prologue. I just never managed to get players devoted enough to start playing the game.

+1. Less BP/Karma is totally the way to go.

All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom;
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid,
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did.

All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul, and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

Amen.

[Major Doom]

I've never used child enemies in ShadowRun, but I have attacked the players with child zombies (D&D) and cadaver men (EarthDawn.)  As Kot said, you have to be careful because it gets nasty, grim, and unpleasant pretty quickly, but it can be a great tool for shocking the players and driving home just how messed up evil or flat out desperate the adversary is.

It's basically the effect I'm going for, to set players off-balance with unexpected adversaries.

As for the stats, you have a good overview on how much is a skill score worth in the rulebook. As for stats, 3 is an average for a human. So, children get 2 on most (besides Intuition, which is their strong point - kids are very perceptive and insightful, even if they don't have the knowledge, or pure intellect to match an adult. Cut the BP in half. And use only Professional Rating up to 2 for 'big kids' and individuals like kid mages.
Just use pure logic. That usually works.

As a quick and dirty young'n stats. If the average Attribute rating for humans is 3, then average for around puberty (12 years old +/1 2 years) would be 2, and prepubescent is 1. If I remember correctly human physical maturity is reached around 20 years of age (younger for women, older for men, averages to ~20). Though doing a quick search on the subject there doesn't seem to be a consensus on this and the only thing that's certain is when puberty is reached and that depends largely on environment, diet, society as well as some genetics and add to that women start puberty earlier than men...on average.

...

Thanks for the ad hoc stats.  I was figuring that some of the Physical Attributes would be around 2, with Ork and Troll kids being stronger, but some Mental Attributes can be between 3 and 5, since some are quite intuitive and naturally charismatic (cute/adorable factor).

Heh. And you can always check out the nWoD Innocents for guidelines. It's basically World of Darkness in which you play kids.

I never got a chance to fully read it through it when I ran nWoD, but at the time my chronicle was focused on the adult perspective anyway.

[Kot]

I never got a chance to fully read it through it when I ran nWoD, but at the time my chronicle was focused on the adult perspective anyway.

It's a totally different game. And there's a lot of talk about differences between children and adults, both physical and mental.

[Critias]

Before you knock their physical stats down too low, keep in mind that (a) Orks and Trolls mature physically pretty young, and (b) most street docs don't have shit for scruples, or they wouldn't be street docs.  If these kids can mob up and form a gang, they can save up for some hideous looking chrome to be implanted into 'em. 

[Fizzygoo]

I was figuring that some of the Physical Attributes would be around 2, with Ork and Troll kids being stronger, but some Mental Attributes can be between 3 and 5, since some are quite intuitive and naturally charismatic (cute/adorable factor).

As for stats, 3 is an average for a human. So, children get 2 on most (besides Intuition, which is their strong point - kids are very perceptive and insightful, even if they don't have the knowledge, or pure intellect to match an adult.

Here's my argument (nice polite discussion-argument of course, no blood boiling grrr-argument here ) against the idea of higher Mental Attributes for kids (and I'm talking 'averages for a sub species' not individual cases). Kids can seem highly intuitive but...two words...Santa Claus. Kids often believe what ever you tell them or, on the flip side, they won't trust anything you say no matter what. Also, my success rate for sneak up on children and adults and scaring the crap out of them are about equal (much to my wife and daughter's dismay). As for Charisma...depends a lot on the other person's view of kids. Some think kids are cute, others don't care, and still others see them as snot-nosed virus bombs waiting to infect the city with the next strain of bird flu. In game terms, is an average kid going to have the force of personality to convince or con a runner better than an adult? I'd rather give out situational modifiers to negotiations or what not than to increase the base stat of the kid.

Essentially what I'm saying is that for any case where one can make a claim that kids will have a higher mental attribute because of X, there's probably a good counter to it...so it all averages out in the end. Though if anyone knows of any good psych-studies done that show that kids are actually more intuitive/charismatic, or equally intuitive/charismatic as adults then, well, I'd be more wronger than righter

Now if you still want kids to be 'stronger' in intuition then I would say have them reach the adult-average rating faster (human-3). So from 0-7 years old they have a 2 intuition and then 8 to adulthood they're at 3. But I still prefer the streamline 1,2,3 progression and then just throw in situational modifiers as needed.

Individuals, of course, are completely different. Some will have higher stats, some even lower. The smarter kids, the faster kids, the dumber kids, the slower kids, etc.

[Kot]

My counter-arguments, i'm going to assume RL=SR, for the sake of discussion:

Kids can seem highly intuitive but...two words...Santa Claus. Kids often believe what ever you tell them or, on the flip side, they won't trust anything you say no matter what.

Judge Intentions: SR4A, page 139 Int+Cha
Kids believe that not because they have no Intuition, but because they trust adults, especially their relatives. And they are fed with stories like that most of their lives. If they take talking, clothed animals as normal, they take fictional mythological/pop-culture figures also.

Also, my success rate for sneak up on children and adults and scaring the crap out of them are about equal (much to my wife and daughter's dismay).

That depends more on your sneakiness, and their Perception(skill - and they don't have much in the way of skills), and:
Composure (Wil+Cha), Page 138. That's the scare factor. Both attributes would be 1-2 in this case. That's a pool of 4 dice. 1 success. As for the Cha+Intimidation, that's at least 6 if we assume an regular adult guy.
I could also take into account that kids get distracted easily (low Wil and Log), and tend to have poor concentration (cookies!).

I'm using real life as a basis, because i have two younger siblings - a six years old sister, and an eleven years old brother. And i can't tell which one of them tells the truth. Yeah, they're that good at lying (Con, maybe a Lies specialization). And they tend to drive both a hard bargain, and a good common sense when it comes to a change of place.

Meh. I think this whole discussion is pointless, as it would be best to assume small kids (up to 7 years) have attribute scores of 1, and older kids (up to age of 12) have an attribute score of 12. And that's the general approach. It will depend on the kid's personality and the environment (people and places) they grow in. I've seen kids who tinker with electronics at the age of nine, and those who didn't read a single book till the age of ten. Hell, if you dig hard enough you can use those scraps of memories from your own childhood. I could, probably because my childhood sucked big time.