@E_RedMark - I agree that sometimes certain professions definitely are going to push an MC or RO’s age higher, resulting potentially in larger age gaps. But those definitely make it more workable, for me, because it’s not an age gap just to have an age gap.
I’m working on one that has the potential for a really large age gap (about 20 years) between one RO and the MC, because one of the starting points is to choose one of three ages for your character, depending on how you want to play. I had to think long and hard whether I wanted to make the RO ages reflect off the MC’s age (making them X years older/younger regardless of their position/profession), but decided in the end, it was very unrealistic. Plus it would mean trying to have this RO reflect a background for an age range of 30-45 and that kind of broke my brain for a bit. Fifteen years is a lot of life experience time.
It may make this RO (and potentially others, as I haven’t fleshed all their details in) less viable to some preferences, but I had to opt for logic rather than comfort factor in the end to be happy with it myself. I’ll leave it up to the player to decide if their MC is mature enough, although the current code makes it a lot harder to cross the age gap for the RO to be interested if the MC trends toward the less mature.
Are we just discussing age gap in general or are we taking the scene of the story in effect too? Since in more fantasy/supernatural genres the RO’s ages could range more than the norm?
In my WIP Blades of Damascus the MC is 21 while one of the ROs is 28 and another who is a demon is really 600 years old
Plus a side WIP im working (and havent posted yet) on which is possibly my teen titans like idea from the interest check thread two of the RO’s are kinda immortal beings and one, which ive been severely debating the MCs age or just letting the player choose between 17-21, is 35 for story reasons and i think i made another possible one 16? hence the flub on MCs age but maturity does severely come into play for this
Omfg you made my day putting that
@poison_mara btw honestly thats how the age gap is for some relationships i see where i live too, including my own i started dating the person im with now when I was 17 (like a week before i turned 18 so it didnt really matter on AOC plus im in Missouri) and he was 23 at the time now i’m the 23 yr old while hes 28
Back on a maturity stand point kind of; my mother, whos been in the same toxic relationship for about a decade now, is 15 years older than the man she is with, granted he is in his 40’s(idrfk i never really cared about him) now and acts like a complete man child and thats just sad so yeah having grown men/women act young/childish is definitely a hard pass
assuming all characters are legally adults(Some countries differ in what that is, obviously. In Canada, this would be 18.), how far apart in age do you think characters in COG’s can be from each other?
Characters . Unless someone is really named that…then…we are talking characters in stories lol .
When it comes to fantasy ages, I think of milestones.
It is generally accepted that Tolkienesque Elves reach majority at 100 years old - 18 for humans - and that they age at roughly 10 years for every 100 that passes. This is true for Forgotten Realms Elves, at least.
For truly immortal beings, like vampires, there’s already a power issue - vampires can crush a human like so many twigs, as it is - so the mental age difference doesn’t really matter. An immortal being is always going to be infinitely more world-weary than someone who gets a maximum of 130 years.
@E_RedMark idk i mean i could get behind a character just named character would make for an interesting story for just the name alone
But OP did say countries what about mythical realms
@ashestoashes018 thats how i like to think of it too. Although i do always laugh at the whole immortal/mortal dynamic where the immortal is always like “why are you doing this” while sighing as they reluctantly follow as thier LI as they rush headfirst into danger even though theyre a squishy meatbag mortal
Personally i think,and im probably severely off base bc ive lived in some wierd places in just Missouri alone, that its becoming more socially acceptable for there to be that age gap (now not like below AOC altho you do see that in small towns where 30yr old men are trying to prey on 16yr olds which i know its acceptable in other countries but its still a wierd notion for me) it also depends on how the reader views what they count as an adult which is different than legally speaking.
I may be going off topic so stop me if i do ive been know to go off on tangents
I count being 21 as being an adult for several reasons mostly based on personal experience and due to a decent amount of people once they hit 18 act stupid because they believe theyre adults now and make unwise decisions not everyone but I was one of those people and i learned real quick i was not prepared
sorry for going off topic back to the point
If its appropriate in maturity/equal partnership and the relationship just flows together instead of it feeling like someone trying to shove a square block into the star space then i dont really mind an age gap to a certain point in a non fantasy/supernatural genre
I am the same way, tbh. I’m 24, and I can’t see myself dating someone younger than 21. I mean, if it happens, it happens, but it is not something I will actively seek out. 18-20 is such a sensitive time, you know?
