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Player Ages & Joining a Site


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Rune's topic about site ages got me thinking about this...

 

While I sometimes look at site ages, I'm more likely to look at the directory and character list for ages to see if I think we're going to be a good fit from a community standpoint. I often will shy away from places where none of the characters are over 30 (in appearance -- immortals don't count), because I assume that -- and usually this is somewhat accurate -- the age range of character appearance is with in 10 years of the players, so if everyone is in high school and college, then most of the characters are likewise younger. Obviously this is not a perfect system; some people who are in their late 40's like to write kids; And I certainly write characters upwards of 30 years my elder.

 

Do other people do this? Does the mean age of characters and/or players affect your interest in a site at all?

Edited by Thyme
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39 minutes ago, Thyme said:

Do other people do this? Does the mean age of characters and/or players affect your interest in a site at all?

 

I'm old so I tend to play older characters. However, my current sites are geared more for a younger population due to the setting. But yes, general age range of the characters will affect my decision to join. If the character I have in mind for the RP is 55 and the oldest character currently played is 19 - not likely to be loads of opportunities for ongoing interactions.

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Our roleplay is canine-centric, so ages don't really translate that way.  We have 40-year-old members, 14-year-old players, and all ages in between that play all ranges of characters.  I don't think that age necessarily indicates anything, really; I played an old woman on a roleplay site when I was 15 for a while.  I'd rather sneak a peek at the Discord or chat box / OOC forums to see what the atmosphere is like rather than relying on the ages of the characters or players.

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For me, it's more useful to look at the outliers. if there's a lot of really young characters, I'm gonna shy away because ten bucks says they're all either yandere psychopaths or the product of a player base with a strangely high collective libido - neither of which I want to deal with.

 

Then I gotta look at the oldest characters and see what's up. Like @Stormwolfe said, if the oldest character is 19 or something, then I'm probably about to walk into a school setting or a group of younger players. if most of the oldest characters are like, 30s/40s/50s though, then there's probably no issue.

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I actually WANT to see more of a mix to be honest. There's so many other relationship dynamics that could be explored rather than the "peer-centric" tendances the community tends to gravitate to. 

 

Anyway, I digress from the topic of the thread. I never looked at "player" ages as a form of "should I join". This is mainly because I play on a lot of genres where non-human lifespans are common. However, the fact that age was a non-issue in these places means that I had no choice but to judge a character/player/site on its merits as characters/thread partners rather than making assumptions based on perceived age before giving the persons a chance. 


The question I want to ask though, is, are we talking about Age as a BIAS of "I don't want to play with kids", or age as a clue to say "I'm not really into doing a school-life genre RP so if all the chars are below 24 I know it's just not the genre niche I'm looking for"?  Because I think they have two very different connotations. 

Edited by CovertSphinx
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I don't care about the character ages. I write characters from 14 till 60s.

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I never thought to look at character ages and translate those into player ages.  That's an interesting concept because in many cases, it's true.  Younger players tend to not play older characters.  And that's how it's been in the RP community around here up until the last couple years when roleplayers started to get older and therefore expanded their character ages.

 

While I don't decline sites with younger characters because it may correspond with a younger memberbase, I do look at character ages, and I don't join sites that have no characters over 40 unless there's a specific plot reason this is so.  Like @CovertSphinx, I love to see a range of character ages, from younger teenagers all the way up to older people.  Similarly, I'm okay writing with a wide range of member ages as well.  Although right now I only want to see adults on my roleplay site, I would have no qualms about joining a site that allowed teens, too, as long as the content was appropriate for a broader age group.

 

I'd never join a site that only had teens and 20-somethings as its memberbase, though.  And the strange thing is that even though I'm about 30, I'd have no problem playing all teenagers if the setting required it (though I may eventually get bored and want to play adults).

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I'm not really concerned with the ages of my writing partners so much as the maturity level of their writing. Age and ability don't necessarily correlate. When I was in my pre-teens and early teens, my role play partners were an average of ten years older than me; and they were always shocked to hell when I'd finally fess up my age to them. 

