How advisory tags keep mature worlds away from younger viewers

A platform that hosts stories written by many Authors needs a way to say what a story contains and to act on that label. On Fabulator, that mechanism is the advisory tag. This post describes what the tags are, who decides to apply them, and what they actually change.

What the tags are

Every World Seed can carry three content-advisory tags: gore and violence, graphic horror, and romantic or sexual content. These are not a new taxonomy invented for the catalog. They are the same three categories the safety system already uses for Player opt-ins, so one vocabulary covers both the label on a world and the setting on a Player's account.

The tags are set by the Author, deliberately. The platform does not infer them automatically from a World Seed's content, so a world with mature themes has the tags the Author chose to apply. That is a trade-off worth knowing: the label is only as good as the Author's judgement, which is one reason the platform also runs moderation on top of it.

What a tag does in Discover

A World Seed with any advisory tag is excluded from discovery surfaces for two kinds of viewer: anonymous visitors, and signed-in accounts that have not been verified as 18 or over. That covers the landing page teaser, the Discover catalog, and a direct link to the world's detail page.

For a viewer who is not eligible, a tagged world behaves as though it does not exist. A direct link returns the same not-found response as any other missing page, rather than a message saying the world exists but is restricted. The specification is explicit that this should not be distinguishable, so the response does not confirm that a restricted world is there.

Link previews follow the same logic. A mature-tagged world's shared link uses a neutral default image and non-specific copy instead of its own thumbnail, so an unfurled link in another app cannot become an ungated preview.

Where the check lives

The check runs on the server, in the same handler that serves the catalog or the detail page. It is not a filter applied in the browser after the data arrives. That distinction matters because a client-side hide would still send the restricted world's name and metadata over the network, where anyone could read it in their developer tools. Here the restricted entries are never sent.

Verification takes effect immediately. When an account is verified as 18 or over, tagged worlds appear on its very next catalog request. Nothing needs to be republished.

Tags are one layer, not the whole system

Viewing a tagged world is separate from what happens during play. Player safety settings are safe by default: a new account starts with every mature category disabled, and a Player has to opt in to each category on its own. Accounts that are not verified as 18 or over cannot enable any of them, and that lock is applied at read time, not only in the toggle on the screen.

When a category is not enabled, the narrator is steered accordingly, for example by describing combat in a milder register, and the safety classifier filters graphic depictions. If a turn is blocked, the interface says it was halted by safety policy and names the category involved, without exposing system prompt internals.

On the publishing side, World Seeds go through a moderation step before they appear in the catalog, and editing a name or style text on an approved seed sends it back through review.

A worked example

Say an Author publishes a ruined-abbey mystery with graphic horror scenes and tags it for graphic horror. An anonymous visitor browsing Discover will not see it listed, and neither will a signed-in account that has not been verified. A verified Player will see it, and when they start a campaign from it, their own category settings still decide how explicit the narration gets. The Author's tag controls who can find the world. The Player's setting controls what the narrator is allowed to write.

That split is intentional. A tag describes a world, while a setting describes a person, and keeping them separate means neither has to guess about the other.

What to take from this

If you are a Player, the practical effects are simple. Tagged worlds are not shown until your account is verified as 18 or over, and even then each category in play is yours to opt into.

If you are an Author, tag your world honestly. An accurate tag keeps your world in front of the audience that wants it and keeps it away from the audience it is not meant for. Leaving a tag off does not make a world safer for anyone, and the moderation scan is not a substitute for labelling what you wrote.

The full requirements live in the safety and moderation and World Seed discovery specifications in the repository, if you want the exact wording of each rule.