Where is the limit?

Last night my subconscious decided to incorporate this scenario into a rather unpleasant dream. :confused: THANKS, FINN.

What if you go at it from a different direction? Maybe the kid really wants to jump on the bed, and his parents won’t let him. Then the puzzle would be to distract the parents so the kid gets a chance to duck under the velvet rope.

The only thing that I can think of in an IF game that would induce me to put a child on a bed is if I found him sleeping on the floor (and if, for some reason, he couldn’t be awakened).

I think in some parsers, putting something down is equivalent to throwing it or dropping it (unless you specify a target, in which case the auto response is usually to block throwing it at). So, I wouldn’t throw, I’d put.

I know some people toss small children as a sort of game, but it wouldn’t occur to me to do it in IF unless I already saw, in the same game, a parent tossing that kid. Then later, if the kid is standing behind a fence looking longingly at the bed, I might put two and two together and loft him over to the bed. But it’d take some pretty broad hinting.

Now, if the kid had a teddy bear, and I sought to raise a ruckus, I might pick the toy up and throw it. Wouldn’t that be a lot simpler? Then the kid can go chase his toy and upset the guard, etc. (Besides, have you ever picked up a 6-year-old boy? They’re pretty squirmy, and they weigh 40 or 50 lbs. Tossing one is not a casual proposition.)

p.s. In any case, PCs in text games have done much worse, often as a required action to advance the plot. Some players will purposely go around attacking, breaking, and torturing everything they can get their hands on – it’s a way of bug testing, if nothing else.

I don’t think there is a limit to what is allowed before it becomes too offensive.

I do think there is a limit to how much uninteresting stuff I’d tolerate. Creating diversions by throwing children does not sound interesting. It sounds silly.

My first thought is - I wouldn’t find this offensive in the least. However, I’m probably pretty insensitive to things like that.

So, my second thought was, well, if the problem is throwing + bed + child, then take out pieces until it’s no offensive - namely, the throwing, and the bed. And, furthermore, you want it to be funny. Thus, the following scenario:

There are statues around the room - examining them tells you, “Those statues look none too stable - the slightest push, and they’ll topple!”
A small boy and his parents are here.
You have a small rubber ball.

To distract the guard, all you need to do is drop the ball near the kid - he sees it, breaks away from his parents, grabs the ball, and in the next several turns:
-Throws the ball. It bounces off the wall (the guard isn’t distracted)
-Throws the ball. It bounces off a statue, which wobbles dangerously, getting the guard’s attention. (but not distracting him enough)
-The ball gets stuck behind a statue. The boy jumps the velvet rope, climbs under the statues, and fishes around for his ball. The guard jumps up in alarm (now he’s distracted)
-The boy reaches the ball, but unbalances a statue. It wobbles to and fro; the guard shrieks and tries to stabilize it.
-The first statue tips into the second statue, which also begins to fall. The guard starts crying.
-The statues fall like dominoes as the kid scampers after his parents (who didn’t notice). The guard is now weeping openly.

Now, I also asked my brother what he thought should happen. His response was that you should be able to get a rainmaker in the museum gift store, and the sound of the “rain” would make the kid have to use the bathroom. Instead of statues, there should be an ancient latrine; at the sound of “running water”, the kid would break from his parents and head for the outhouse, which would obviously upset the guard. In the confusion, you could slip away.
…though that one may be a little more offensive, to be honest.

Hm, I think that anything that has the potential to actually destroy priceless works of art and put a guard out of work trips “I would not do this unless the game has specifically signaled that my character is a bad person” just as much as picking the kid up did, to me.

Looking over many of the responses in this thread, it seems that a common theme is an argument that, in substance, boils down to, “this is not an appropriate thing to do in ‘real life,’ and hence is not appropriate in IF (except possibly for a decidedly evil character).” I think that basically proves too much.

In the “real world,” I (and I suspect most people) do not go around destroying art, or picking up other people’s children. I also do not go around picking up objects which do not belong to me just because I suspect they may be useful to me in achieving some objective. And I do not go around breathing helium so I can fool a guard into thinking I’m a squeaky-voiced dwarf to get into an “authorized personnel only” area, or slaying reptiles because they happen to be blocking my way into the next room, or sabotaging nuclear bomb tests, or pushing buttons and pulling levers just to see what happens, or [insert your own favorite here].