Same time, if an 18 year old is adamant about dating someone 20 years their senior, it’s not really my place to judge, even if I feel kinda icky about it.
I think by and large it depends on the age you want the characters to be in the story.
If we’re strictly talking adults, I’d say just make sure both characters are 18 or older (or maybe 21 or older if you’re think that’s safer), are both comfortable being with each other romantically, and it’s clear the older partner won’t try to take advantage of their younger partner’s naivete (if they have any), I’d say the age gap holds little concern.
If we’re talking romance between two children or two teenagers, I’ll admit that’s a little trickier, but here’s my take;
Romance between two children is unusual, but I know it’s not unheard of. If one child reaches 13 while their partner remains younger, I’d say an age gap of maybe 3 years at most might turn the least amount of heads.
Though I think if the prepubescent couple managed to get together in the first place and sustained a relationship long enough for one of them to reach 13 in the first place might draw more attention than a 3 year age gap.
Obviously teenagers dating is a common thing but i think similar rules can be applied, only with one partner reaching 18 instead of 13, though if anyone knows any teenage couples with a longer age gap than 3, I could be wrong. Most examples of teen dating I’ve known mostly involved two teens being the exact same age, or with an age gap that’s small enough to be irrelevant.
That’d be a strange case on its own- most kids don’t associate much with anyone outside of a three year age range, much less form a romantic relationship.
Once you hit 24-25 imo that’s when relationships with larger gaps (where the person is maybe 5 years older) start feeling okay at least in my opinion) I’m 19, and I’d never feel comfortable being approached romantically by someone older than 21 or younger than 18. The older you get the less weird it is, bc there isn’t that gap of maturity.
I think it’s perfectly fine to have a younger character attracted to an older character (bc crushes happen) but a lot of the time I can’t wrap my mind around that being something the older character would want to pursue.
For non-fantasy ages, I wouldn’t make a hard rule beyond “legal adults/Romeo and Juliet,” but I’d take circumstances into account other than that. Older adults shouldn’t be specifically trying to pick up dates at the freshman dorm, ideally, and I’d trust Anne McCaffrey to be a lot more tasteful in writing an age-different romance than I would Piers Anthony.
Fantasy characters…look, I know my hot new love machine in Choice of Robots isn’t even five yet. I’m banging her anyway. I’d go with “is this supposed to turn pedophiles on?” as a standard of decency when writing such things. It works for TVTropes.
Honestly, half your age plus seven “feels” right to me. Some who’s 20 can date 17-26, 30 can date 22-46, 40 can date 27-66 without feeling too weird to me. Obviously people can write whatever they like, but speaking for games I’d want to play and relationships I could believe would work out happily for both parties.
The first post asked if it’s different if you’re playing the older character and after some thought, yes. That would make it weirder for me. I think I’m most willing to accept age gap romances where I’m playing the younger character, I’m proactively pursuing the older character, and they have qualms about it. The first clause because I, for lack of a better way of saying it, am inside the younger character’s head and know “they” aren’t feeling creeped out. The second and third clauses because come on, if someone’s 30 and a 22 year old starts flirting with them, most people you’d want to date would have serious reservations. In a present-day realistic society (meaning one where many people don’t finish full time education until 22), there’s just such a gap between short-term goals and time-lines for a 22 and 30 year old. I can buy it’d be a good relationship for the both of them, but the writing would have to be pretty convincing.
If it’s set in a time/place that large age gaps are normalized (ancient Greece, renaissance Venice, or analogs) I’m both more and less willing to believe in it, depending on how it’s developed.
