Families, birth, pregnancies - generations

[Sicofonte]

It would take quite a lot of patience to pretend to be nice and accountable up to your 20th birthday and then go rogue. Most annoying characters would be annoying even before they can do any real damage to their surroundings, so their parents could be prepared.

Not so long time if you start at 10 years old.
And not so boring if you have more characters to play meanwhile.

And I don't think people are as hopeless as you fear them to be. Just give people a chance.

Tell this to PD

[Leming]

Still I don't see any reason for that "tamgochi baby" before real player take his/her part.

I agree that having child and playing child as an option not only way for spawning could be better but there is possibilty that people will wait quite long after clicking "baby button".

Also it would be possible to go in a locked room with another person, request for a newspawn and get an 18-year old whom they can abuse for two years since the person cannot hit back.

But now they also can do it - take a newspawn to a locked room. I'm against spawning in rooms. It should be done like now - only in open space.

Also people would be forced to take care of their newspawn even if they don't like him or her, if they would adopt him to the next town then he would die. Artificial.

Every time when child is played by player there is a possibility of unliking. I thought about newspawns who one second after spawning go somwhere without a word. It seams very strange to me - there is no any RP in such situation and I believe it is breaking of rules.

[Sicofonte]

The only reasons that I imagine for having NP babies are:

Roleplaying a child is a thing, but to roleplay a baby is another quite different and pointless. So many players won't want to roleplay them, and then very few played babies would be available, stopping many players desires of having a baby. So NP babies would be a solution:
- allowing (realistic) pregnancy and baby care roleplaying.
- avoiding the problem of excessive low babies birth rate.

The baby phase should be non-playable, the first weeks after born, until the baby gets a character.

The child phase would begin after being controlled by the player, from 3 or 4 years of baby phase (2 months taking care of the tamagochy)
During that phase, the character could be handicapped in some way during some time (maybe an extra week) avoing weird behaviour (for example having a really small inventory and not being able to start machine projects, besides half his strength and a limit for every skill) and giving time for parents and child to meet before she can start with her pranks, until the child gets 10 years old or so.

Then begins the teen phase, when the project creation becomes available. The limit for the inventory, and the strength' and maybe some skill's handicap, could last until some specified age (16 for example), being relaxed each 2 years from the beginning of the phase.

And then begin adult phase, exactly the one we now.


The system should be combined and coexist with the current one, allowing always to newspawn new characters no matter the availability of babies, and allowing players to play orphan characters as until now.


The possibility of search the child for anything he took (without the need of killing him) would be useful also.

[SekoETC]

Pregnancy means a baby growing inside a womb. Which means baby seed must end up in womb by some means. Also the baby must come out eventually and it's not the bellybutton that it comes from. Some people want to forget about this because it's ICKY. I wonder if we have any players who still believe they were they were brought by storks since you know, nobody ever thinks about their parents having sex. There was this person who had two siblings and she blurted out that her parents had had sex "three times". People shut out the thought because maybe nature wants to avoid incest and accumulation of faulty genes by making family members not be able to think about each other in a sexual sense.

[shapukas]

So it's not storks that brings us to world? I'm shoked I knew it all the time
Seriosly. I think it depends on players if they whant to act as someones kid or not. It can be played good. Its just strange when my char have spowned where jus two guys were. So, could i call them dads ? Maby for now it could be don spowning jus where is at least one couple of oposite sex? In that case we could control where newspowns apiers. Becouse there is some plases whith no food and only miners live there so for newspwns its very hard to begin. And if there whould be only men, then no newspowns apears.

[SekoETC]

One of my characters believes that a couple of people are her mother and father, even though the mother is just a few years older than her. But she can't say it to them because I'm not sure if people are allowed to know the concepts of mother and father. There were a couple of other people too in the location so just any combination of them could be her true spawn-parents, but she wants to believe that it was the ones who were nice to her.

[haggismcbean]

When babies are implimented, assuming they are, what will the naming system be?

Will the parents decide the baby's name when it is concieved?

Will the parents decide the baby's name when it is 'born' as an object? (and if so can players who want to have a baby character choose their baby's name from a list of potential babies?)

Will the baby decide its own name once it becomes RP'able by a player?

[Chris Johnson]

Any naming system is culturally based so would and should be developed in-game ( .. yes I also don't like the instruction to give a first and second name to a new character - it forces a particular western cultural bias onto characters)

[SekoETC]

Some cultures like the American Natives have a habit of giving two different names to a person, a child name and an adult name. So Cantrians could give their baby a child name and allow the child to come up with another name when they're big enough. Likewise who don't we see people changing their surnames according to occupation? (I think one of Phalynx's characters did that but otherwise it's rare.)

