Adult: GUCK development forum III

[Death By Surfeit]

Thanks for the input, everyone. The suggestions posted have all been perfectly valid, making it awfully difficult to post criticisms or alternatives.

Sorn, your pregnancy rules are great - pretty much exactly what I'd have imagined. Likewise, Loren, your point about post-menopausal women is entirely valid (how did that one get through?). I'd suggest removing any modifiers and simply having a paragraph (or sidebar) stating that women in their Prime or Middle Age and men in their Prime, Middle Age or Old life stages are considered fertile.

*considers VVrayven chastised and spanked*





*snaps out of it*

I'm a little concerned about HEx (is that the correct spelling?) starting up so soon... with the full mechanics complete, we still don't have a completed Guide, and I don't want to have to split my attentions (doing so on one guide is difficult enough). If HEx is intended as a supplement to the GUCK, wouldn't it make more sense to complete the GUCK first?

Just a(nother) thought.

DbS

 

[Sorn]

I see where you guys are coming from regarding the menopause issue. However, also remember that we are not just talking humans here. Orcs are very fertile, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if orc women continue to reproduce even at advanced ages. Elves are generally looking like they are about 20 (in human terms) anyway, so their bodies don't really age all that much, which could allow for pregnancies at old age.

But, I am willing to concede on that one. We can always add a little blurb to the suggested sidebar/paragraph that DM's are free to add any age modifiers if they wish to allow older characters to conceive. Sound like a solution?

 

[brevdravis]

About the Hex (off-topic)

I personally can't wait to get started on it. I don't think it will draw too much attention away from the main, since we're doing different things with it.

Different forum too if I recall....

While splitting attention can wreck things, It can also help cross-pollinate ideas. And if the Hex is done concurrently as opposed to consecutively, we might spot some things in the base mechanics that need tweaking too.....

Just my thoughts...

Stuart

 

[Sorn]

HEx worries

The HEx might be different enough as to not conflict with the GUCK, I am also a little worried.

The GUCK core team has dwindled down to a handful of people. Working on two seperate projects will mean that a good number of the already small core team will have to split their attention between the two. If time and attention are split 50-50 between the two, it means that the GUCK could take up to twice as long to finish.

Right now, we are on a roll and could wrap this thing up sooner rather than later. Plus, we've been at this for a long time. Looking at the timestamp in the preview version of the GUCK, the fall of 2001 is when things started to get serious. I for one am eager to have a finished product.

This is not meant as a slight to HEx or trying to discourage anyone from doing it. While I am not a big hentai fan anymore, I am certainly looking forward to it.

 

[Sorn]

Updates Updates Updates

More updates in the Pregnancy section. Again, instead of reposting everything here, check the site.

-Removed the age modifiers for conception and added a paragraph about fertility.

-Added revised injury rules and other complications such as death of the mother, disease, poison, magic and shapeshifting.

To finish up this section, we need to complete the rules for labor and childbirth. I have a basic rules-set on the site, but that it needs a lot of tweaking and polishing.

Furthermore, the 0.5 version of the guide contains a lot of material on the baby. There is general information on stats, etc. as well as mutations and birth defects. Personally, I think that whole section is way too detailed and cumbersome.

I remember seeing expanded age tables with stat modifiers for children, but I can't recall where. If anybody knows, please let me know. If they are OGC, I'd suggest we just reprint them and let the DM or players generate a new character. All we need then is a something for gender, but a simple high=female/low=male should do the trick fine.

I am somewhat against including birth defect/mutation tables, as that will only need to balance issues and headaches down the road. Not to mention that the players of pregnant PC's tend to be very protective of their unborn NPC's. Any DM stupid enough to mess with the unborn child is only asking for trouble.

Besides, this is the Netbook of Sex, and while pregnancy is a part of it, I don't think we need to go overboard on the whole children issue. Opinions?

 

[VVrayven]

::smile:: Relax boys. I'm not going to steal the thunder. Next week I simply want to start the Yahoo group and start taking members, no submissions yet. That is what I meant by start. Sorry, I should have been a little more specific. We shall complete the GUCK first, I just wanted to get some staff together and start noting things we can look at later. For instance, certain rules that aren't being delved into here, can be later if we have a list. I just want to remember what we said we'd go back to.

As for the birth defects/mutations... I don't think a small section is out of the question. The old tables did have some.... charm.

Sorn, the rules look great! <blows a kiss> Absolutely great work everyone.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I took Morning Sickness off the site. So no worries there anymore. Same goes for Con drain.

Now, the menopause thing. The reason that there are modifiers is that there are always a few exceptions to the rule, namely women who give birth at an old age where most other women are way past the ability to become pregnant. Note that a MW contraceptive only gives a +2, which in turn leads to a vastly decreased chance of conception. The age modifiers are higher than that (and I am even considering bumping them up even more).

