Pregnancy and STD

[Brytta Léofa]

I now very much want to have a PC who dies of eclampsia.

and then a repeat concept who survives childbirth, goes everywhere with her back-wearable babby object, settles down by a water seep to raise it through the Hitchable NPC stage, teaches it herbology, and finally sends out a role call for it to become a Real Boy.

Note that I'm all about Arm-the-simulation, and am highly unlikely to become pregnant IRL.

Support for this idea is annoying me so if you're not ready to hear about pregnancy reality, consider yourself warned.

Most of those arguments also apply to hacking people up with bone swordz.  Which, true, few of us are likely to experience, so perhaps it's less troubling to romanticize it.

[Hauwke]

I now very much want to have a PC who dies of eclampsia.

and then a repeat concept who survives childbirth, goes everywhere with her back-wearable babby object, settles down by a water seep to raise it through the Hitchable NPC stage, teaches it herbology, and finally sends out a role call for it to become a Real Boy.

Note that I'm all about Arm-the-simulation, and am highly unlikely to become pregnant IRL.

Support for this idea is annoying me so if you're not ready to hear about pregnancy reality, consider yourself warned.

Most of those arguments also apply to hacking people up with bone swordz.  Which, true, few of us are likely to experience, so perhaps it's less troubling to romanticize it.

If it was allowed, I would 100% send out an invitation for one of you guys to play my kid for 10 minutes then die to a scrab.

In all seriousness though, is that a thing I can do?

[Shabago]

Why? Because staff have seen the response to any sort of realism on either front.

People tend to gravitate towards "perfect" births, children, and so on. I can think of a handful of times off the top of my head where, even another player rather than staff, have done/acted in such a way to cause death or dismemberment to a child....Well, it wasn't pretty. Same applies to any STD involvement.

[valeria]

What?

No.

No thank you.

[Bast]

I so want to see STD's in the game... and would also like to see an end of the Mexican Soap Opera babies/pregnancies and the 2 week pregnancies . I also just want to leave deciding whether my pc gets preggers or not to the dice. I really like Teacups comment about only having one roll a day though.

I am not gonna argue with anyone else over there own opinion on it but thanks guys for expressing your own opinions. I will say I played in another mud once where pregnancy code was added. Everyone ended up loving it. I was pretty against it until I used it now I am a fan.

[Lutagar]

i don't think the inclusion of coded std's would improve anyone's gameplay experience

[Mr. Fancypants]

You can always have staff handle the choices and dice rolls for children. It works well, especially if you're willing to roll with the unexpected. I would prefer a scenario where you give them that permission, however, as having someone take over the reins of your character without permission is rarely enjoyable. The player behind the character will always be best equipped to make judgment calls on those sorts of stories. If they go the low drama route, who is it really hurting?

[Bebop]

What?

No.

No thank you.

C'mon.  You know you want to be forced to RP pregnancy, still birth, miscarriage and STDs in a game world instead of having an escapism from RL where female bodily autonomy is constantly being called into question!  Can we get a Donald Trump IG railing against Planned Parenthood and casting tweet spells next?!   

[Refugee]

I believe the way it is now is preferable by far.

[Nameless Face]

If it was handled well, it could be just another fun mini-game just like Teks Tower or Kruth. 

Completely optional, but fun for those people who want to put the gambling pieces on the board and roll them bones.

[Hauwke]

What?

No.

No thank you.

C'mon.  You know you want to be forced to RP pregnancy, still birth, miscarriage and STDs in a game world instead of having an escapism from RL where female bodily autonomy is constantly being called into question!  Can we get a Donald Trump IG railing against Planned Parenthood and casting tweet spells next?!   

It's not about body autonomy though, its about realism in a world where getting an abortion is deadly. You can't just stick a coat hanger in your junk and successfully pull a baby out without some serious damage to the mother.

In this one, very specific instance, the mantra of "don't want a baby? Don't have sex" applies, because that's how sex works in a world where the best contraceptives they have include eating random asssortments of herbs and the pull out method.

I am a big supporter of body autonomy for all people in the real world, it's just that we are here to tell a story and having full control over everything is less fun than RPing through the bad shit that happens. Sometimes it's more fun to let go of control and have your kneecaps broken and then go through the story arc and changes that result from that.