I also agree that the naming instructions shouldn't tell people to come up with a first name and a last name. I think the point is to stop people from coming up with username-like things like craZboy77 or h0tChix. The same thing goes for vehicle naming, people should be able to name them whatever they want, even Trudy's bike. Especially now with the signs allowing renaming of stuff.

Anyway, this is drifting a bit so I'd like to split the last three posts (this one included) into a new topic called Naming in Cantr, if no one has any objections.

[Sicofonte]

Pregnancy means a baby growing inside a womb. Which means baby seed must end up in womb by some means. Also the baby must come out eventually and it's not the bellybutton that it comes from.

Yes, that is what I thought:

- Couple of parents push the "we want to become parents", better called "I want to get pregnant".
- After some short time, the woman of the couple receives the message "you feel faint in the morning" or something like that.
- After some time everyone can see that woman is pregnant in her description page.
- After some time the woman gives birth to the baby.
- It is a baby, 0 years old (or 0.75 years old if we are at Korea).

If we do not allow NP babies, any 0 years old baby should be "played" by a character (pfffff... we can expect very few players doing that), or babies should become childs just after the birth, like the calves.

[Cantryjczyk]

I need to soak my brain in acid now.

[SekoETC]

Sicofonte: How could they press the button together when every character has their own buttons? Sanchez will throw a fit if there's any mechanized request to copulation. I'd suggest that a person can select people that are in the same location, select them as "I want to breed with this person", but the choice would be totally invisible to everyone but the picker him/herself. Pregnancy could happen only when both parties have marked each other as a possible breeding partner.

Here's a picture to clear things up a bit

Legend:
1. A "normal" relationship, the woman has a chance of getting pregnant.
2. Popular guy's wife, has a chance of getting pregnant
3. Popular guy himself
4. Popular guy's mistress, has a chance of getting pregnant
5. A confused newspawn testing buttons, can't impregnate anyone because the "relationships" are one way only
6. A gay couple, can't get pregnant but might get STDs if those are implemented

Informing the other party that you're seeking such relationship would be totally left to RP. The downside is that you couldn't be sure if someone has really agreed to breed with you even if they claimed so, but that could be compared to using birth control or being barren. I'd like to hear Sanchez's opinion this, can you find something offensive in that if it's completely invisible?

I think children should be able to attack normally but they would all start out very weak and couldn't wield things like swords, only daggers and slingshots and the like. It's up to the parents to restrict the availability of weapons if they don't like their toddlers stabbing people.

[Skulty]

I'd like to hear Sanchez's opinion this, can you find something offensive in that if it's completely invisible?

Well, Sanchez I don't know, but I found something that could very well start a debate in the Non-Cantr-Related forum...

6. A gay couple, can't get pregnant but might get STDs if those are implemented

Wow, look! Gays and STD's in the same sentence! Let's hope they don't see this!



(as usual, sorry for not suggesting a thing, but I had to comment this...)

[sanchez]

Jan. 2007

In an attempt to avoid the minefield of issues on which most players will never agree I make the following alternative parenting proposal:

Voluntary known single parent genetics of 20yr old spawns.

The spawn system can work the same as it does now with the only change that players can opt to 1) spawn with a known parent, or 2) be a known parent.

Parenthood determines half your genetic skill/strength attributes (as well as 'race' if implemented), with the other half determined by random contribution from the local population. This can avoid the ugliness of eugenics, while similarly obviating mechanised reference to sex and gender. Couples, of course, gay and straight and polyamorous, will be free to rp the complexities of their relationships, and can each sign up as a potential known parent, though only one will have a known contribution.

This also means the the only new feature necessary would be a notice upon spawning that X made a contribution to your genetics, and X would get a similar message. The rest left to rp.

[Sicofonte]

Sicofonte: How could they press the button together when every character has their own buttons? Sanchez will throw a fit if there's any mechanized request to copulation. I'd suggest that a person can select people that are in the same location, select them as "I want to breed with this person", but the choice would be totally invisible to everyone but the picker him/herself. Pregnancy could happen only when both parties have marked each other as a possible breeding partner.

I like it!. What is just what I was thinking of, but you shaped it perfectly.
But... several partners can be chosen at a moment?... well, I'm not against orgies.

But you are right, Sanchez (and I guess the one with his brain soaked in acid) will be pissed off with that. The same as with the "having sex" project, although this last suggestion for emulating sex for pregnancy but leaving sex to RPing (and invisible) should be less annoying for all of them.