"Hi! I'm your son. Betcha didn't recognize me."
— The player's son upon growing from a baby to a child.
"Hello. I'm your daughter you know. I'm all grown up now."
— The player's daughter upon growing from a baby to a child.
Fable and Fable: TLC Edit
Children inhabit Oakvale during the Birthday Gift quest during the hero's childhood and are regular inhabitants of Bowerstone South. They run around playing whenever they can, and study at the school during the daytime. Children play a part in the Book Collection quest, listening to the books that you give to the school teacher.
Fable II Edit
Children can be found naturally in Bowerstone Old Town, Oakfield, the Gypsy Camp and Bowerstone Market. They spend their time playing tag and pretending to be great heroes. They are the only type of villager who appreciate children's gifts.
Children can also be found in Westcliff after the Westcliff Development quest if you choose to become Barnum's business partner. Children can also be found during The Snowglobe quest with Fable II's See the Future DLC.
Fable II allows the player to have their own child after getting married. In order to have a child, you have to interest your spouse enough to have sex with you. This can be done with the "Come Back to My Place" expression, or by using the "Thumbs Up" expression if a spouse asks you to sleep with them. After this, interact with a bed and choose the "unprotected" option which may lead to you having a child. Your children will stay with your spouse as you go about your heroic acts. They will grow to be more like you in personality and alignment.
Children go through two stages: baby and child. Babies stay in their cribs and do not move, while the child has the traits of any of the NPC children. Before the trip to the Tattered Spire they will not age from the baby status until you return. Afterwards, children will age from baby to child if you travel far enough away from home and return. There is a limit of about 5-7 children per spouse.
WARNING: This section or article may contain spoilers!
There are certain quests that involve your children. If you have children during the main storyline, your spouse and child(ren) can be killed, and at the end of the game, you can choose love and they will be ressurected. If you have children after you finish the game, they will wander off leaving you with The Rescue quest to find them.
Remember to visit your family often and keep them happy or your spouse may divorce you, causing her/him and the child(ren) to leave permanently.
Fable III Edit
Children return in Fable III with a few changes and additions.
- The Hero can use the dynamic touch system to pick up, tickle, toss, and hug their own children. Other people's children have more limited interactions.
- The Hero of Brightwall is the first Hero not to have a playable childhood quest set.
- Two players can have children together over Xbox Live.
- The player can also adopt children in addition to having biological children. This costs 500 gold, and requires the player to select a family home. Children can be adopted from the orphanage.
- Your child's appearance and how they are dressed generally depends on your spouse's spawned location. Children can be working class (Bowerstone Industrial, Bowerstone Old Quarter, Mercenary Camp, and Silverpines), middle class (Brightwall and Understone), upper middle class (Bowerstone Market), noble (Bowerstone Castle, Millfields and Clockwork Island), Dweller (Dweller Camp and Mistpeak Valley), Ecological (Mourningwood and Driftwood), or Auroran (City of Aurora).
- Male children now have a new voice track. The old voice track is still used for NPC boys.
- There is a design flaw in Fable III where the ethnicity of your biological children does not match you or your spouse. However, this doesn't happen in every case.
- Your children can now give you gifts just like your spouse.
- Renaming your child returns, but this time subtitles also change along with the name, unlike in Fable II.
- There is a limit of two children per marital home.
- After consummating one's marriage, a baby is typically born. In order to have another, the house where you stuck your family must have at least two beds (for two children), such as the Hunter's Lodge in Mistpeak Valley. Once the first has grown from baby to child, wait for the spouse to be "amorous" again to make another attempt. Then, you must select "sex invite" and let your spouse follow you to a bed without holding their hand.
WARNING: This section or article may contain spoilers!
- Child labour is a problem at the beginning of the game due to the actions of both Logan and Reaver. After the player becomes King/Queen, they can choose whether or not to abolish child labour in Albion.
- Like most villagers in Fable III, your children will require you to complete quests for them in order to maintain your relationship. These quests usually involve buying your child a specific toy.
- Biological children will adopt the personality traits good, evil, nice, and mean based on the Hero's morality and primal alignments.
- In Fable ll, if you listen closely to children playing hero games you will sometimes hear "Teach me to be a Hero." This is similar to the famous quote in Fable lll made by the Hero of Brightwall to Walter Beck after being told stories about the hero's mum/dad.
- In Fable II, if your spouse dies or is sold into slavery, your child/children will be taken by the Child Protection Agency, and you will never see them again. In Fable III you can regain custody of your children by picking them up at the Bowerstone Orphanage.
- In Fable III, when you become King/Queen, you will be given the option to turn the Orphanage into a brothel or renovate it. Turning it into a brothel will not prevent the adoption of children – some of the orphans can still be adopted from a small area outside the brothel near the boundary hedge.
- Children can be prevented by protected sex using a condom.
- The only way for children to change to a different region they live in is either by selecting a new marital home for that specific spouse, or during the quest The Rescue. (children not related to you cannot leave their region)
- Children are well-known for their glitches as well. Some of the most common ones are children who become unresponsive, and a glitch that prevents you from having more than one, making your second child vanish.
- There are NPC Children not related to the Hero in Fable and Fable: The Lost Chapters running around in Bowerstone South.
- In Fable, during the Hobbe Cave Quest, it is possible to kill James. It's not recomended to do during the quest, but you can kill him afterwards.
- In Fable, Fable II, and Fable III children are un-killable by the player, even with safety off.
- In Fable ll the book "Becoming a Parent" states that "Folklore says that girls are conceived at dawn and boys at dusk"
- In Fable II, children will ask for your autograph when you become famous enough. In Fable III, they will ask for your autograph after you become King/Queen.
- Children's' clothes and nature depend on your nature and how much allowance you give.
- Children can be kidnapped involving a mini quest to get them back.
- You cannot use the Flirty expressions with children. Doing so will have the child act confused towards the character.
- When you see a bald boy, it sometimes may look like he has eye makeup.
- In Fable II you must use the bed in your marital home to conceive a child, while in Fable III you can use any bed in the same area as your marital home.
Bugs & GlitchesEdit
- There is a glitch in some games, in which your children will no longer exist once you reload your game. Your first child will still exist but all following children will completely disappear. (Note: If your marital home is set to Serenity Farm, your children will still be present but will be set as normal villagers and only your first child will be marked as yours.)
- A means to fix this glitch exists if your child was in Serenity Farm, they will still be there but as a generic child. By a series of often random expressions and actions, the game can 'remember' that the child is yours and the 'dummy/pacifier' icon then appears above the childs head again. This child can potentially fix the glitch making the child persistent between reloads.
- There's a small bug in which your daughter can have a boy's voice or your son has a girl's voice.
- In Fable II, the hero may rename their child. Despite this, the original name given to the child still appears in the subtitles during dialogue.
- In Fable III, there is a minor bug when interacting with a female child using the 'tickle' expression. Regardless of gender, a [female] hero will always say "Who's a lovely boy?"
- In Fable III, if a spouse is divorced or killed while a baby is present, it will be sent to the orphange where it will automatically age to childhood.