An interesting topic, and one that everyone will have strong views on. Similarly everyone will have their views on what crosses that line. This is very much up to the GM and that group of players; if they want to get into detail, within their own 4 walls, then that is their choice, but it has to be a group consensus. It is the same in miniature wargaming generally. Some people won’t countenance flamethrowers in a game, others won’t allow SS (look at figure manufacturers that term such sets as ‘elite troops’ rather than giving them their true title). This doesn’t hide the fact that such things existed. Unfortunately, nothing you as the GM can think of that crosses the red line will be original and it has already been done somewhere in the world, and is probably still being done (and if you truly think of something original, I don’t want to know). The world we game in, be it Twilight 2000, The Morrow Project, Dark Conspiracy or any other, is going to be ripe for every sort of depravity and atrocity imaginable. The world order has been disrupted by war or aliens from another dimension. Things will be darker, more evil, just because of the setting. To pretend that it isn’t happening risks sanitising the background we strive so hard to make as realistic as possible (why else do we study rates of fire, armour penetration, fuel economy or how long tyres last on a LAV?). That said, I believe everything beyond the red line (whatever that may be for you and your group) should be treated in very abstract terms. Yes they happen, no the players don’t need graphic detail. A mention may be acceptable as background to the setting, but not as a major element in any scene setting. Leave the detail out and if players want to imagine it in glorious technicolour let them do it in their own minds.
If a GM wants to go into extreme detail I wouldn’t want to play that game, and if my players had ever wanted such detail I wouldn’t have wanted them in my game. Fortunately the people I gamed with were always very similar in attitude and it was never an issue.
It has happened in the UK, at a large show, and rightly the organisers clamped down on it as soon as they were made aware. Aside from being distasteful and disrespectful of the players, it does not convey the public image we want for RPG’s. It makes the D&D ‘satanic panic’ seem mild by comparison.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...0the%20players.