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If you're gonna play a parent-less 12 year old, we need child protective services


KinnyWynny

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Please read this.

I think I know what this topic pertains to...I was that character (age 13) who got injured and was in the hospital. I didn't know what to say concerning parents, so I came up with something on the fly, which, is a pretty common reason (in my experience) why kids go into gangs. Drugs, parental negligence. 

I wanted to explain why I had made him, why would a 32 year old woman do that? This is, at least, my reasoning. I grew up in Detroit, and at times on the rez in Montana. Very much not safe places, not great. I saw tons of kids & teens get involved in gangs from an early age, and their life goes down a dark path. When I made Leon, I was giving him that struggle but ultimately my hope was that he'd have a success story and turn around. Something that I rarely saw any of my former friends to, I lost tons of friends to the streets.

I'd much prefer family RP, that is what my hopes were, but I was letting RP decide we're he'd end up. I don't know everyone's situations, but kids on the streets and without parents is VERY realistic, and happens frequently in poverty-stricken areas. It's unfortunate. Yet, I understand not everyone wants to see that in RP, to each their own.

He wasn't shooting people up with guns, flirting with adults (disgusting), he wasn't driving vehicles. He was riding his bicycle around trying to help out people in the area of Grove street to get recognized. Someone even told him to drive to another area, and he simply said he isn't old enough. Of course.
I didn't make him adult like, but oftentimes scared and impressionable. Leon was told that gangs are family. That is what he wanted, actually. Character development! 

A nice nurse and a nice officer took the time to help him, and now things are going better for him. He learned a lot about why he should not have been looking for a gang, so thank you! He is in the foster care system, and would have been aged up to 16 or so. If any would have wanted to adopt him I would have been %100 willing to go with that, as Peter Muskrat had said.

I've deleted him (going to do so), so none of this will happen again.

Edited by Kai
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Child chars are innately cringe, shouldn't be allowed in the first place lmao. As mentioned they just act like other adults, cold hearted killers, and I don't think they're necessary to facilitate gang roleplay. A lot of things happen IRL that aren't allowed on the server, don't see why people are so adamant on the need for child chars when they ultimately add nothing and only serve as a big warning to those around them that they might do something stupid. There's been many questionable people banned for trying to engage in sexual roleplay with a minor, or as a minor character, an easy solution would be just to remove them entirely IMO.

 

On topic though, a child char being convicted of a crime should definitely go the route of an undocumented person, CKed and sent away to be in the system or something if they don't NPC parents. But even if they do maybe their NPC parents should send them off to live with grandma or something. 

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24 minutes ago, Kai said:

I'd much prefer family RP, that is what my hopes were, but I was letting RP decide we're he'd end up. I don't know everyone's situations, but kids on the streets and without parents is VERY realistic, and happens frequently in poverty-stricken areas. It's unfortunate. Yet, I understand not everyone wants to see that in RP, to each their own.

 

As for the rest of your post, I wouldn't take it personally, there's tons of 13 year old characters doing all kinds of silly shit, you seemed to have a nice idea in your head about portrayal which is more than can be said about many 13 year olds that find themselves holding a gun after three days of "RP development" and being used as child soldiers.

 

Streets are rough and many kids are outside the system IRL, but most people I have met don't RP any of this, because their interest isn't to RP the struggles of a young boy/girl growing up in the Ghetto, their interest is to be indoctrinated into a gang and they just happen to have to go through the kid phase. Their parents are just implied, somewhere in the background, and aren't really mentioned because they're not actively RPing living in some trap house with a bunch of adults, but they also don't want  to RP the limitations to their actions that a guardian would enact.

 

16 year olds definitely get up to no good and ignore their parents or even become violent and abusive at home, that's all entirely believable, issues come when you have all these unsupervised 12 year olds just running around the neighborhood all day, with families who seem completely ignorant to the fact that their kid is hanging out with (young) adult gangbangers regularly.

 

Yes, many criminals use young boys and girls to commit crime, but it's mostly to use them as mules and bait, not to have an extra body when they roll four deep.

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I really question how many people, in this topic, have hung around teenagers either connected or involved with a gang in the real world.

Most of these claims seem like an over-exaggeration, in my opinion, as a person that has RP'd either in or with street gangs for at least a year.

I don't really see the whole "They act like adults" argument within most of the teenager gang-members or affiliates that I R.P. with.

Edited by DLimit
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We don't have the in-game services to accomidate all these homeless and parentless children. You shouldn't be allowed to roleplay under 18 unless:

 

- You are 16 years or above and roleplaying as legally emancipated (these characters would likely be legal in all cases except girls who became mothers at a young age, which in California legally qualifies you for emancipation if I recall correctly). 

 

- You have at least one reasonably active parent portrayed by an actual player. 

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I wouldn't be upset if characters were not allowed to be under 18, 16 AT A PUSH. 

I actively try to avoid RPing with characters who're under 18. I personally think it's weird to want to roleplay a child. Let's not forget we're playing GTA not Second Life. 

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Personally, I have no problems with people who play orphans. One of the best characters I had the pleasure of roleplaying was my character's adopted orphan son. It's a shame there isn't a CPS or Foster Care system on the server currently; but I have hope that there will be one in the future. That would do wonders for the server, opening up more creative legal roleplay opportunities. 

 

To compensate for the present lack of an active CPS/Foster Care faction, parent-less characters should be required to actively roleplay with an older character. This could be an older sibling/grandparent/foster parent/adoptive parent/guardian/carer/social worker/whatever would work for their development. It would encourage players to think long and hard about how to conduct their young characters. This would prevent a bunch of orphans turned into gun-toting hang associating fearless death-matchers who have no purpose other than acting reckless to other people's roleplay. The should also apply to young characters whose parents are incredibly negligent or not around in the kids' life. 

 

I made a similar comment. in the thread I'll link:

 

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