Landladies: Whether we are into incest or not: We are all annoyed buy the prevalence of MC's landladies who make no sense as such and are clearly to be meant MC's mothers. The same applies to roommates.
Role tags: Standard practice is to give the player a chance to replace "landlady" by "mother", "rommate" by "sister" etc. Usually this is done by asking the player in the beginning of the play-through what his landlady, rommate etc. should be called. I find this about as annoying as the appearance of false landladies.
Pressure groups: This way of circumventing anti-incest censorship has always been risky. Given recent events (purge of adult games on itch.io and Steam due to Australian pressure group Collective Shout), it has probably become untenable. For example, NiiChan currently has to waste time removing role tags from My Bully is My Lover.
I think the following approach is a good way for Ren'Py games to get rid of the annoyance of asking about the roles, while simultaneously making games less vulnerable to pressure groups:
Role tags: Standard practice is to give the player a chance to replace "landlady" by "mother", "rommate" by "sister" etc. Usually this is done by asking the player in the beginning of the play-through what his landlady, rommate etc. should be called. I find this about as annoying as the appearance of false landladies.
Pressure groups: This way of circumventing anti-incest censorship has always been risky. Given recent events (purge of adult games on itch.io and Steam due to Australian pressure group Collective Shout), it has probably become untenable. For example, NiiChan currently has to waste time removing role tags from My Bully is My Lover.
I think the following approach is a good way for Ren'Py games to get rid of the annoyance of asking about the roles, while simultaneously making games less vulnerable to pressure groups:
- The values of the role tags should be stored in a new standard file game/roles.rpy.
- For each role tag there should be a choice between two possible values. Not asked as part of the story, but as options in the Settings/Preferences.
- For each role tag, both possible values should be unrelated to incest. For example, one can choose between "landlady" and "mature friend". Between "roommate" and "childhood friend". In connection with 2, this serves for plausible deniability.
- The format of roles.rpy and the most important role tags it defines should be standardized. There should be no error if this file defines additional role tags unknown to the game. Each role tag should be assigned an array of possible values, with the first being the default.
- For example, the default value of landlady in roles.rpy should be something like ['landlady', 'mature friend']. The default value of female_roommate should be something like ['roommate', 'childhood friend'].
- A universal incest patch would set values such as landlady = ['mother'], male_tenant = ['son'], female_roommate = ['sister'], roommates = ['siblings'].
