Some fiction - if it hopes to deliver full dramatic impact must feature some very hard choices and deplorable activity. Take for consideration the new FX series “The Americans”. Without exposing the dark and dirty side of the espionage profession the series would not be able to deliver the intended impact and will be at best a mediocre spy action.
If I hoped to create a StoryNexus world with a similar impact I would need to provide players with choices that might involve murder of innocents, torture, sex as a mean to manipulate others, imprisonment without trail or even evidence… Oh I could insure that you only kill “bad people” and so on, but that would mean shallow pulp style spy action (which admittedly has its merits), when what I want is a deep story that forces reader/viewer/player to think and to re-evaluate concepts of good and evil, means and ends, heroes and villains.
Naturally such a world would have all the “Mature Content” warnings I can place.
Would I’d be allowed to create such content or do things like cold blooded murder or torture make this an automatic no-no?
I am sure the good folks at Failbetter will be along to answer this in due course. This is probably enough threads on the subject. edited by Alys Indigo on 3/30/2013
Just a thought: torture etc. is a sad part of life, but it seems to me you have a hankering of describing the terrible details mayhaps? Why bother such, when our minds can create them themselves?
So, rather than going in-dept about person x being tortured, why not start it off, scalpels etc. primed, then move to the fact that you passed out from the sheer pain/screams echoed around the tent and you are scarred forever at what you saw, etc? Our mind is good enough at filling in the gaps.
Good example: in Fallen London, a Dangerous option is to donate your body to science, which involves you getting opened up and live-vivisected. Sounds gruesome, right? Yet it is written in such a way that ones mind fills in the blanks.
I don’t intend any graphic description, no. I have however seen publishers that have problem with player choices (to get an information from an NPC) along the lines of:
a) ask nicely
b) bribe
c) shoot NPC’s companion in the head and ask again
d) torture