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[Number7]

Self Explanatory. Except maybe make it an option that is off by default because I know some people are against it, so if its off by default they'll be happy and people who do want the feature on can go and turn it on, that way no one is hurt.

Why should this be a feature? (and important question to ask ^_^)

A) Realism
B) Other games these days are acknowledging it (Bioware and bethesda games especially)
C) Might help some people overcome homophobia by making it a more common thing seen and acknowledged (kind of a universal argument for it, even changing one person's opinion will make the world more harmonious )
D) Because i randomly thought of it, and you all admire me.

Now, before anyone comes in here and tries to get into a discussion about morality and such, Please keep in mind i suggested this as a feature that is by default off and will not even be seen by you if you do not want it, no one is forcing ideals upon you or anything.

[dizzyelk]

Like I even notice the heterosexual relationships of my dwarves. I'm not against it, I'm just wondering why. After all, I barely even notice those hairy little buggers as anything more than interchangable cogs. The Bioware and Bethsucka games make sense to have it, because you're much closer to the world.

[Thorik]

I actually like my dwarves to have kids, I don't want homosexual dwarves.  It's not something that's very dwarvenly.  I'm only for this if males in the clothing industry turn gay automatically, it's for realism.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's not true. Even a straight-as-an-arrow man such as myself can see the dwarveness of gay dwarves. Just look at those long, well-braided beards, that hair and mud covered exterior, oh my....

Er, uh, I mean, uh.....realism and civil liberty and...all that. Right. Yeah.

[Bytyan]

If this were a feature, I would be against it being off by default. From this point onward, I use the term gay, because homosexual is just too clinical for what we are talking about. I think relationships need to be more fleshed out for it to have any impact on the game. As it stands, I'm rarely aware of the gender of a given dwarf, and gay couples would just be another set of dwarves who share a bed, but don't have little ancle bitters hanging off their beards. Could be a good foster parent material, if the couple were so inclined. It feels unnecessary. Maybe if homophobia were implimented in the game, and cultures were to open hostilities based on ethics, I would be more inclined.

[NW_Kohaku]

We've had this argument before...

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=82822.msg2204553#msg2204553
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=66677.msg1592807#msg1592807
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=46914.msg951928#msg951928
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=40167.msg701812#msg701812

The top one of those, especially, got into it, and devolved into a tantrum spiral because of what actually having gay dwarves would mean in terms of cultural ethics, as well as a few homophobic zealots coming into the forums.

Now then, saying "I want a feature that is by default off" is a really bad argument.  Why should Toady spend time on something he doesn't want most people to use when there are so many better things Toady can spend time on he does want people to use?

Toady also isn't just going to add something to have it there - he always goes into things to flesh it out, so adding ethics tags over what civs condone homosexuality, and what civs have to keep things on the Down Low are going to be considered.

(In fact, there's no reason to have a thread on a board for discussion if you then say that there is no reason to discuss anything about the idea...)

[Telgin]

It wouldn't bother me to see this as an option in the game.  Only concern I have is its place in the morality as portrayed in the game, which is supposed to be set with a tech base around what, the 13th century?  I don't think too many cultures were accepting of that sort of thing back then, so homosexual marriages at least would be dubious to include.

But... like almost everything else in DF, having it as an option at least isn't a bad thing.  Having dwarves who were homosexual and never got married, but only to lover status or something, that might be interesting.  It quickly grows into a lot of possible directions to take it, which Toady might get to one day, but considering his stance on things such as waste and sex being in the game, likely not.

This could be a random civ based thing for example, where some civilizations are tolerant or open about it.  Or plural marriages, or anything like that.  Or even some where dwarves are put to death if they're discovered.

You know... on second thought, perhaps it's best to either not implement it or only in a very passing way (such as having hidden homosexual flags that prevents a dwarf from ever having a lover).  It wouldn't overly bother me to have even a fairly in depth simulation of all of that, but it probably would bother a number of people.  And wrong as that might be, Toady does have to worry about the image of DF.  It's bad enough with the torturing of elves, imagine if word got out that people were torturing all of the homosexuals in their forts?

