The "Landlady" Issue

[Psylent]

I've been playing lewd games for years now, And I have come across a consistent immersion-breaking issue, that being the "Landlady" and the "roommate". Now, I could give less of a shit if they just come out and say it's your mom, and I can understand why the change was needed, due to Patreon changing its rules. It's always just done in such a clunky way. This is mostly just a general ask if anyone else is having this same issue with games like this, and maybe even what devs can do to fix it. My first thought is to go the step-mom route, similar to what they do in "This Romantic World". There, they have your dad leave and you're staying with your step-mom and step-sister. That way, it can skirt the rules while also still having the same vibe

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Usually there will be a patch (hosted off Patreon) that turns the landlady into mom.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Get that patch and the issue is usually solved.
Can still be problematic though, if the game was not intended to have wincest by the devs themselves and the incest enabler was done by some modder, in which case there will likely be some awkward moments.

 

[Deleted member 440241]

I'm pretty sure everyone has the same issue. Sadly, even with patches or players changing the relationships dialogue tends to have immersion breaking clunky moments. Even liking incest games I often find myself wishing they'd just write out the incest entirely.

 

[Hagatagar]

For an incest patch to be a viable option, it would have to do more than just change the "labels" of the characters.
But this would result in more work for the devs, as they would need to have at least two dialog variants, one with and one without the incest patch.

Because in many cases even with the incest patch, the dialogue is written in such a way that the characters seem more like acquaintances or somewhat distant relatives (like aunt/cousin instead of mother/sister).

Besides, there are more than enough developers who have incest in their game just to appeal to yet another target audience without really pursuing the incest kink seriously.

Edit: Typos

 

[Carrera]

Blame Patreon, plain and simple.

 

[rk-47]

They have to to avoid breaking rules, as annoying as it is we all now landlady = (step)mother

 

[Kurōzu]

I feel u bro.. It happens because the devs try to keep both their fanbase and Patreon happy. The result is ofter half-incest dialogues that try to keep the relationships as generic as possible and end up being cringey..

 

[woody554]

you're never ever supposed to play the landlady version. get your game patched before you even start.

 

[Meaning Less]

Here is the solution: stop using incest patches.

At this point landlady is kinkier than mom, so just learn to love your landlady as much as you love your mom. they are both the same anyways

 

[OldMoonSong]

If I ever actually develop the stories brewing in my head, I will probably use SubscribeStar. Fuck Patreon, they singlehandedly kneecapped the presence of non-vanilla kinks in virtually all indie games.

If you're going to support a developer, do it on a platform other than Patreon. Existing devs might be less hesitant to switch to another platform if such a vast majority of their support base wasn't through Patreon.

As it is, even the "patched" stories no longer have incest. Sure, "landlady" is replaced with "mom", and "roommate" with "sister", but the relationships aren't there.

 

[Meushi]

This is mostly just a general ask if anyone else is having this same issue with games like this, and maybe even what devs can do to fix it. My first thought is to go the step-mom route, similar to what they do in "This Romantic World". There, they have your dad leave and you're staying with your step-mom and step-sister. That way, it can skirt the rules while also still having the same vibe

Your proposed solution won't work, because step & adopted relationships are also against Patreon's terms. I don't know "This Romantic World", but just because it's still on Patreon doesn't mean it's OK, it just means no one has reported it to Patreon.

If the devs want incest but are censoring it for Patreon they already have solutions:

• Hide the incest stuff behind a variable, which the player can turn on. This is a terrible approach, because if the game is reported to Patron, all they need do is decompile it to see the dev included incest in the official release, and they'll get banned.
• Make the relationship terms variables, which the player can edit. If someone reports it to Patreon no problem, it's not the devs fault if the players change the default landlady to mom. As others have said, this sort of brute relationship term replacement can result in some clunky/odd dialogue though.
• Have a 'evil modder' release a patch that contains a separate script for the incest stuff. As long as there's no way to connect the 'evil modder' to the dev, then Patreon has no reason to take action against the dev if someone reports it.

 

[Lunardis]

• Hide the incest stuff behind a variable, which the player can turn on. This is a terrible approach, because if the game is reported to Patron, all they need do is decompile it to see the dev included incest in the official release, and they'll get banned.
• Make the relationship terms variables, which the player can edit. If someone reports it to Patreon no problem, it's not the devs fault if the players change the default landlady to mom. As others have said, this sort of brute relationship term replacement can result in some clunky/odd dialogue though.
• Have a 'evil modder' release a patch that contains a separate script for the incest stuff. As long as there's no way to connect the 'evil modder' to the dev, then Patreon has no reason to take action against the dev if someone reports it.

