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[Robosaur]

Do ya think if we can have homosexual dwarves, we can have asexual dwarves as well?

Or trans dwarves, homosexual heteroromantic dwarves, and hell, maybe even obect sexuality dwarves.

or

autosexual dwarves!

[Baselope]

Dwarves have sex?  I thought they just propogated by some type of budding or mold-spore like method that required a male/female of the species to be present.  Oh, I guess they do have these relationship feelings.  I've never seen evidence that dwarves love their significant others more than their friends.  Why not make relationships less boy/girl driven and just have them form friendships randomly and then people can imagine whatever they like in their own personal fantasy world.

Hey, if you guys are so worried about this, are you going to put in a request for transgender operations at the hospital?  I'm in no way homophobic, but the last thing I want is to have an ascii game with distracting sexuality.  Sheesh, sex relations I think is just an incidental happening in the world my dwarves live in, if it actually happens at all.  You all know those beards are actually where the spores/pollen are released and recieved don't you?  And that all that drinking is truly because that's about the funnest thing they do all day (and an efficient source of additional calories as they must have something like internal-combustion to keep up with all that work).

[NW_Kohaku]

Not once have I ever posted that people should "play with Barbies"... evidence you're just trying to cause conflicts/attacks.

Yes, evidence.  That would be the exact reason I quoted you saying that in the post before.

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

If you find my tone unfriendly, perhaps you should reread your own, as it seems you aren't aware of what you, yourself have said. 

And as for this...

I haven't made any attacks at all about this idea, you're just taking any dislikes for the idea as personally which is very unprofessional and immature.

Once again, if you don't like the idea, but don't have any actual criticisms or ways to guide the idea to being a better one, just don't post, rather than attacking the very notion that someone could even suggest something.

Posts like the following:

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.

"It doesn't serve any purpose, but I won't go into details of why I think this, or how it could serve a purpose," and "your ideas just aren't important to me, we should focus on Y, instead," along with the perennial "it might hurt FPS in some completely nondescript way" are just ways to shut down all conversation on any topic you don't like, and are utterly unsubstantiated. 

These arguments are all invalid, because they can be copy-pasted onto any topic the poster dislikes (and have been at some point), and have no relation to the topic at all.

If you don't want to talk about the suggestion, just don't post.  If you want to carry on your baseless personal attacks, do it by Personal Message; That's what the "Personal" is for.

Dwarves have sex?  I thought they just propogated by some type of budding or mold-spore like method that required a male/female of the species to be present.  Oh, I guess they do have these relationship feelings.  I've never seen evidence that dwarves love their significant others more than their friends.  Why not make relationships less boy/girl driven and just have them form friendships randomly and then people can imagine whatever they like in their own personal fantasy world.

In the previous threads, things like castes that had tokens that designated the relationship-forming behavior was discussed. 

The alternate to this was a personality trait that discussed sexual orientation, so as to make it a spectrum, where most high (or low, set the axis however you want) numbers means "completely straight", with "completely gay" on the low end, and "bisexual" in the boundary area.  This would have the hypothetical advantage of making the characters in question have gradients of "gayness", with, perhaps, some sort of possibility to form relationships with either gender, but making one gender or other more difficult to form romantic relations with.

Of course, it depends on what sort of statement you want to make on the nature of (homo)sexuality, and how much of a "choice" there is in the matter, which is delicate ground to tread upon.

As for the relationships, spouses share items and beds and have a greater affect upon the thoughts/happiness of their SO. 

This can, of course, be greatly expanded upon the more the game comes into focus upon the personal relationships and individual motivations and wills of the dwarves with the Personality Rewrites, although those are still somewhat vague and distant.

Hey, if you guys are so worried about this, are you going to put in a request for transgender operations at the hospital?  I'm in no way homophobic, but the last thing I want is to have an ascii game with distracting sexuality.  Sheesh, sex relations I think is just an incidental happening in the world my dwarves live in, if it actually happens at all.  You all know those beards are actually where the spores/pollen are released and recieved don't you?  And that all that drinking is truly because that's about the funnest thing they do all day (and an efficient source of additional calories as they must have something like internal-combustion to keep up with all that work).

Fanon memes aside, I doubt transgender operations are going to become part of vanilla, but you already can achieve caste-swapping through memory hacking and interactions.

Sex is a part of the game, as the progenitor of life, although it is not part of the game as an explicit event that you somehow peep in on.  To talk about sexuality is not necessarily to talk about sex, however. 

