That’s not the right question 
A young child would say anyone in their 20’s+ is “old”
A teenager would probably say anyone in their mid 30’s-40+ is “old”
Someone in their 30-40’s would probably say someone in their 60-80’s+ is old.
The bar keeps moving. And “old” doesn’t mean “walking stick old” either. It can just be where you feel the generation gap starts to kick in.
No, I actually feel old already. About 189 - 254, most of the time. Hell, I remember not being allowed to play in the sandbox outside because of the chernobyl fallout.
None of those are old, lol. Old is like 70+.
But older than me is anything above 30.
Oh so I should definitely choose late 40s+
Even when I was a teenager, I didn’t think of late 40s as old! 
Yep absolutely! It’s super relative. That’s why I was interested to know what each person who’d said they preferred slightly older MCs considered old, personally, since it could be very different.
HAHAH!! whoopsies.
God, you’re basically already the same age as that stuffy old vampire that you sometimesss express mild discontent with on the forums, eh? 
Sorry! Accidentally liked and almost replied with my private account, have corrected myself 
Pretty difficult if you want to do it right. There’s a vast gulf of differences between, say, 18 and 35. Life experience, skills obtained, relationships formed and lost, resources available, the manner in which other people treat you, etc, etc. If you want to properly reflect that you’re going to have to change a lot of things, because if you don’t you’re gonna wind up with a lot of dissonance in the story.
I voted for 30-40 because that’s the age bracket I’d want to see for an older protagonist, not because I think that’s old.
Exactly!* But at the same time, I’m mid-puberty with the according hormone levels. Try that! (The joys of being trans)
*(Though I don’t bash them THAT much… I think… 
)
Nightmare fuel.
HAHA! Gotcha, have edited to slightly fair-er phrasing
Ah nice, what an RO you would make!
It would be so worth it, though.
I think the biggest risk would be the author (inadvertently) imposing their vision of what maturity looks like. I think of my own reasons for wanting to read about older characters, and I look at what some people here have said about why they want to read older characters, and … the Venn diagram is two circles. That doesn’t mean any of us is wrong. It just means that it’s not so simple as young people being one way and older people being another. For example, some people gain confidence as they grow older, while some have to learn humility. Some people are just cocky or mousy by nature their whole lives. I think in a well-written story, the effect of age would be felt not in terms of actions, but justifications and motivations. To use another example from this thread - I was actually surprised someone associated young characters with too much hemming and hawing before taking a romance to a more physically intimate level; I associate youth with impulsivity and age with caution and deliberation. But maybe the difference is not when the characters start having sex, but why? Are they acting in a hormonal fog, or cutting to the chase because life is short? Are they waiting because they’re still awkward in their own newly-adult bodies, or because painful experiences have taught them it’s better to be a bit choosy?
Quick aside, but aren’t alt accounts forbidden on this forum?
Ooh, is it? I’ve not used my other account for anything else, I just created it earlier, for reading pleasure, but I should probably just delete it if it’s not allowed 
I checked the FAQ, and it says:
- Alternate accounts (sometimes referred to as “sockpuppets”) are categorically forbidden. If you want to change the name on your account, contact an admin.
That was me, and it comes from the fact that this is how it generally was for my generation back when / where I was young. To be fair, I wasn’t as much thinking of people in their early twenties, but more of (virgin) teens, because the pacing of CG relationships often reminds me of how “we” approached things back then, and how the popular magazines for teenagers (“Bravo” in Germany) taught us how to best approach intimacy, that being step-by-step. Dating, then a first kiss, than a bit of making out (we called it “petting”, haven’t heard that one in a loooong time), until eventually, when everyone and their dog was ultra-comfortable and the room filled with the smell of cheap scented candles from “Nanu Nana”, the first (bad) actual sex.
I do think this is great advice and a good guide for teenagers who are new to all this and insecure, but why do romantic plots for adult readers so often have to follow the same rules for different reasons? I mean, I just answered my own question; it’s to always have another carrot on a stick, another goal to pursue to keep the reader reading. It’s just not very realistic, and not something I like. Sure, there’s adult people who still like this whole song and dance of dating and taking it step-by-step, more power to them, but I don’t need this, less so in my fiction.