I don't want to sit there and tavern RP for the sixtieth time this month, and I definately don't want my characters life to be perfect. Changing it up is how our characters grow and develop.

[Lutagar]

In this one, very specific instance, the mantra of "don't want a baby? Don't have sex" applies, because that's how sex works in a world where the best contraceptives they have include eating random asssortments of herbs and the pull out method.

You're not wrong but the problem with this is it creates a different attitude toward women having sex as pregnancy is exclusive to females. This is sexist when there's adamantly no sexism in Zalanthas.

I'd honestly rather just pretend that Zalanthan women can put up a psionic barrier that prevents pregnancy, even if it's unrealistic and stupid, than go down the avenue of potentially creating an attitude where women having unprotected sex is more irresponsible than a man doing it.

[Bebop]

What?

No.

No thank you.

C'mon.  You know you want to be forced to RP pregnancy, still birth, miscarriage and STDs in a game world instead of having an escapism from RL where female bodily autonomy is constantly being called into question!  Can we get a Donald Trump IG railing against Planned Parenthood and casting tweet spells next?!   

I don't want to sit there and tavern RP for the sixtieth time this month, and I definately don't want my characters life to be perfect. Changing it up is how our characters grow and develop.

That's awesome.  And you don't have to.  As mentioned, you can ask staff to decide a good fate or turn of events if you are open to whatever.  I too have RP'd some not happy endings to pregnancies IG.  But no one should be forced to do that.

Like rape plots, miscarriage and still birth can be very triggering and alter someone's character forever.  I don't want someone who's experienced the RL horror and pain of such an incident to be forced to RP something like that because the coded decided it.

I think it could be a fun option for those that want the game to roll it for them.  But it should remain just that.  An option.

[Veselka]

Not terribly interested in this.

Then again I wasn't interested in nipple rings.

If a Staffer went through the effort to code it, I'd opt out 100% of the time, but I won't yuck other people's yummy.

[teacup]

Still support STDs and pregnancy code because like I've experienced on other RPIs, it positively enriches the game and there's no stillbirths or miscarriages unless YOU the Player absolutely ask Staff for that if that's the kind of like RP Story you're wanting to endure. With Harshlands the /only/ echoes of pregnancy you get are the confirmation that yep you're pregnant and like a notification on 2nd and 3rd trimesters and you get a flag on your description so there's no like hiding you're pregnant after 2nd trimester without being like cloaked 247 or like avoiding PCs. When its time for birth, you get a notification you're ready to like give birth any time and you have like a RL week to run the prog, out pops a baby obj. Like if you have the baby alone, there's a % of risk that the baby obj is flagged 'sick' but you just go to like a physician/healer PC or NPC and they run a craft where they like check up on the baby and like its okay. This prevents ANY kind of trigger-flicking for people who don't want to experience stillbirths or miscarriages which are super hard. AGAIN, there are things in game that codedly stop insemination or just don't do the ERP. Like if you don't want to get someone pregnant or be pregnant, take the potions, don't run insemination or accept it. Get pregnant but don't want to be? Drink the fix for it. Like its handled 100% maturely other places without all this push back. Its realistic and I bet if Staff did an anonymous survey there's plenty of players out there who would like the opportunity to have baby objs and coded realism for this sort of thing.

[PriestlySiren]

I'm not a fan of this idea.

Your opinion is valid, but I don't like the idea.

[Refugee]

You can choose to have all these consequences if you think you would find that fun.  Coding it forces people to.

So, while the way it is everyone can choose what they'd like to play out, coding it removes the choices for one portion of the playerbase who don't want to play that way.

You already can have what you describe, just roll the dice if you don't like making the decision.  But don't force it on everyone.  Let people have the fun they want to have in this very personal area.

I don't mind the part about the baby objects.  I've played in games with baby objects and was surprised I didn't find them here.  But I seem to remember reading about the baby object issue being about allocating staffers' time in dealing with drama over losing/stealing/"but I didn't do that..." stuff.  OK, no problem, I'm not a great emoter but I'm skilled enough to make baby RP without needing an object.