 

I'm older now, so I'm on the flip side of that. I have writing partners that are 6-10 (or more) years younger than me. I've started role playing with my cousin as a means of keeping in touch with her - she just started middle school and is easily a more skilled writer than the average adult. I also have older writing partners that are anywhere from 5-20+ years older than I am. 

 

So I'm minimally concerned about the age of a member base. What I'm going to look at is character development and actual in-character events. However, I will skip over a site where the majority of characters are under 25 or so because, as @CovertSphinx brings up, that's just not the interactive niche I'm interested. I don't mind playing teen and early twenties characters, but I like there to be a greater availability of age range to interact with. 

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I actually prefer when a site allows for all ages of characters and when you see a variety of ages being played. It's a give-in at this point that really young and really old characters are more rare, but there are people out there who play them and play them really well. I have seen preschool aged characters played in a really interesting/fun manner and elderly people as well. I honestly like to play a variety of ages myself, depending on what I am in the mood for. Sometimes it's really relaxing and fun to play a carefree, innocent child instead of an adult. Playing an older person with a lot of life experience is a whole other game as well. 

 

That being said the age of the player does not matter to me for the most part. I will write with all ages so long as they are mature and our styles and characters click. I don't write much in the way of smut, so that's not a huge thing for me to worry about. So, I try not to judge on age of the player or characters that they play. 

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Yeah, character ages don't bother me. Since depending on the site I join I tend to play characters that fall within the median age range of the roster. Like, if the site is a school setting then without a doubt my first character there would be > 19 since hey, I want in on some good ol' Academy of Adventure fun too. I generally don't create outliers until I successfully "break in" - I.e. I've grown comfortable with the community and said sentiments are reciprocated.
 

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I don't want to write with teenagers. But I can't say I've never actively paid attention to a site's character's ages before I've joined...

 

Afterwards, I might be weirded out if there is a large amount of people playing children or what have you.

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10 hours ago, jenneral_jennson said:

Considering how much adult content I write I’m always concerned about the age of my partners and characters on the site. This is why I will very rarely join a site that is not 18+. 

 

echoing this sentiment. While I don't really write a lot of explicit content, I would not feel comfortable writing most of my characters with under 18s

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I tend to stay away from sites where the character base is mostly in their teens or early twenties (Fandoms like Harry Potter or Buffy would probably be an exception because of the setting if I wanted to play in those.)

 

The reason for this is it could be an indication of the age of the players. If it's top heavy on the teens/early twenties you're probably going to get a lot of kids. (At least Harry Potter and Buffy are quite old fandoms now, so the majority of the player base is likely to be close to my age.) Young people don't have a lot of experience with writing and creating characters and are more likely to create over-powered ones, or not write very well and they don't always have the life experience to create characters who are very different to themselves.

 

On the whole, though, I like a site to have mixed ages with characters because the setting is more realistic. I do come up with ideas for children and young characters and I've come across sites where they don't want people writing them (usually because they think that people will want to write smut with them, but I think that says more about the kind of environment they've created to write in rather than what a writer's intention for a character are.

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The only thing I watch out for are legal requirements. I know JCINK doesn't allow mature content, while JCINK Premiums does, but only between characters older than 18, and they block the content for players under 18 too, so I make sure to follow their guidelines etc.

 

I've never looked at character ages and assumed they matched the player ages, though I suppose maybe that might work? What are the young kids into nowadays? Do 16 year old still roleplay Naruto? I don't even know. Anyway, what I'm saying is, I usually assume based on of fandom type what age-range is more likely to be playing. 

 

I personally only really like playing on mature sites because I enjoy writing mature content, so I guess I naturally weed out playing with younger roleplayers (though everyone under 18 lies about their age still right? That hasn't changed in the last decade or so??).

 

I play high school characters all the way up to old-as-dirt characters and my personal age has never changed that, so if you were checking out my list of characters you might have a hard time guessing my age. (I do get kind of weirded out when anyone wants to play someone younger than say 16 or 17. Children NPCs are cool for character development and plot-purposes but playing games with actual kids squicks me out).

 

 

Edited by Zahhy
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