Unfortunately, in most cases, that would not be enough IMO. Incest is not just a matter of how you are calling who, there is a whole world of conflict, forbidden feelings, guilt vs. pleasure, that comes with the incestuous relationship.

Even with a variable or a relationship that can be changed, a developer will have to make a choice. One story will have to make sense, and the other will not. Either the MC seems to have no problem fucking his mother, or you wonder why he is so conflicted about just kissing his roommate.

 

[Meushi]

Unfortunately, in most cases, that would not be enough IMO. Incest is not just a matter of how you are calling who, there is a whole world of conflict, forbidden feelings, guilt vs. pleasure, that comes with the incestuous relationship.

Yes, that's why I said:

As others have said, this sort of brute relationship term replacement can result in some clunky/odd dialogue though.

Only 2 suffers from that problem though, 1 & 3 allow the dev to write unique dialogue/scenes for the incest & non-incest versions. IMO #3 is clearly the best approach, but the dev/evil modder basically have to maintain two separate scripts.

 

[Meaning Less]

Either the MC seems to have no problem fucking his mother, or you wonder why he is so conflicted about just kissing his roommate.

Although it is an easy problem to solve... A simple fix is to just make him a naive virgin boy, that way he will look conflicted by kissing anyone, especially an older lady.

Also, devs can just avoid using cliche dialogues like "I can't believe I'm fucking my (roommate)", imo those are unnecessary lines and feel more like you are watching a generic porn video than reading a good story...

 

[WIRProductions]

I've been playing lewd games for years now, And I have come across a consistent immersion-breaking issue, that being the "Landlady" and the "roommate". Now, I could give less of a shit if they just come out and say it's your mom, and I can understand why the change was needed, due to Patreon changing its rules. It's always just done in such a clunky way. This is mostly just a general ask if anyone else is having this same issue with games like this, and maybe even what devs can do to fix it. My first thought is to go the step-mom route, similar to what they do in "This Romantic World". There, they have your dad leave and you're staying with your step-mom and step-sister. That way, it can skirt the rules while also still having the same vibe

The problem with going the 'step-mom' route is while it gets around the incest issue, technically, it is now a different taboo. Maybe some people will get the same vibe but I know for me, step-mother does not equal mother. Its now the taboo of banging your dad's new wife rather than banging the woman who birthed you.

I've found no problems with the games that let you change the relationships. They give landlady or maid or whatever as a default but can easily just type in 'Mother' or 'Sister' or 'Aunt' and so on.

 

[justpassingbyreally]

At this point landlady is kinkier than mom

Also, devs can just avoid using cliche dialogues like "I can't believe I'm fucking my (roommate)", imo those are unnecessary lines and feel more like you are watching a generic porn video than reading a good story...

I can't believe I'm commiting a tax fraud fucking my landlord/lady for a free room with catering!

 

[Lunardis]

Only 2 suffers from that problem though, 1 & 3 allow the dev to write unique dialogue/scenes for the incest & non-incest versions. IMO #3 is clearly the best approach, but the dev/evil modder basically have to maintain two separate scripts.

In theory, you're right, but my opinion is that in reality, it's very difficult to execute. A good story about a forbidden romance is not just a few scenes here and there with comments like "I shouldn't be doing this". You have to see the character in conflict, in their actions, and their thoughts.
I'm not sure I've made myself clear, so I'll use an example. Let's take Romeo and Juliet. Now imagine that because of the social norm of this time, Shakespeare had to create a patch to change the relationship between the two main characters (people underestimate the historical influence of Patreon lol). In my opinion, it wouldn't work, the forbidden romance is so central that he would have to write two different stories, or one of them wouldn't make sense. I feel it's the same with a good incest story. The few very good I have in mind wouldn't have worked with a patch, I'm sure of it.

Although it is an easy problem to solve... A simple fix is to just make him a naive virgin boy, that way he will look conflicted by kissing anyone, especially an older lady.

It's a solution, but like any solution, it has a price. Maybe the developer didn't want to have that kind of mc for example. That, and the fact that you will have to be careful with every relationship between the MC and any other girls. He can' t be conflicted about kissing his landlady and then, without any problem, fuck his classmate for example.

 

[papel]

Clearly, we should all drop incest and every other "hardcore" fetish because sex is bad and evil and we should feel bad. Clearly the credit card processors know better, they're thinking of the children!
/sarcasm

I'm glad SubscribeStar still lets people post and profit on "bad" fetishes.

 

[Jellyluve]

I am not so sure about SubscribeStar anymore... I found an older post (a 2-year-old post) that showed some bad red flags about SubscribeStar (while trying to find information about what the hell happened to Westy and his game over on SubscribeStar). -

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Now some of those things may have changed over the years but seeing how SubscribeStar is now hiding dev pages from the public is telling me that things might be getting worse.