I'm fairly sure the way that Toady does things is that he searches for threads using keywords related to what he's thinking about at a given time to see what has been suggested on the topic before when he's ready to do something about it.
Hence, if you want to get Toady's attention, it's probably best to use as many synonyms for whatever you're talking about as possible to cover all bases on the search engine.
So far as reproductive schemes go, however, I would generally point to Mass Effect for (Sci-Fi) reproductive schemes that are well-thought-out and thoroughly nuanced. (As expected of Sci-Fi, since, as a genre, it tends to favor making up your own system and reasoning it out over rehashing the same memes the way that fantasy does so often.)
Salarians, for example, are a race with mating behaviors somewhat akin to insects. They have few females that are always engaged in complex social maneuvering and lay huge numbers of eggs while males are numerous and have to go out and accomplish something to get the prestige required to get mating rights. Romance never really fits into it.
Meanwhile, the Asari is a race that, Green-Skinned Space Babe references aside, is a perfect model of a one-gendered epigenetic species. They reproduce by parthenogenesis, and use a psychic (read: magic) ability to get epigenetic changes to their offspring even as they are genetic near-clones of their mothers (excepting mutation).
Since someone mentioned the social structure of hyenas, it's worth exploring how this could be extrapolated into a social structure of sentients.
Many such pack-hunting mammals actually organize in matriarchal family units. The head of the family lives with her mother, aunts, sisters, cousins, children and possibly nieces. Male children leave the family when they are old enough. Female children continue the family on. The older women care for the children while the more young and healthy provide for the family. Essentially, grandma takes care of the kids while mom goes to work.
Males have to go out and compete for acceptance into a family. There are more males than families, so competition is fierce. A male not "married" into a family by meeting the approval/attracting an alpha female/head of a family must live on their own and fend for themselves.
A "marriage" in this sense is not by a male to a single woman, but to a whole family. All the same, only the alpha female/head of the family (or possibly the beta, as well, depending on family size, which would probably be a sister or cousin of the alpha) has children. The others either work for the family, or care for the children. Social competition among the women for being the head of the family may be fierce, but is tempered by a constant need to work for the continuation of the family - they compete by trying to prove they are the ones who provide the most for the family, and will have to step aside when it is time for the next generation to take over.
Males are tied to a family not permanently, but until a better male can be brought in, and a change in alpha females can mean either kicking out the male, or keeping him on with a different alpha female. No male should ever stay around long enough for them to be competing to stay with an alpha female that is their own daughter.
If any species currently in the game seems to be suited to this, it seems to be the elves, honestly.
That said, animal-men of pack hunting types might well adopt this.
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Topic: Alternative (RAW-defined) Reproduction (Read 15011 times)