[valeria]

I think the staff time issue with baby objects would be that each would need an individual desc (sort of like a mastercraft), because no two babies are going to look the same.

Though now I have a daycare idea: A stables for baby objects.  You rent the baby with a nursery.  Clans have free nurseries.  Other people have to pay to rent their baby objects.  Then there's a Kasix NPC who buys baby objects.  Your baby was stolen and sold to slavers?  Sucks to be you.

This started out as a joke idea but now I kind of want it.

[Bast]

Again...Sterilization as option in the hall of kings...You don't want to deal with your pc getting pregnant there is an easy fix right there. Taking it to some bizarre extreme where by even mentioning it is an attack on feminism is utterly ridiculous.  Considering this is a real life thing for ever woman ever. You want to run around banging elves and breeds you should run the same risk of consequences in our HARSH BRUTAL game setting that you do in irl. At least in real life your less likely to get murdered by your mate? 

[Bast]

P.S. please no baby objects. We have already been that road and learned Arm players can not be trusted with children objects 

[Mercy]

I'll be honest, my biggest issue with pregnancy code was going to be baby objects. I won't go into why since it's a moot point. However, I don't really understand the purpose of coded pregnancy otherwise. Everything can be carried out via RP. And without anything to 'show for' pregnancy, i.e. a baby object, people can just 100% dodge pregnancy code and RP things out as they are doing now.

I have mixed feelings on this as a whole, but it sounds like a lot of work from staff for what seems to be a purely optional and very easy to bypass system.

Is the purpose to have coded support for negative modifiers you can't simply RP out? Is it to force all players who want to partake in that sort of RP to make the same dice rolls so no on can 'game the system'? I don't want to sound condescending in anyway but I genuinely don't get it. Especially, from the perspective of 'code abuse' its far too easy to simply RP convincingly without utilizing the code put in place. You can't really RP being swordsmith without the skill to craft swords, but you can easily RP being a parent without a baby object (even if they did exist, unless they had intermittent echoes or something. Shudder).

[Lizzie]

We could make it so men can also get pregnant and STDs cause them to miscarry, and their penii to rot and necrotize.

I'm on board with that!

[Heade]

We could make it so men can also get pregnant and STDs cause them to miscarry, and their penii to rot and necrotize.

I'm on board with that!

We could just make it so that there aren't multiple sexes in Arm. Instead, everyone has both sex organs and can be as feminine or masculine as they want without us having to worry about the real life issues regarding gender identity. Eliminate genders altogether!

/sarcasm off

[DesertT]

Pregnancy symptoms:
Missed period - wtf is the request for a period code where it lasts a week and comes with its own set of symptoms? Oh? You don't want THAT, right? Cramps, bleeding on your clothes, clothes not fitting, diarrhea AND MORE!
Sore boobs - the entire pregnancy - sparring blows to the chest are gonna be grrreatttt.
Mood swings - random mini-mul rage. Cool.
Exhaustion - random chance of falling asleep.
Forgetfulness - stat decreases for the length of the pregnancy, maybe you forget to use the way.
Gas and bloating - I better see some hemoted farts and atinky echoes when a pregnant pc is around.
Increased hunger - speed that code up.
Cravings - hunger code doesn't go away unless you eat what you're craving.
Nausea and vomiting - random puking better be present.
Constipation - (wait for it)
Frequent Urination - wtf is THAT code?

My wife and I have 8 kids together, she adds:

Nine month waddle
Lower crotch pain
Not being able to pick up fallen objects
Desire to kill everything male
Random bouts of crying
Unable to shave legs or trim toe nails
Can't put your own socks on / can't reach feet / slide-on shoes only

I'm sure we can come up with more... 

Let's not even talk about nursing every 2-3 hours
Leaky boobs / Random let down
Milk duct infections
Gotta have poop and vomit stains all over your clothes too!!

Oh my, this is fun!!

[ShaLeah]

No because...

Coding it forces people to.

One of my whores got fleas (read: was forced by staff) once. She was METICULOUS about cleansing. She checked every client. I was pissed.

Forcing an STD on someone or a pregnancy... yeah. No.