Since we have no rules for menopause, high DC modifiers will make sure that only very few women will become pregnant when they are older.

We are still facing the same problem--the formula either makes for no failure chance whatsoever (if you consider a 21 to be impossible) or a 1 in 400 chance no matter what (if you consider a 20 to always hit).

High modifers are *NOT* a solution as the formula breaks down.

 

[Alzrius]

Kuso, take a day off to begin organizing my trip back to the States, and the whole group moves on without me. Shame on all of you!

My thoughts on what we've discussed thus far:

Originally posted by VVrayven
Morning Sickness should not have a solid dehabilitating mechanic. After all, these adventuring women can take getting stabbed by a two foot sword and have no penalties to attack, yet a morning sickness troubles them? I realize this is a thin argument, but I think we should try to keep things as simple as possible.

I disagree here something. There already is a solid mechanic for morning sickness: its called being Nauseated. That's a status condition as outlined in the SRD. Just say that being morning sick applies that condition. Even the hardiest of adventurers still takes an attack penalty when nauseous.

In my experience, simplicity of mechanics is good, but something that simplifies too much is unwanted. People like a system that covers the little things. Just so long as how its all handled isnt a big mess, its okay.

Originally posted by Sorn
My thoughts... for most purposes, mother and unborn child are a single entity. We don't have stats for the unborn child, so it's all dependant on the mother. Any spell affecting her automatically affects the child. Easy as that. Weird side-effects are nice and fine, but probably not what we really want.

I disagree somewhat here. The system as you propose it gets the job done, but its boring! The fun of the old system, as large as it was (and it wasn't that unwieldy, since it was basically rolling on a table or two) was that it had so many possibilities. Magic is wild, primal arcane energies. Who knows what effect it could have on a newly-developing embryo? There should be a wide range of effects. That's what people will want (I think).

 

[Knight-of-Roses]

Re: Updates Updates Updates

All we need then is a something for gender, but a simple high=female/low=male should do the trick fine.

But it should be noted that this does not apply to all races. The standard D&D dwarves are usually presented with 3-4 male dwarves to each female.

I don't know if other races have imbalance in their male/female ratio (do Drow have more females than males?).

And it should be sex not gender, IIRC from my gender studies class, sex is biological, gender is societal.

 

[Sorn]

Ok, from the top down...

VVrayven... Sounds like a plan for the HEx. As far as mutations etc. go, how about a simple table with a few modifiers. Something along the lines of a Fort (?) Save DC ?? with things like "Mother drank alcohol -?" or "Mother was possessed by a spirit -?" or "Mother travelled to another plane -?" and then on failure simply cross-reference to a mutation/defects table. Should be a lot less cumbersome than the old method. I am somewhat opposed to having the mother roll saves every time she does anything.

Loren... I see what you mean, please see the revised paragraph on the site. No more mods for age and conception.

Alzrius... Morning Sickness can indeed be handled with the Nauseated status condition. However, it is a very nasty status condition, nothing I would want to subject any characters to on a daily basis for several hours. If you look at it, for whatever timeframe we deem morning sickness to last, the mother can only do one thing... take a move action each round, nothing else. So, if we want to keep morning sickness, I propose the following changes:

1.) reduce the duration to a few minutes instead of 1+ hours as proposed before

2.) to keep people from having to roll morning sickness checks every morning, only one save is allowed at the beginning of each stage. Two successful saves in a row indicates no more morning sickness.

On to Mother-Embryo for spells, etc. See above for werd side effects, but in general, I think we will need to consider the two of them as one entity for several reasons.

First of, do you really want to keep redoing the fetus' stats at every stage? How many hit points does a Stage IV fetus have? What's the Fort Save? If it can be affected with spells and stuff, it needs stats.

Secondly, the number of things that can affect the fetus is somewhat limited to begin with, since the fetus has complete cover from the mother's body. Anything that requires Line of Sight is out. Anything mind affecting will spawn a discussion on when the fetus actually develops thoughts of its own.

Last, anything that inflicts direct damage or ability damage or anything like that will almost certainly kill the fetus. I mean come on, if a healthy adult has about 4 hit points or so, a fetus doesn't have any more than 1. Most ability scores are going to be way below 10, so any ability drain will be fatal.

Knight-of-Roses... Already noted in the descriptive paragraph on the site. I used the classic dwarven example, and left it to GM discretion. That makes it easier for custom campaigns, plus we don't have to make up data for the other races. Not entirely sure on Drow demographics, but a lot of the males get killed by over-eager priestesses or are sacrificed at birth, so that could explain it (if there is indeed a discrepancy).

And I'll double check the stuff on the site regarding the sex/gender issue. never even thought of that, but english isn't my first language... some of that stuff slips through.