Question about whether something is too immoral to put into a game. Thoughts appreciated!

[Beatru]

So I was world building for a game I am working on and one of the ideas I had was for goblins to be created from the flesh of human children. I pitched this idea to a close friend and they thought that since the game also allows these goblins to then have sex with the player, this may be too immoral to include in the game.

A bit more information...
There would be a specific type of demon which abducts children. The demon would take them back to his lair and harvest their soul, then use that power to transform their flesh into that of a goblin. Of course this becomes problematic, because the goblin's flesh was once that of a child and that goblin is now a monster that kills and rapes humans.

Is this too much? I'm looking for honest opinions because if it's something people aren't comfortable with in a game, then I do not want to include that.

 

[super_slicer]

Well, if you're trying to motivate your audience to hate an antagonist, that's a pretty good way to do it.

 

[Fakuretsu]

So I was world building for a game I am working on and one of the ideas I had was for goblins to be created from the flesh of human children. I pitched this idea to a close friend and they thought that since the game also allows these goblins to then have sex with the player, this may be too immoral to include in the game.

A bit more information...
There would be a specific type of demon which abducts children. The demon would take them back to his lair and harvest their soul, then use that power to transform their flesh into that of a goblin. Of course this becomes problematic, because the goblin's flesh was once that of a child and that goblin is now a monster that kills and rapes humans.

Is this too much? I'm looking for honest opinions because if it's something people aren't comfortable with in a game, then I do not want to include that.

Well, sounds great but I wonder if people will get triggered by it, I'm against pedo of course, but I don't see a problem when is just made by someone to play on my screen (Magic loli that is actually 1.000.000 years old, 24 years old woman that looks like 10), is weird, but I see no difference from other fetishes.

Look at the bright side, some people may not even follow the lore (Unless you add some graphic outpot that shows the birth thing)

 

[Beatru]

I had intended to get pretty graphic. I've come to realize that some people draw a hard line in front of anything that could even come close to pedophilia and there is very little reasoning with them. Not that this would be pedo. It's a goblin shaped from dead child meat. But someone I'm working with basically told me, that if I include that in the game, they would not want to work with me. Sooooooo

 

[DaBouncer]

Could you change the whole "flesh to goblin" into "soul into goblin"? Make the excuse that a child's soul is weaker, so it results in a goblin.

Not sure if that's any better, but since there's no "flesh" aspect, it might be okay?

The premise imo could be used for some extremely good world building.

 

[Strange]

since the game also allows these goblins to then have sex with the player, this may be too immoral to include in the game.

Look, you're mistaking the issue here.
The issue is with violence towards children. Just, don't, sexual or otherwise. Goblin Slayer, with much Goblin hate building since day 1, barely got away with killing goblin children.

Lore has it Demons are summoned from young virgins. No one thinks about these kids when the Demon goes into a rape spree. There's no issue nor relation, flesh, blood, soul or otherwise.
Few will be sick imaginative enough to still see human children in the creepy pustuling green things jumping at their throat.

Just depict your goblins as evil witout a doubt, and it's ok. Having MC finding a child's corpse is also ok - as long as he doesn't laugh it off and goes breeding more gobs, obviously...
What is not ok, is depicting a scene where a child is killed or maimed - unless MC can jump in and save the kid.
And if you want to feature an evil MC, avoid the children controversy, really. Houses (alongside the innocent bystanding family) have been burned for less - only rumors, even.

Pick a smarter lore; a specific goblin fae (I remembered! Changelings) snatches babies at birth (or from the womb) to replace it with their own, for instance.
Avoid to describe the scene when they make kebabs out of the baby's innards, and you should be fine. Unless you only want to cater for psycho players (and partners).

 

[habisain]

A good yardstick for what stories are acceptable is to look at what's in folklore. After all, those are stories which have managed to persist for a long time. Those stories will be a pretty good guide on how to depict things as well; there's plenty of mythologies where supernatural beings target and kill children - Lilith, Gello, Keshi, Lamia, Acheri, Bunyip and Changelings (which are faeries, not goblins!) all do. There's also folklore of where dead bodies are animated somehow - Zombies, Skeletons, Vampires, Frankenstein's Monster etc.

What you tend not to find in folklore is anything quite as graphic as what you're saying, where something is created from the flesh of another which is something most people will find intrinsically revolting, even more so when it happens to a child. The closest I can get to that in mythology is something like a Poroniec (a Slavic creature, popularised in the Witcher as a Botchling), but even there you're still lacking the flesh-shaping aspect. Literally the only thing I can think of in anything that even gets close would be D&D's Flesh Golem, and I don't think WotC have ever really described the process for creating one of those.

So this would definitely be beyond the pail for most people. Your best bets would either be to adapt things to be less graphic (although perhaps still horrifying - stealing and changing souls could be used, which is fairly horrific but has precedents in mythology, like the Baku - although this is perhaps more extreme than what a Baku does), or simply use the power of omission and don't describe the violence used to turn a child into a goblin.

 

[Beatru]

Thank you for all of the suggestions, I will avoid using children in this instance but will still come up with something interesting regardless. :]

 

[Tentalover]

Adding a rather irrelevant things to the discussion, changeling origin appear on dungeon meshi/delicious in dungeon which has superb world building as well.

Just make sure you're not hungry while read it.

 

[Strange]

Adding a rather irrelevant things to the discussion, changeling origin appear on dungeon meshi/delicious in dungeon which has superb world building as well.

Definitely a great read. Fresh flavors lore and interesting recipes view on monsters' anatomy / biology / ecosystem.
However, they did mix up the changelings with the mushroom circles (aka fairy rings). I miss neo Senshi though - he really cracked me up back then.