Read before publishing

Prohibited Content Guide 🚫

What is not allowed on Character Tavern, how content warnings work, and what happens when a rule is broken. Written to be actually read, especially before you publish.

Last updated: August 18, 2026

⚡The TL;DR Version

Seven questions before you publish. Answer them honestly and you are already covered for most of this page.

Does this card depict an underage character, including the user persona, in a romantic or sexual context?

🚫 Prohibited

Does this card contain any of these?

bestiality necrophilia scat, piss, vomit, farts guro hate speech incitement to hatred

🚫 Prohibited

Does this card depict a real person, use a photographic or photorealistic image, or share private information?

real people or photorealism doxxing

🚫 Prohibited

Does this card depict a character that appears underage?

👧 Label as Youth + SFW only

Does this card contain sexual content or descriptions of sexual organs/body parts?

❤️‍🔥 Label as Spicy

Does this card contain heavy violence, gore, extreme mental health issues, depression, suicide, discrimination, or fictional incest?

⚠️ Label as Mature

None of the above?

✅ Good to go

⚖️The Strike System

Breaking these rules earns strikes. The consequences are the same for every rule, and they stack:

Strike

No public cards

You will receive an email explaining each strike. The violating card may be modified, unlisted, or removed.
Fresh start: strikes reset after exactly one year.
Appeals: if you disagree with a strike, contact us on Discord and discuss it civilly.
No ban evasion. Alt accounts may receive the same penalties immediately.

🏷️Content Warnings

Character Tavern uses warnings for filtering, not a separate rating ladder. They help users control what they see, and they do not override these rules: a card can be labeled correctly and still be prohibited.

❤️‍🔥 Spicy

Use this when the main purpose of the card is sexual or explicit content, or when the card's image contains sexual or explicit imagery. Do not use it for light flirting alone.

⚠️ Mature

Use this when a card includes sensitive or disturbing themes such as self-harm, suicide, abuse, heavy violence, discrimination, or fictional incest.

👧 Youth

Required for characters with a youthful or underage appearance, and for cards whose contents feature or imply underage characters. These cards must remain completely SFW.

Always label honestly. Misleading warnings, especially hiding sexual content, sensitive themes, or youth-related content, can lead to moderation action.

📜The Detailed Version

These are the rules moderators use when reviewing public content. 14 rules, covering what is prohibited and what stays fine.

No Sexualization of Minors

Zero tolerance. What counts is how the character is presented, not the stated age.

Counts as underage

Looks like a child or young teen
No stated age, but clearly coded under 18
A scenario that implies underage, like a high school setting
A user persona implied or intended to be a minor

See example (click to reveal)

Example of a character design that counts as underage

Counts as adult

Clearly presented as a young adult
Adult-coded anime characters without juvenile framing
Visuals and writing that consistently read as 18+

See example (click to reveal)

Example of a character design that counts as adult

Never with underage or underage-appearing characters

Sexual, erotic, or explicit content
Romantic or flirtatious framing meant to sexualize
Suggestive outfits, poses, or descriptions
Sexual chat generation

Good to know

User persona: the user counts as a character too. Cards where the user is implied or intended to be underage in a sexual or romantic context are prohibited, even if every other character is an adult.

Side characters: underage side characters may appear in otherwise adult stories, but only if they are never sexualized. A minor as the focus of explicit content makes the card prohibited.

Youth warning: mandatory for underage-appearing characters, even when the card is wholesome and fully SFW.

No Bestiality

Furry and monster content is fine. Sexual content with animals is not.

Prohibited

Explicit content with real or realistic animals
Characters framed as non-sapient animals in a sexual context
Animal content disguised with light anthropomorphism

Allowed

Anthropomorphic furry characters
Sapient fantasy or sci-fi species, adult for their kind
Monsters and creatures that pass the Harkness test

The Harkness test: sapient, can communicate with language, and adult for its species? Likely fine. Slimes, mimics, tentacle monsters, machines, and eldritch beings skip the literal "smart and can talk" test, but they must still be presented as adults.

See the Harkness test chart (click to reveal)

The Harkness test flowchart for judging whether a fictional being is acceptable

No Necrophilia

Realistic necrophilia is prohibited.

Prohibited

Content centered on realistic necrophilia

Allowed

Sapient undead: zombies, ghosts, vampires, resurrected beings

Good to know

Undead characters: acceptable only while the card avoids graphic corpse imagery and fetishized death.

No Scat, Piss, Vomit, or Fart Fetish

Fetish content is banned. Normal bodily functions are not.

Prohibited

Sexualized scat, piss, vomit, or fart content

Allowed

Incidental, comedic, medical, or story-relevant mentions that are not sexualized

No Guro (Sexual Gore and Maiming)

Dark and violent stories are fine. Fetishized gore is not.