And this aside, I think age has one big advantage: You usually know what a naked, real body looks like. You know about hair in weird places, stretch marks, scars, Keratosis pilaris, cellulite, and so on. There’s less “Is it normal to have that?” and more realistic expectations, both for yourself and your partner. And age just generally ruins every body, so everyone starts to look a bit shitty underneath their clothes sooner or later. This too, can make it easier to feel better about your body and cut to the chase when hooking up.
I think the real metric of ‘old’ is when you can be impressed that the person in question survived that long.
No, that’s true at 15 for many people.
. Many of Lucid’s HGs seem to have this or something similar, either as an option(like in The Lost Heir Trilogy) or as a non-optional part of the HG(like in Life of a Wizard), but AFAIK that’s the only HG or COG.I agree with you, that it would be good to have as an option more often, at least in the more complex and stat-heavy COGs and HGs, particularly in the unfortunately far from rare instance that it’s difficult to figure which test goes with which stat based on the descriptions of the different alternatives.
I have to admit to admit that I’m a bit curious as to why not more writers allow you to see what test uses what stat and so on. Is it because it’s too hard to do coding-wise or because the writers are worried that knowing all of this will make the COGs and HGs too easy or predictable? Or are they worried that this will take away the mystery of COGs and HGs or ruin reader immersion? Or is it due to some other reason?
For me, it’s because it ruins some of the immersion. I like being able to check in on my stats periodically, but if I know exactly which stat is associated with each option, then it feels like I “have to” pick the one I have the best chance with, even if that’s not the choice I want to make for the story. I’d rather have the risk of failure–which keeps things interesting, if done well–than feel like there’s a statistically correct option every time.
100% this.
Also, in my experience, if the stats are well-constructed and the options reasonably well-written, it’s usually not too hard to figure out which stats are being tested, if you really want to.
Thank you both for your replies. I can see your points too and I do suspect that how well showing what stats are being tested will depend both on the reader/player and on the COG or HG in question… For a COG or HG where the “gamey” aspects come more to the fore and there is a more clear difference between winning and losing at the end, I find that I tend to get very much into the mind set where I’m trying to win and then it becomes much more annoying when I don’t know which of my stats that are being tested. But for a COG or HG that focus more on story and less on stats and there isn’t a big difference between losing and winning at the end, I can certainly see that this can be a distraction and take away some of the magic of the story, without this bringing anything important to the COG or HG in question.
Of course, If all COGs and HGs made it easy to figure out which tests use which stats, we might not even have had this conversation. But I have seen plenty of COGs and HGs(actually more of the former than the latter, I think) where it’s not clear at all or at least somewhat unclear which stats are being tested. And when the COG or HG in question is a statheavy one where you can get a really bad ending for choosing the wrong stat check(in the sense of a stat check using a stat where you’re so poor that you’re guaranteed to fail), this becomes a problem, I think. At least for a guy like me, who prefers a happy or happyish ending.
But I guess it depends a bit on what your focus, priorities and general mindset is when trying a COG or HG and your background too. I discovered ChoiceofGames through gamebooks and have played plenty of books in series like Fighting Fantasy and Fabled Lands(or for that matter, Grey Wolf). Those books were much harsher than just about all the COGs and HGs when it comes to the difference between winning and losing and the path to victory and involved having to keep track of my character’s scores. So I’m both used to doing that and entering into the story for the purpose of winning, in a sense. So this both mean that my immersion or at least my experience isn’t ruined much(if at all) by having to look at my characters stats and also that winning tend to be quite important to me, particularly in those COGs and HGs where there’s a large difference between the good ending(s) and the bad ending(s) and where your character plays the part of a hero of some kind.
So that’s where I’m coming from and why I think that,if we can’t get enough stat checks that are clear enough, that it would be a good thing in the more stat heavy COGs and HGs, at least the ones that are the more “win-lose” so to speak, to have the option to see what stats are being tested. But people are different and it’s clear that your perspectives are different from mine. Anyway, it’s interesting to hear both your perspectives.
i think my situation is sorta similar to you but i dont have a problem on knowing which stat is going to be tested but i have a problem on knowing if this stat is going to add to it or be tested. i only encountered this once on a IF and i dont remember the name but i couldnt move pass that option cause i got confused. granted, most of the IFs i tend to gravitate towards is less on a heavy stat.