As the title states. I know CHYOA doesn't allow stories about underage characters, which is why I ask.
I would figure variable age is okay, since that's not inviting people to break the rules just by giving them a blank entry line. For instance, somebody could name their character "Garfield the Cat" or "Jimmy (12 years old)" and make the story break particular rules. Name entry fields are the most common type of customization variable. Can't help what people might put there.
Technically, yes. However, this should only be used to let the reader choose an age above 17. Also, the other criteria of rule 1 still need to be respected. This means: - The default number in the age field should be 18 or higher. - The character with varying age must not be written in a way that suggests, implicitly or explicitly, that they are younger than 18. This includes external factors (e.g. being a freshman in high school), physical appearance (e.g. being 4'6" tall), and behaviour (e.g. speaking in a childish manner). - You shouldn't encourage readers to input an age below 18, or suggest that this is an option. In other words, if you've written your story in such a way that inserting an age below 18 would at all make sense, you're probably doing it wrong.
That makes sense. Although the physical appearance one is sort of weird, considering I know a girl who is literally 4'0", and she's older than me. I get it, I just feel like that is a weird line to draw. That being said, i will obviously respect the line. And yeah, the default age will never be anything less than 18. I just want to give the readers as many options as possible, which includes ages.
Well, that's just an example - you could have a woman that's 4'0" but with a clearly adult description. After all, that's a real condition, and additionally, there are plenty of short fantasy creatures like dwarves, fairies and halflings that appear in erotica. The point is that you can't write a clearly underage character and circumvent rule 1 simply by calling them 18. For example, a story could have a character that's stated to be 18 but doesn't know what sex is, still wears a training bra, hasn't gotten her period yet, has a childlike physique, etc. These types of stories are not appreciated.
Some height percentiles for 18-year old girls: US 3rd percentile: 4'11" US 0.1st percentile: 4'8" Asian 3rd percentile: 4'9" Indonesian 3rd percentile: 4'7" So a height of 4' straight is very very unusual and probably related to a medical condition. Having a character with dwarfism and a way smaller height is fine as long as they are described accordingly. It is also possible to shrink adult characters as long as they are true to scale. Things like puberty blockers, drugs that inhibited the growth before the character reached maturity, and other ways to circumvent the underage rule are off-limits.