Gay dwarves don't need to be anything more than dwarves that love other dwarves of their own gender, and act as such. 

As you hinted at earlier, however, the notion of romance in general needs to have much more depth for romances of any kind to have meaning.  As it stands, marriage currently means little past activating pregnancy flags.

[NTJedi]

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

Quotes from Big Fans of the game who agree with my quote:
   http://kathleenparkerb.blogspot.com/2011/01/falling-asleep-on-floor-and-other.html
   http://thesims2.livejournal.com/5406609.html?page=2

Plenty more quotes online to match.  While I've never personally played the game it's clear my quote is accurate for many of its fans.  As usual NW_Kohaku just trys to view my responses in the most tainted way possible.

Once again, if you don't like the idea, but don't have any actual criticisms or ways to guide the idea to being a better one, just don't post, rather than attacking the very notion that someone could even suggest something.

Suggesting something with game depth and suggesting something just because it's a passing thought are two different things.  Suggesting something such as hey the game should have chinese dragons because other games have done this and because it would help people be more aware of them are nothing useful or inspiring for the developer to actually include them.  After I pointed out this difference it just flew between your ears.

These arguments are all invalid, because they can be copy-pasted onto any topic the poster dislikes (and have been at some point), and have no relation to the topic at all.

I already explained my reasoning with an example of where someone could have suggested different spears.  The suggestion of different spears by itself simply because it's been within other games and people should know about them is a weak suggestion.  I'm sorry you cannot understand or accept this example comparison.

If you don't want to talk about the suggestion, just don't post.  If you want to carry on your baseless personal attacks, do it by Personal Message; That's what the "Personal" is for.

As I wrote earlier I merely posted I dislike the idea and simple reasons for the dislike.  EVERYONE should be allowed to post if they approve or disapprove of an idea.

As you hinted at earlier, however, the notion of romance in general needs to have much more depth for romances of any kind to have meaning.  As it stands, marriage currently means little past activating pregnancy flags.

It's possible Toady might add more depth for romance and marriage, however my personal opinion would hope the game would evolve other directions.  Just expressing my freedom of speech of my opinion, yet you might twist this around too.

[peskyninja]

Calm down guys, this forum has enoguh rage and flaming since DFVD....

BACK ON TOPIC
-------------------------------
I like this idea, it's realistic (Before the middle age and christianism Homossexuality was pretty common, IIRC you had better chances to enter in the roman army if you had a partner inside the army, homossexual prostitution was common too.) but, I feel that it isn't the right time to add this specially with all this hauling and stuff going on. Probably in the personality rewrite.

[Radiant_Phoenix]

Make it multiaxial:
[ATTRACTION:LOCAL_CREATURE:FEMALE:0:10:100] default 0:0:0
[ATTRACTION:LOCAL_CREATURE:MALE:0:90:100]

[NW_Kohaku]

Make it multiaxial:
[ATTRACTION:LOCAL_CREATURE:FEMALE:0:10:100] default 0:0:0
[ATTRACTION:LOCAL_CREATURE:MALE:0:90:100]

While this model is also possible, although it raises questions of how powerfully this can be bell-curved. 

Depending on how high up that scale a number has to be before they are considered attracted, this can make something like 20 or 30% of all dwarves gay or bisexual.

This system is problematic as well in that it creates a basically greater chance that a dwarf will have nearly no sexual impulses at all than the chance of being gay.    If you are talking about a scale where there is an 80% chance to like men, and a 20% chance to not like men, and then a separate 20% to like women, and a 80% chance to not like women, the breakdown is as follows:

64% straight, 16% bisexual, 16% asexual, and 4% gay.

Even if we tweak the numbers around, that model is basically going to always result in more asexuals and bisexuals than gays, and that's not strictly what we are going to want to achieve. 

[Thorik]

There were no homo(sexuals) in Lord of the Rings, therefore none are needed in Dwarf Fortress.  If they were put in I'd remove them from the raws.

[Aquillion]

I like this idea, it's realistic (Before the middle age and christianism Homossexuality was pretty common, IIRC you had better chances to enter in the roman army if you had a partner inside the army, homossexual prostitution was common too)

It's slightly more complicated than that.  Essentially, the ancient world mostly lacked our conception of binary gay / straight sexuality -- in our terms, you could say that they assumed everyone was bisexual, but that's also a bit misleading (because it has connotations that it wouldn't have back then.)  Without the religious condemnation of it that came later, there wasn't really any need to categorize sexuality.  Also, thorough most of history and in most parts of the world, it was considered demeaning and humiliating to be the 'receiving' partner in sex; accusing a male of enjoying this would have been seen as an insult in ancient Rome, say.