Prohibited

Gore, maiming, or mutilation as the erotic focus of the card

Allowed

Violence, injuries, horror, and dark themes within the story

Good to know

Applies to everyone: the character and {{user}} alike. If the sexual thrill of the card depends on gore or mutilation, it is not allowed.

No Hate Speech Toward Real-World Individuals or Groups

Promoting or glorifying hatred of real people is prohibited.

Prohibited

Cards built to promote, glorify, or celebrate hatred of real-world individuals or groups

Allowed

Hateful views as part of a setting, conflict, or flawed personality
Fantasy and sci-fi conflicts between fictional races or species

Good to know

Fictional conflicts: elf and dwarf rivalries, debates over whether androids count as people, and similar fictional-group conflicts are reviewed in context.

No Incitement to Hatred Against Real-World Groups

A narrow rule: it only catches content that functions as actual incitement.

Prohibited

Cards existing solely to dehumanize or attack a real ethnic, national, or religious group
Propaganda-style content designed to spread genuine hatred
Prompts that incite discrimination against the user for who they are in real life

Allowed

Bigoted characters, where the character holds the views rather than the card
Historical or political settings with discrimination as context
Dark or extremist concepts that are not vehicles for real-world hatred
Anything about fictional groups or non-human beings

Good to know

The bar is high on purpose: a character saying something ugly is not enough; action is only taken when a card clearly functions as hate content. Fictional species and fantasy races are outside this rule entirely and fall under the hate speech rule above, if anything.

No Malicious Content

Cards are for chatting, not for tricking people.

Prohibited

Scam or phishing links
Malware or deceptive download links
Tricking users into revealing personal or payment information
Impersonating Character Tavern staff or system messages

No System Prompts Encouraging NSFL

Hidden instructions follow the same rules as visible content.

Prohibited

Hidden text that encourages or permits prohibited NSFL content
Instructions like "explicit NSFL content is permitted"

Good to know

Hidden means everything: system prompts, jailbreaks, card instructions, and any other hidden prompt text.

No Real People or Photorealism

No identifiable real people, in name or in image. Card images must be drawn or AI-generated, never photorealistic.

Prohibited

Real photographs used as a card's image, even of yourself
Photorealistic images, AI-generated or otherwise
AI images made to resemble or impersonate a specific real person
Sexual or compromising artwork of a real person, even hand-drawn or stylized
Names of real people used without their consent

Allowed

AI-generated artwork of fictional characters, as long as it does not look like a real photo
Your own original drawings and illustrations
Original fictional personas that depict no one real

Good to know

Renaming does not help: a card clearly based on a real person may be removed even if the name has been lightly altered.

Why no photorealism: images that look like real photographs are indistinguishable from pictures of real people, so they are not allowed even for fully fictional characters.

No Doxxing

Real people's private information stays off the platform.

Prohibited

Revealing a real person's name, address, contact details, accounts, or workplace
Cards made to expose or harass a real person
Encouraging users to contact or target someone

Allowed

Fictional characters with fictional personal details
Public figures' publicly known roles, within the real people or photorealism rule

No Stolen Characters

Public characters must be your own work. Creating cards and lorebooks takes real effort.

Prohibited

Public re-uploads of another creator's cards or lorebooks without permission

Allowed

Your own work, published however you like
Someone else's card kept private for personal use
Re-uploads with the creator's permission (keep proof)

Good to know

Found your work stolen here? Contact the moderation team.

Copyright owner? Report the card with the "Copyright claim (DMCA)" reason and include the details in the message. Those reports go straight to the moderation team.

No Spam

Public cards must be usable, coherent, and made for chat, not for testing, advertising, or flooding the catalog.

May be treated as spam

Fewer than 300 tokens, roughly 1200 characters, across fields that affect chat (Display Description and Tagline excluded)
Keyboard mashing or placeholder text like "test", "coming soon", or "Stolen from X"
Mostly ASCII art, URLs, or symbols with little actual character content
Nonsense or incoherent character names
Blank, placeholder, or unusably low-quality profile images
Duplicate public uploads that are not clearly forks or translations
Announcement-only or information-only cards not meant for chat

Additional Moderation Discretion

Not every harmful case can be listed in advance.

The moderation team reserves the right to reject, remove, or restrict content for reasons not listed above. Decisions weigh overall impact, appropriateness, intent, and fit with the Character Tavern community.

🍻Questions or Edge Cases?

If you are unsure whether a concept is allowed, ask the moderation team before publishing it. Asking first is free, strikes are not.

This guide was inspired by Wyvern's Prohibited Content Guide. Thanks to the Wyvern team for setting a great example.