Is this too much of an age gap?

It depends. If turning into a 17-year-old seems too contrived in the story, like it happens just for fetish purposes, it’ll creep out the readers.

17-year-olds and 30-year-olds have completely different phases of life. If the “boring” everyday stuff they do isn’t similar enough and they don’t have any plans in common, the relationship will probably die when the infatuation phase ends.

I had an age gap problem because of cryo shenanigans, and I removed the romance, because it personally disgusted me.

Just make the main character 18, then you can make them “supposed to be” however much older you want.

Give us a magical age cake that enable us 2 get older or younger

Short answer: That’s below the minimum age of consent ( I think, at least in the US). Besides that? Make them a RO and see if your readers want to go down that path…

Nope, U.S decides state by state. Most it’s 16. It’s just that in Hollywood it’s 18 so movies use that standard.

In my state it’s 16 with a 3 year rule, so 13 with restrictions I guess.

Okay, putting aside the legal question, the rule of thumb for it being capital C Creepy, is generally half your age + 7, so for a 30 year old that would be 22. Anyone younger than 22 is “rule of thumb” creepy territory.

I would have to actually read the game in question to see whether or not it would be considered Grossly Offensive by Hosted Games’ standards.

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This is all relative. Once two people are past middle-aged, the +7 rule of thumb makes less sense then it does if you are looking at two people in the tweens-30’s …

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I think it holds up. e.g., Personally, my girlfriend was talking about dating someone who’s 22, but she’s 38, and that age gap is pretty massive, while the gap between me and her (I’m 27) is a lot less weird, albeit near the edge of that gap (yes, we’re poly). The numbers do get less hard when we’re talking about older people, but as a rule of thumb, that is, as a general guideline to look at to make sure you’re not absolutely in weird territory from the get go, it holds up IMO.

I mean, yes, so many factors are in play regarding whether or not a relationship is ‘weird’ (is the 17 year old out of school, is there a position of authority involved, how old where they when they first met, where do they know each other from, ect.) and other factors (e.g. if the 17 year old is a girl, and the 30 year old is a man, [and yes I used those terms specifically] that has more problematic undertones because of the infantilization of women in society), but all said and done, hold your thumb out and see just to be sure.

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Here is the rub - as I said in the Tweens up to middle age it holds but let’s take the 38 year old girlfriend dating a 54 year old … there is no creep factor there (imo. ymmv) because the maturity level and experience level is on a different scale by that time.

Its also has many other factors such as historicity and culture but “Rule of Thumb” designations usually are not flexible enough to cover everything.

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Some readers will definitely have a knee-jerk reaction to a relationship like that, personally it doesn’t bother me too much, but it will disgust some. However, it’s not like a big age gap is unheard of in COG games, Choice of Romance is about a newly 16 year old being pursued by a monarch at least twice as old as the MC, an aficionado in his late twenties, and an elderly merchant all vying for your attention. And, I don’t remember anyone having a problem with the age gap, it was just accepted as a part of the game. So I would suggest taking it carefully with the ages if you want to follow through or just make the MC 18 to smooth things over.

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As someone who is 17, that is far too much of a gap to be comfortable. Even if you add the three years you said you could add, being 20 and dating a 30 year old still feels odd. The minimum that feel less uncomfortable to me personally is the MC being 21(it’s less uncomfortable at this age though I suppose 20 /could/ be okay. It’s still very odd considering a 20 year old would only have 2 years of experience being an adult.)

Though if you ever have to think about a romance option being uncomfortable or having some sort of backlash I think that should be a good sign not to do it. Friendship is always a viable option.

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It really does vary…I always find it kind of hurtful when people say large age differences are inherently creepy, though. I’m not at all arguing about CoG policy here—it’s not my place, for one thing—but I did want to share a bit of my story if that’s all right.

My spouse and I were twenty-eight years apart (I was twenty-three when we were married), but I never once had anyone tell us our relationship was creepy, or tell any of our friends that (at least as far as I know, and it was a close-knit few communities we moved in).

In fact, new people who met us in person often thought I was about fourteen years older than I actually am—which often happens anyway—and that my spouse was about fourteen years younger. We’d give them a few weeks to adjust to us and then tell them our ages for amusement, especially when we were in certain countries. It was always good entertainment value, since they were inevitably really surprised. We had to resort to showing papers to prove it once.

We never had any problems with our age gap. We also had the good word from our communities, both joint and separate, before we decided we wanted to pursue a relationship, and eventually marry. The only concern was that, of course, the odds were good that one of us would die sooner and there would be an awkward one-spouse-needs-nursing-care sort of period, or that it would be difficult if we had children (which we theoretically couldn’t, but then did, but that’s another story).

Then my spouse solved the aged-and-deteriorating issue by dying of a very rare type of cancer, relatively young, so no nursing homes or such turned out to be needed. I suppose I could have been the one to be hit by a bus and go first instead, though, so who can say.

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Okay, to clarify: Unless this is something substantially more offensive with the relationship (e.g. there’s something fetishistic about it being ‘illegal’), this is not at all be what we’d consider when we mention our Grossly Offensive standards. When I said “I would have to actually read the game[…]”, that’s my normal disclaimer that I’m not making any judgement call right now, although I see in this case it could be taken to mean that I was. That was not at all my intention.

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In Spain is really really normal couples of +20 years of difference since 27 or 28. Someone with 30 with someone 50 is normal here. Is not creepy or anything. Until twenty years agi it was always the men the old and the woman the young. Now both sides are normal. In fact there is a fetish of twenties want have relationships with older women.
But 17 is totally a no no jail punishment and super creepy

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Yea I’d be comfortable if we were slightly older too 19 sure
18 eh 17 that’s a nope.

(Personally don’t see issues with age gaps if there is a connection just the larger the gap the harder most people have it connecting)

I’ve decided to just scrap it altogether. Thanks to those who voiced their opinions on the matter.

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Glad discussion about it was useful. Game idea sounds cool

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That shows maturity as it is.
The idea had a case closed/Conan feel to it about the becoming younger it isn’t done often but it’s usually a interesting story I look forward to seeing how it plays out

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Um… You don’t exactly become younger like in Detective Conan. By all effects you are 17 both mentally and physically. Also it’s more of a inFamous-y-ish sort of story… That’s the best way I can find to describe it.

You know, a game on steam called RimWorld does it where the colonists are often different in biological age vs chronological age because of cryostasis.
Just in case anyone was looking for an existing example of this sort of thing.

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