None of this hugely matters, of course.  Like everything else, we can only understand the way the ancients saw sexuality through a glass, darkly.  But it's important to remember that our own understanding of sexuality isn't necessarily complete or perfect, either.

As for how it relates to Dwarf Fortress, though...  I think it should wait until the game has a more robust representation for cultures and their views.  Sexual mores and different type of acceptable or unacceptable relationships can be an interesting way to lend flavor to that, so it seems like that would be a logical point to work it in.  Right now it isn't important, but eventually, it can be one of the things that adds to stories -- culture clashes between cultures with different notions of what's sexually acceptable can make the game's world more interesting and lead to more dynamically-evolving settings.

[NW_Kohaku]

There were no homo(sexuals) in Lord of the Rings, therefore none are needed in Dwarf Fortress.  If they were put in I'd remove them from the raws.

Why should Lord of the Rings define what DF is?  Lord of the Rings also didn't have sea serpent or mermaid farms, didn't have catsplosions, didn't have magma cannons, or most of the things most iconic to DF.

As for "I'd remove them from the raws", that's what essentially everyone who has ever advocated these suggestions has always allowed for - letting people just choose not to play with those elements they find uncomfortable.

[NW_Kohaku]

It's slightly more complicated than that.  Essentially, the ancient world mostly lacked our conception of binary gay / straight sexuality -- in our terms, you could say that they assumed everyone was bisexual, but that's also a bit misleading (because it has connotations that it wouldn't have back then.)  Without the religious condemnation of it that came later, there wasn't really any need to categorize sexuality.  Also, thorough most of history and in most parts of the world, it was considered demeaning and humiliating to be the 'receiving' partner in sex; accusing a male of enjoying this would have been seen as an insult in ancient Rome, say.

None of this hugely matters, of course.  Like everything else, we can only understand the way the ancients saw sexuality through a glass, darkly.  But it's important to remember that our own understanding of sexuality isn't necessarily complete or perfect, either.

As for how it relates to Dwarf Fortress, though...  I think it should wait until the game has a more robust representation for cultures and their views.  Sexual mores and different type of acceptable or unacceptable relationships can be an interesting way to lend flavor to that, so it seems like that would be a logical point to work it in.  Right now it isn't important, but eventually, it can be one of the things that adds to stories -- culture clashes between cultures with different notions of what's sexually acceptable can make the game's world more interesting and lead to more dynamically-evolving settings.

It's also more complicated than that, however.

Romans, for example, were permissive of homosexuality... among the patriarchs of society, who basically could do whatever (and whoever) they darn well pleased, but it was taboo to do so with other patriarchs (for that "receiving" reason), or with their wives.  Those wives, meanwhile, were expected to be purely monogamous on pain of death for cheating.  Homosexual relations were often practiced by the wealthy on slaves who were often not exactly willing partners (and, I should point out, so where heterosexual relations on slaves), which helped lead to homosexuality's being tied to corruption and decadence in the Roman Empire.  (But heterosexual abuse of female prostitutes was still totally peachy because those women deserved it.)

With that said, as everyone keeps coming out to talk about how it requires more of the cultural structures be constructed before it has a meaningful place in the game, I'd like to ask people to start extrapolating on those comments a little more, so that we could at least get a solid debate on what, exactly, it would take to create the environment where gay dwarves makes sense.

The last time I was in one of these threads, one of the hot button issues that drove the thread to derailment was exactly on the topic of cultural ethics, and the notion that in a fantasy game there would be discrimination against gays, which some members of the forum thought was "too painful" for gays to include in a game.

[peskyninja]

I see no problem in creating a system where homossexual individuals could be descriminated by some sort of cult, group or religion. But that shouldn't be just that, it should have some sort of history. But of course there should be  worlds/civs where homossesuality is widely accepted.

[Leatra]

Relationships in DF isn't very detailed and important right now. I hold no ill feelings against homosexuals but it would be pretty pointless to make Toady work on this before fleshing out relationships.

[Moddan]

Anything that keeps the child count down is welcomed by me.

"Woah, finally a useful immigrant wave. A lovely childfree miner-armoursmith couple. Wait a second, both male? Praised be Armok! They are gay!"

[Murphy]

My mod-fu has suffered greatly ever since 40d became obsolete, but I believe you can already mod in a caste of "homosexual dwarves", if you really need it.