I think 18 plus and how you portray it is what matters most in pretty much any case when writing. As someone who has gone younger and then older back to back before returning to my own age bracket IRL both were the worst relationships I’ve ever had. I professionally recommend keeping it close to home and would never go more than a couple under or more than 5 over. When I was 19 I dated a girl 17 going on 18 it lasted a year and a half. Then by 22 I jumped up to dating 20 years over my own age. Short version that turned into the worst fast and was over by a year in and living together. Now I’m dating with less than a year difference at 24 and it’s nice to relate to my own age again. My attraction to older women is still there, though I would never go over early 30’s at this point for anything long term, for the night maybe
It depends heavily on culture for what it seems. I just noticed here That Americans have a big problem with one of two years. fact that surrounding me is the most logical circumstance in the universe. I see that also there is a problem with economic gap. Like if having more money automatically means you will abuse others.
After working in a court and preparing profiles in many denounces of domestic abuse. I have noticed that money doesn’t mean anything many older woman with a good job are being abused by unemployed younger twenty something.
Being six seven years older is normal here there is also people who prefers older people and if both are ADULTS where is the problem? Is fiction nobody is abusing anyone. Is something natural in most of world. It is like say all marriage people I know including my grandparents are really toxic after 50 years married.
However it is interesting. Now How I will fixed my game when a 18 years old and a 25 are flirting with each other…
I also came to think it might be an american thing. Here in germany it is not different than in spain. When I was 18 I had a boyfriend who was 26, I felt there was nothing wrong with it. I had friends around my age and now my BF of 12 years, father of my daughter is 5 years younger than I am. But that has never been an issue for him and for me. What I see as a problem is, when someone actively searches for someone in a different age group.
Meeting, getting to know each other and then falling in love is one thing, there the feelings relate mostly to the person and not to looks or age or something like that. When I constantly go out with people several years younger than me, to get someone who loves me in that age, there starts the cringeworthy part. When the gap is there by coincident I am much more willing to live with it, than when it was looked for to be that way.
This really looks to me like a western thing. In the US and, even more so in the UK these days, the way society treats age differences depends to a huge degree on genders. An older man with a much younger women seems to be frowned upon with the male often labelled as ‘predatory’ while an older woman with a much young man is more accepted, even frequently encouraged.
The problem with saying it is less accepted in America is that it is such a sprawling country with varied and often contradictory cultures that it depends on who you are talking to.
Where I am from… a very much Bible Belt Southern US state, large age gaps are not uncommon at all, although they do largely trend to the male being older. About half the couples I know have an age gap of nine or more years. It’s especially more common with couples who meet when the younger is already in their 20s or 30s. The ones that raise eyebrows are the 30+ year olds who date 18 or 19 year olds. But even then it depends on the situation.
The easier acceptance may also have to do with it being an area where post-secondary education isn’t common (only 22% of adults in my state have bachelor’s degrees) and poverty rates are high (my daughter attended an elementary school where 90% of the kids were below the federal poverty line), so once someone’s graduated high school and joined the workforce to support themselves, quibbling about how old their older partner is would be a bit moot.
Interesting I have experienced it, just the other way. A man in his 60s with a 30 year old girlfriend is cool, while a Woman with a younger lover is pitiful with her Toyboy or was the Term boytoy?
Honestly, I’m less concerned about the age gap then I am with whether the relationship is predatory. I’ve seen plenty of same age relationships that are predatory, and quite a few relationships with a large age gap that are loving and healthy. It really depends on the individuals involved. Power differentials when present aren’t inherently abusive, and neither does greater age necessarily translate into greater power. Quite often it’s the younger partner who calls the shots. So I try to avoid blanket judgments.
BTW, I don’t think Kate Beckinsale deserved the criticism she got for dating a man 20 years younger.
That’s the way it used to be in the UK not so long ago but times have changed. Certainly where I am anyway, you can see it in the mainstream media as well as on social media.
Personally, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. As long as people are mentally capable of making up their own minds and don’t break any of the current set of petty rules and regulations controlling their lives, they should be left alone. Part of the problem, I think, is that with every new generation comes a new set of ever more restrictive rules so what’s acceptable to one generation is frowned upon by the next.
i started dating the person im with now when I was 17 (like a week before i turned 18 so it didnt really matter on AOC plus im in Missouri) and he was 23 at the time now i’m the 23 yr old while hes 28 
I’d go with “is this supposed to turn pedophiles on?” as a standard of decency when writing such things. It works for TVTropes.