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It makes me sad. So very very sad.

58 (49.6%)

I think it's great!

26 (22.2%)

I'm indifferent.

33 (28.2%)

Total Members Voted: 115

[TD1]

It would be cool RPing a holy warrior on a crusade against the scourge of [INSERT THING HERE]

Considering how silly DF's procedural generation can get, it'd probably lead to crusades over absurd issues.

1: Greetings, I am raising a crusade against the scourge of the ethical treatment of potatoes. Will you join me on my quest?
2: It is terrifying.

The main protagonist of this maltreatment is the Human known as MZ. He has killed one potato in his lust for murder!
Please lead our crusade to capture and kill this fiend.

[Rum]

I like the idea of dwarf fortress as a "happy" lol little world without the homophobia and racism I have to deal with on a daily basis.   Having literally seen people killed over race, was part of the 2003 benton harbor race riots, and having seen a gay man beaten to death in my homeland of somalia this is not something i want tainting my gaming experience.

Point is pretty much moot because I doubt Toady will ever implement racism/homophobia but thats just my 2 cents.   Dwarf fortress is a nice little escape from the horrors of the real world.  While I dont have to deal with three headed centipedes that breathe fire or a goblin invasion in real life, i do have to deal with racism and homophbia.  It's inclusion would ruin my favorite aspect of DF (Being able to take care of the dwarves problems will ignoring my own =p)

Ramadan Mubarak
Adow is ka ilaali

May your enemies stumble.

The problem is that's you as an individual drawing that line. If you had a horrible kidnapping experience you might have a serious problem with child snatchers and if you wanted to personally remove them that's understandable. I'd like racism and homophobia because it would give more realism and personality to the world. Having racial conflict in world gen would be amazing from a world building point of view despite the fact that in the real world it's a serious problem.

I personally like the dwarves as sort of a blank slate. When you think about dwarven ethics (in the context of the game) what you're usually thinking about isn't the raws it's the forum. They hate elves because our popular experiences with them have led to a pragmatic dislike.

specism is abstract enough for me,,, and my uncle was recently kidnapped in kenya and is still missing.   There is an inherent difference (at least to me)  about killing people over their sexual preference vs goblins kidnapping (liberating) dwarf children from a dwarven fortress.   Its not a real world problem only one youd face in dwarf   fortress.   Also its not me as an individual drawing a line, its me as a good person (sorry if you are homophboic you are not a good person period).

I wouldnt have a problem with homophobia really in the game, it would just be frustrating to have to jail/exile all the homophobic dwarves, from a gameplay standpoint it would just be annoying and not add anything FUN to the game for me personally. 

[Skorp]

I like the idea of dwarf fortress as a "happy" lol little world without the homophobia and racism I have to deal with on a daily basis.   Having literally seen people killed over race, was part of the 2003 benton harbor race riots, and having seen a gay man beaten to death in my homeland of somalia this is not something i want tainting my gaming experience.

Point is pretty much moot because I doubt Toady will ever implement racism/homophobia but thats just my 2 cents.   Dwarf fortress is a nice little escape from the horrors of the real world.  While I dont have to deal with three headed centipedes that breathe fire or a goblin invasion in real life, i do have to deal with racism and homophbia.  It's inclusion would ruin my favorite aspect of DF (Being able to take care of the dwarves problems will ignoring my own =p)

Ramadan Mubarak
Adow is ka ilaali

May your enemies stumble.

The problem is that's you as an individual drawing that line. If you had a horrible kidnapping experience you might have a serious problem with child snatchers and if you wanted to personally remove them that's understandable. I'd like racism and homophobia because it would give more realism and personality to the world. Having racial conflict in world gen would be amazing from a world building point of view despite the fact that in the real world it's a serious problem.

I personally like the dwarves as sort of a blank slate. When you think about dwarven ethics (in the context of the game) what you're usually thinking about isn't the raws it's the forum. They hate elves because our popular experiences with them have led to a pragmatic dislike.

specism is abstract enough for me,,, and my uncle was recently kidnapped in kenya and is still missing.   There is an inherent difference (at least to me)  about killing people over their sexual preference vs goblins kidnapping (liberating) dwarf children from a dwarven fortress.   Its not a real world problem only one youd face in dwarf   fortress.   Also its not me as an individual drawing a line, its me as a good person (sorry if you are homophboic you are not a good person period).

I wouldnt have a problem with homophobia really in the game, it would just be frustrating to have to jail/exile all the homophobic dwarves, from a gameplay standpoint it would just be annoying and not add anything FUN to the game for me personally.

Well, you can leave the homophobic dwarves alone so you can focus on other things.

[wierd]

I can see a possible consession in the "OMG, really guys? you WANT there to be homophobia and racism!? *spaz attack*" debate.

It is definitively in HUMAN nature for those things to exist, and be part of the condition.

Not necessarily so for dwarves. Likewise, dwarves clearly have VERY different neurology than humans do, given that they can drink hard liquor instead of water, every day, and not be total vegetables.

As such, expecting something that appears to be the result of an endocrine malfunction during gestation involving sex hormones to happen the same way in this different species may be a bit of a stretch, if you are going for realism.

So, having homophobia and racism in the game's humans? ABSOLUTELY. It is DEFINITIVELY part of the human condition.

Dwarven? Jury's out on that one I think.  Should I think dwarves need to be this uniform, sterling white, bland vanilla flavored McCulture that never has any societal ills? Oh hell no-- How boring!

However, they might not have the same causal factors for producing homosexual individuals within their biological domain, so the numbers expected for humans may not be a good fit. 

I would expect their culture to more favor asexuality in both genders, leading to population decline, as it would leave significantly more time in that dwarf's life for military or artistic/craftsmanship related pursuits, which are culturally lauded, and would thus be selected for naturally.