And... for what it's worth, this is possible to force in the game if you're willing to jump through hoops and do manual hacking of it.  I've done it before.  I'm working on a DFHack plugin to help automate the task, but who knows when I'll get it done.  Not that I'd be marketing it as a way to do this, but it would be possible.

[NW_Kohaku]

AAaaaaaaaaaand here we go again.

but considering his stance on things such as waste and sex being in the game, likely not.

His stance on waste is that he likes it for fertilizer and making sewage systems and lant and saltpeter, but just doesn't want to introduce more "breaks" for dwarves to go on. 

You know... on second thought, perhaps it's best to either not implement it or only in a very passing way (such as having hidden homosexual flags that prevents a dwarf from ever having a lover).  It wouldn't overly bother me to have even a fairly in depth simulation of all of that, but it probably would bother a number of people.  And wrong as that might be, Toady does have to worry about the image of DF.  It's bad enough with the torturing of elves, imagine if word got out that people were torturing all of the homosexuals in their forts?

It is a game where you basically have the freedom to do as you see fit - how, exactly, is a game where people execute gays any different from a game where people commit kitten genocide and farm mermaids for soap?  We even have dwarven eugenics programs with the genetics information.  We have dwarves that constantly vomit when they go outside, and are then capable of picking up that vomit, throwing it at people, and causing their skulls to explode.

We also have skin colors, so that means we can hypothetically have an adventurer that murders everyone in the world who is of a different skin color than their own.

How, exactly, does having someone being capable of something mean that the game endorses that thing?  If someone decided to arbitrarily start discriminating on skin color, it's not a reflection of the nature of the game for having skin colors that you could check, it's a reflection of the nature of that one person.

The same goes for gays - simply making them exist opens them up to all sorts of horrible things happening to them, because having something horrible happen to you is basically the definition of existence in DF.  In much the same way that I don't see why people get so uptight about urine when we already throw vomit around, I don't see the problem with adding gays into the game when we already have torture and genocides. 

What, it's OK to torture and genocide the straight elves, but we have to stand up for the gay ones?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I might remind you all that Toady is actually intending to thwart attempts at Dwarven Eugenics by eventually making individuals carrying a certain trait become violently paranoid if all the other individuals with that trait start dying.

[NW_Kohaku]

I might remind you all that Toady is actually intending to thwart attempts at Dwarven Eugenics by eventually making individuals carrying a certain trait become violently paranoid if all the other individuals with that trait start dying.

Which is spectacular. 

Could you link a quote of that?  I want to see that.  It would make so much sense for that to happen.

Not that it would stop players from doing it - that just means you need to separate them off into burrows and throw them all into the gas magma chambers at once.  In fact, that would just encourage finishing off the job, or even starting the job just to see the mechanic in play.

[Naryar]

I don't see any real gameplay gain from introducing gay dwarves in DF. Maybe flavour, but we have enough of this already.

Arguably this same argument can be used for many things that are already in the game, but most of these things are just flavour and not very useful IMO.

I might remind you all that Toady is actually intending to thwart attempts at Dwarven Eugenics by eventually making individuals carrying a certain trait become violently paranoid if all the other individuals with that trait start dying.

Won't stop eugenics attempts. Especially with the "doesn't care about anything anymore" trait.

[Telgin]

I don't disagree, really.  I'm just saying that's what people will hear and assume.  I agree completely that having as many options and leaving it up to the player is a wonderful and rare thing.  I love the fact that I can murder kids and kittens if I want to (I don't, really), but the bad stuff is what people will remember when they hear about the game.

I literally dismissed the game when I first heard about it years ago because the only thing I read was how players wanted more ways to torture the elves.  I literally thought the purpose of the game was to capture and torture elves, because that's all I'd read about it.  Maybe it was my fault for not reading into it more.  I did eventually, was ashamed of myself, and downloaded the game and had fun playing nice with the elves.