Granted, there are some things that are so over the top that they seem inappropriate even for a game – but the mere fact that a particular behavior is unacceptable in the real world should not be the standard. If IF demanded that we act the same way as we do (or are expected to do) in real life, it would be far more boring, and far less less fun, than it is.

Robert Rothman

It shouldn’t be too hard to make it obvious that the works of art are replicas and/or would be undamaged, and indeed, that the guard is more upset at the mess than possible loss of job. Still, I see your point - but then again, it’s really hard to distract someone without actually damaging anything important - the guard is there for a reason, specifically, to protect the art, and won’t move (probably) unless the art is in danger.

I suppose an alternative would be that the ball get stuck somewhere high, the kid goes to fetch it, and the mother freaks out, pulling the guard over to help.

LOLWUT?! why not tossing a dwarf instead?

ah, it starts to sound like Skyrim is just GTA: Medieval City after all… I yawn at kindergarden sadistic sandbox fun…

ArmanX-
True, and also my phrasing of “bad person” was overly simplistic. I mean more like: I will be cringing really hard if I have to do something like that in a game. If that is the author’s intent, then all is well. Indeed, I can think of a game that does this to very good effect: Violet. Likewise, the protag in Taco Fiction does a lot of stuff that clearly makes him/herself cringe, and I quite appreciated the effect.

I do think the original puzzle proposed would benefit from a multiple-solutions approach, even if only because clearly there’d be many ways to accomplish it in real life and you definitely don’t want the player trying a bunch of them with no luck.

In real life that would be way worse, of course, because it would make the boy guilty, and likely to be (rightly) punished. Now if he had Down syndrom and believed you on authority when you told him it was allowed, and you gave him a good time while evoking endearment among all around…
Game-wise, it is more the ballistics that would prevent me from “getting it”, I suppose. Long-distance unexpecting-child-launching isn’t something that would occur to me easily, given all the practical hurdles involved.
What about fleshing out the guard? Let him contemplate an exquisitely-balanced complex piece of art. By getting some part slightly displaced, the harmony is broken, which sets him screaming in esthetical pain and rushing forward to restore the elegance. (That would be a different kind of museum, of course, but you get the idea: observing the guard teaches you something about how to upset him.)

That says it all, I suppose. Not much I can add to that…

It puzzles me that American culture is hyper-protective of children, and yet at the same time seems to hate children on a very deep level. Many people in restaurants or other public places do not hesitate to complain at great length if the behavior of children nearby distracts them in any way. I hear otherwise compassionate people fret loudly about overpopulation and call people who have more than one child “irresponsible.” I’m always amazed when I see foreigners because almost without exception, they are pleased to see children wherever they go and don’t hesitate to interact with them in a friendly, appropriate way. It’s a big contrast to most Americans that I see.

Of course the fear of children being abused, and the fear of being perceived as an abuser, is one thing that puts a barrier between adults and children. In many ways I think it’s good that Americans are aware how widespread child abuse is, but often the response is unhealthy - complete avoidance rather than responsible interaction. Plus, “stranger danger” is blown way out of proportion, while abuse by family members and friends of the parents is often glossed over.

As for this particular example, I think it sounds weird. Picking up a stranger’s child is not something I would ever expect anyone to do. As others have suggested, talking to the child makes more sense. Or picking up a dropped toy. There are just so many other ways to create a diversion that this just seems unlikely. But if your game provides a strong sense of a culture where that would not be weird, maybe it could work. Show the player how other strangers behave around children in an earlier scene, for example.

Also, I think almost everyone is more comfortable interacting with children if the child takes the initiative.

I just saw this today and thought it was amusingly apropos.

budgetraygun.com/featured/ho … -from-bad/

Or so it goes in Detroit sometime around the 1950s…

I want to use this pamphlet as a prop in a game now.

From the pamphlet

My wife likes to quote Gavin de Becker on this, who points out that little kids can’t tell policemen from security guards, and security guards are the people who brought you Mark David Chapman, Son of Sam, and Timothy McVeigh. de Becker advises telling your kids to find a woman with children, who is likely to be helpful if not appreciative.