The Evil GM – Adventurer with… baby?!

I am in the process of gathering up some friends and doing a face to face game of D&D, and I told my friends, think about your character concepts as we will be rolling up characters next time we meet. I also advised them that I want them to work as a group and figure out their back stories, whom they know in the town, family members..etc. I wanted to see if they could form a well rounded group with characters that meant something.

I’ve gotten a few emails from folks asking about this or what I thought about that, but this morning I receive a rather odd.. well, I won’t say odd, maybe kind of interesting concept from my friend Michelle. My friends and listeners of the podcasts I do, know I never say “no” to players, but rather tend to work with them on whatever they want to  make things acceptable to both of us, as well as the group. 
Anyway, let me post the email I got:
Okay, yes you read that correctly, the player wants to have a baby with her while she is out adventuring.
My first thought is okay, that is different, but how will that work? 
I can see that working from a pure roleplaying stand point, but for adventures… I see this said baby causing a lot of problems. The common things I can see causing problems:
  • Baby crying
  • Baby making sounds while trying to be quiet
  • Baby becoming a target during battles
  • Baby needs food, can’t eat rations
  • Baby saving throws, much weaker then a normal adventurer

These are the first thoughts that come to mind when I read the email, I will jot these down and present them when she is telling the group of her idea. If the group is cool with this idea, I am more then willing to roll with this for as long as things allow it.
I think its an interesting concept that the character has a dark secret of why she has this child and maybe, depending on the deity she picks, will frown upon this and not give her those spells she prays for, making her feel guilty until she admits the situation and returns the child to said family.
What would you do? What do you think?

5 thoughts on “The Evil GM – Adventurer with… baby?!

  1. Dropping by at the request of my buddy Fitz at Moebius Adventures….

    I ran a campaign where the party suddenly found themselves taking care of an orphaned human infant. Because children are a gift from God — amirite? — I made a Divine Boon item card that listed the benefits of having a baby around.

    http://i.imgur.com/VQYK7Mn.png

    Making them roll dice to see what the baby did every in-game hour was oh so much fun. Having a crying baby who really needs breast milk in the midst of a zombie apocalypse… motivated the party to find a human woman at any cost. 🙂

  2. The baby noise issue can be solved when moving around by having some sort of magical silence spell/device running when its in the papoose etc. That's a lot better than giving opiates to babies, which is what happened during Victorian times.

    Might want to rewatch Willow again and see what happened with Elora Danan in the movie there.

  3. Reminds me of the Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind manga, where Nausicaa rescues a couple of infants from some war-torn town. She had them with her for a short period until she was able to find a mother who had recently lost her kids in a similar war-torn scenario. Short lived, but it was touching and dramatic. Perhaps that's the goal, to find a safe home for the child.

  4. This could be awesome, or extremely terrible for the whole group.

    I would discuss this with the group and then make the baby the key point of the campaign. Something like the baby is going to be the King Arthur of this world, the PCs need to make sure it happens. But in order to become the King Arthur character, the baby needs certain rituals and tasks complete (now the PCs have an excuse to adventure rather than hiding and waiting for 15 years).

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