Anyway, sorry for throwing fuel on the fire.  I should probably have known better. 

I would attempt to rerail the topic, but I don't know if there's much else to be said without risking a "omg i dont want gay dorfs in my fort eww" argument spawning.

[NTJedi]

I disagree with this suggestion based on the following:
1) It wouldn't serve any purpose for us playing the game other than a drama element. 
2) There's many more important features and bugs which need attention first.  When thinking of having a random bug fixed or gay dwarves the random bug wins.  Even more important is providing goblin sieges with actual tools/devices for sieging our forts.

[NW_Kohaku]

I don't disagree, really.  I'm just saying that's what people will hear and assume.  I agree completely that having as many options and leaving it up to the player is a wonderful and rare thing.  I love the fact that I can murder kids and kittens if I want to (I don't, really), but the bad stuff is what people will remember when they hear about the game.

I literally dismissed the game when I first heard about it years ago because the only thing I read was how players wanted more ways to torture the elves.  I literally thought the purpose of the game was to capture and torture elves, because that's all I'd read about it.  Maybe it was my fault for not reading into it more.  I did eventually, was ashamed of myself, and downloaded the game and had fun playing nice with the elves.

But that's sort of my point: The argument against adding gay dwarves is that you can kill gay dwarves, and that would somehow be terrible... but we already have genocides, anyway, so what's a genocide against gays when you already have genocides against other things?

The argument against adding urine is that people will do things like throw urine or dump people in urine... but you already can do this with vomit.  What's one more thing that's slightly gross you can throw at people at this point?  Especially when there are genuine gameplay benfits to urine (sewage design, fertilizer, saltpeter manufacture, lant, etc.)

Then there's the way that people can already mod in genitalia, and someone made a "succubus and incubus" mod where there are... secretions *shudder* with syndromes from those genitals, with which they do combat.  Then there was the goblin fortress with all the adult toys.

You seriously can't do things more disgusting with a gay dwarf than what we are already capable of doing.  The damage is already done.  Just let the players who'd be happy to have this sort of thing have their toy.

Honestly, I think the kitten genocides would cause more stir than any pogroms against gays.  People are more defensive about their pets than they are about their fellow humans.

[NW_Kohaku]

I disagree with this suggestion based on the following:
1) It wouldn't serve any purpose for us playing the game other than a drama element. 
2) There's many more important features and bugs which need attention first.  When thinking of having a random bug fixed or gay dwarves the random bug wins.  Even more important is providing goblin sieges with actual tools/devices for sieging our forts.

And the drama elements are a useful purpose.  You have to learn to respect that people have playstyles other than your own. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I'd love it if folks would get attached to instruments and toys. Little Urist throwing a tantrum because he dropped his bronze horse in lava would be simply precious.

I think that would be leaning toooo far towards "The Sims"...  the I play with barbies on my pc game.

One of the great aspects of DF is that it allows for players to pursue entirely different playstyles in the same game.

A military player who constantly mods in tougher and tougher enemies to fight in sieges as they seek more and more challenge can play the same game as a fortress engineer who plays just to express themselves with the "lego set" aspect of the game. 

If a player wants the game to be more like "The Sims", and it doesn't actively interrupt the playstyle of other types of players, then there is no reason to deny other players their fun.

This game has an abundance of focus on military aspects already - there are a million other games out there with combat in them, but DF is unique in its complexity of simulation and engineering.  We need more of the giant, detailed cities for exploration in Adventurer Mode and mine carts and reworkings of internal fortress mechanics to make the dwarves feel less like "interchangeable cogs" and more like independent sentient beings.  It's fine for sieges to wait another decade before they get updated, since the military players have plenty to chew on, already.

With the personality rewrites, gay dwarves may have a much more meaningful role in the game, especially if there are more aspects of cultural permissibility, where they actually do have to be secretive about it. 

It would be funny if there were mechanics where dwarves start getting suspicious of dwarves that keep to themselves, so they start to think he's a thief or a vampire, but he's actually just gay... or vice-versa.