Ok, so... Not sure how this works, so bear with me.

Our board is rated M15+ by Australian standards, which from what I can tell is looking like

THAT ^ one, by American standards.

My question is just how much sex and violence and stuff that would entail. Because I'm a young admin, I don't want to overdo it, and I know I have a few members who aren't comfortable (surprisingly, the older ones. lol.) but I want to know.

There are a few characters who have massive tension right now, and I'm pretty sure if anything happens between them, its gonna be soon. I want to know what people think is appropriate for that level. If anyone could PM me an example that would be good too, because I'm stuck for how to word things pretty often. Kinda sucks for playing a canon. :p

I'd like opinions, basically. And examples. And any thoughts you have.
At one point I was considering an adult area on the board... *shifty eyes*

Dazed and Confused, with not enough smut (or too much??),

Mmmm I think PG-13 basically means that characters can get away with making out and getting a little touchy-feely before the scene SHOULD fade out. But it definitely doesn't mean that people can write full-blown sex, or even a lot fore-play, really. Like, they can sort of hint at what's going on, maybe something like "His hand dropped below her waist" or something, but apart from that... Yeah, that's not PG-13 anymore. At least in my opinion, but my forum is rated that and I'm kinda lax on it. Not the sex part, mind you, but I'm a little more lenient on gore. Because gore is well... only really gruesome if a person is talented enough to write it that gruesome.

As for violence... Well, I would imagine now mass murders in really descriptive detail (such as someone describing how their character skinned this NPC and did this with his organs and blablabla). Like... blood and guts is ok, but the more descriptive it gets, the more likely it'll be at an R rating. And language well... if the f-word is every second word coming out of a character's mouth, that's an R rating. If it shows up once and a while, accompanied by other random curse words, I'd still say that's PG-13.

If you think it may get out of hand, I would set up a Mature forum of sorts and direct people there for their R rping needs. No point in subjecting the public to something they really don't want to read, lol. At least, many won't.

I don't know if I helped, as those are just my opinions. I find it very grey, to try and define something as solely PG-13 when people have different opinions on what may constitute PG-13. I hope I did help though, in some small way.

You did help, a little. Thanks for your input.

I'm interested in any more opinions, as I was pretty certain on the fade out thing (lol), but not how much could be written before that.

I'm just worried because one of my members in particular (the others kinda don't care) is quite... squirmish. She takes everything and blows it up into a much larger thing. Her character kissing is very dirty to her.

Sexually, PG-13 basically means you've got to fade out before anything fun actually happens, but you can hint moderately that it's going to happen/did happen. Mary and Gary can kiss, but if it starts getting too hot in there, the lights have to go out so no one can see. :p

As mentioned, cussing is allowed, but in small, infrequent doses, and nothing too incredibly vulgar.

Drugs are not typically shown. If they are, it is "soft" drugs, such as marijuana. Harder drugs may be referenced, but not too extensively and, again, infrequently.

Violence is allowed, but not to extreme amounts, and nothing too gritty or cringe-inducing. Blood is kept to a minimum in PG-13 movies, and violence is often "off-camera".

If you have an issue with members not wanting to stumble into something that may upset their sensibilities, maybe you should mandate people put a [MATURE] rating in the title of the thread, so they can't accidently see something they don't want to see?

Thank you! I like the idea of the [MATURE] thing. I'm shocked that such a simple thing pleases me so much, and that I didn't think of it. *facepalm*

Thanks a bunch, guys. I reckon I know what to do now.

Also, I love your Gary & Mary example. v v cute. :p

Personally, I'm a bigger fan of the mature forum idea. Mine is hidden from guests and non-applied members. It also used to be password protected, but that was a pain in the butt to maintain, so I dropped it, figuring that it being invisible was enough. My board is 18+ and privately hosted and I don't want parents on my butt for kids reading stuff they don't want them to read.

I use the "mature" rating on threads too. But if you want to get a better idea of what PG-13 entails, I'd watch some PG-13 movies and see where they draw the line.

^ I've watched heaps of PG-13 movies, I'm a bit of a movie buff, but its hard to determine, because in Aus we use a different system.

I was just a bit stuck on how far to go in terms of the writing. *shrug*

Some PG-13 movies really take it to an extreme, though o_o Like... you watch it and all you can do is kinda stare and go, "Wow, I didn't think they could even put that in a PG-13 movie." I think one example I heard was The Road to El Dorado. Not sure if that's PG-13, but I know that it was like... Wow.

The only issue I see with the [MATURE] rating in the threads is that people can still get all huffy because it's visible to the rest of the forum. Which, I mean, is kinda stupid, but some people don't like to see even that. So... Maybe do a member vote and see how people feel? Mature forum vs. simply writing [MATURE] in their thread titles? It's worth a try, if you're really uncertain.

Our board took all the sexual related threads off the main board. We have a mature forum area on our board like Angel-girl. We went one step further. We allow characters to have private forums as couples that only they can see. No other member can see the couple has a room. If members are a bit...er... promiscuous, they can have up to three rooms.

It actually works out kind of well because people have no idea what is going or if certain people have rooms together. No one knows just who is doing the wild thing or cheating on their partner. There are no passwords so there is no way that another person could ever get in the room to read it.

Admins can see those rooms and we let them know we will monitor the rooms from time to time and if we see violations to our rules, they will be locked out of the room and possibly banned. It's never been an issue.

Even though the rooms are private, we put restrictions on content (like you can't have a sheep in the room with you).

Great. Kill all the fun.

Yeah, I did not just laugh out loud at that one.

:lol:

Well, I'm gonna see what my mods think, because I originally asked one of them - the one my character is lusting over - and she had no idea.

I'll put these suggestions to them, and see what I come back with. Thanks!