(You can actually see something like this happening in Japan right now,  IN HUMANS, simply because of societal pressures. )
({url=http://theweek.com/article/index/254923/everything-you-need-to-know-about-japans-population-crisis] Linky[/url])

I see elves being radically more homosexual/bisexual, with strong emphasis on family and feelings--- where dwarves would be more stoic, with more emphasis on status, capabilitity, and individual strengths.

As such, I think humans should favor human statistical distributions for homosexuality, and should feature human-levels of homophobia and racism, where the other two should diverge significantly.

I am glad the values are moddable---

[Rokh]

Wow wow wow wow WOW! I went to have dinner and suddenly HELL!
But it's all over now, so let's move on:

--

I think moddable vegetarianism tag is not a bad idea. It indeed has been common in several places through history (mostly Buddhist nations). Japan, for example, was (sort of) vegetarian until not that long ago, when they were overrun by Western "progress". I'm sorry to bring up the "it did (not) happen in human history" argument again, but I can't help it.

About the atheism thing... well... I don't know. It seems gods in DF now are quite active and prominent, so I don't see a dwarf believing the very same god that's burning him alive does not exist.
Actually, I think antitheism is a better idea. The good old 'god-hating'. A dwarf saying "I don't like the gods, they are such assholes!" sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Finally, the "moral progress" stuff... I disagree with it. This might be my personal bias, as I am completely against Social Darwinists (which are surprisingly prominent today, although by different names). Yet, if it is moddable, I'm fine with it.

[TD1]

Yea. Humans should be humans, Dwarves should have much less homosexuals but be more tolerant of them, and elves should have more homosexuals and be very tolerant of them.

But homophobia would still be there.

[Putnam]

I think the alcohol thing is more about the fact that they have 3 times as large a liver.

Dwarves probably aren't gonna be homophobic. They seem the kind of culture to consider that about as bad as, say, loving cats, and besides that it's a stated goal of Toady not to have dwarves be too alienating.

Also, about that ninja post two above me: WTF does progressivism have to do with social darwinism?

[Skorp]

I have made a suggestion thread about this, so perhaps this discussion could be moved there? http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140609.0

[sal880612m]

The thing is most of the people arguing against the idea of homophobia being present in the game seem to hold a different view on how such a thing would actually look.

The implementation of homosexuality, asexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality is already in the game and once a dwarf is one they will always be one as I understand it. I am all for this but I want to be able to turn it off until I have a reached the second or third generation of a fort without immigrants at which point the population will be able to handle an uncooperative RNG.

Everyone against the idea of a homophobia ethic seems to think that having such an ethic means that what occurs will be only oppression of homosexuals but even as it currently stands the games supports the idea of shunning, exiling, beating, killing homophobes. Further such a thing would have the option to either have homophobia be not applicable or unthinkable in all civs by modding so it isn't as if you couldn't have DF world the way you want with modding.

Elf/goblin racial conflict is not really analogous with real-world racism as it is obviously based in an idea of fantasy races being substantially different from each other in real ways, not just cultural or skin-color differences.

i.e. nobody in the real world experiences discrimination due to being a goblin.  Man, now I feel ridiculous having typed that out.

That seems like a moot point. Racism is racism regardless of whether it has an obvious real world variant. Also I don't really see how goblins and elves are different from each except for cultural and aesthetic differences. I am having trouble thinking of an ethic that is present in DF that hasn't at some point been practiced by some culture IRL. As far as I can tell with the exception of them being immortal they show less difference between them that say a regular creature and a vampire or werebeast who biological can't help what they need.

I wouldnt have a problem with homophobia really in the game, it would just be frustrating to have to jail/exile all the homophobic dwarves, from a gameplay standpoint it would just be annoying and not add anything FUN to the game for me personally. 

This is why at least for the first couple generations of a fort I don't want same sex marriages so please explain where you feel justified rallying against homophobia and being judgmental and aggressive towards my wanting homosexuality be an option. Also I have to mod the game to play the way I want why should you be exempt from such a thing?

[WillowLuman]

If such prejudices were included, they should definitely be moddable. People who don't want to deal with stuff like that could turn it off, and people like me could have the story of the soldier antperson who rebels by becoming a fisher despite their tribe's longstanding tradition against their caste doing such a thing.

Terry Pratchett provides an interesting quote for the racism discussion, though:

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because -- what with trolls and dwarfs and so on -- speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

[Rokh]

Also, about that ninja post two above me: WTF does progressivism have to do with social darwinism?

Maybe I did not explain myself well. 'Social Darwinism' was the first thing that popped up in my head. My bad.
I disagree with the kind of people who say, "history is totally linear and a society's techological level correlates perfectly with its beliefs and values".

Well, that's extremely moot.

Anyway, I wouldn't like to start another flamewar so maybe I should just keep quiet...

[TD1]

Imagine if all your starting seven were gay, and after that there was a high percentage of gays. It would have too low a child yield, especially in forts that need children. I don't like it as a feature at all, but I could live with/mod it out.

[Skorp]

Imagine if all your starting seven were gay, and after that there was a high percentage of gays. It would have too low a child yield, especially in forts that need children. I don't like it as a feature at all, but I could live with/mod it out.

But that is as rare as having an adamantine forgotten beast with a direct path to the surface from the beginning...

[dbay]

Imagine if all your starting seven were gay, and after that there was a high percentage of gays. It would have too low a child yield, especially in forts that need children. I don't like it as a feature at all, but I could live with/mod it out.

What fort has ever, seriously, needed children? A baby born in a fortress takes twelve years to become a useful adult. How many of you here routinely have fortresses that last for twelve years without migrants? Whenever I play for a few seasons, I'm up to my ears in scores of migrants. I've been a heavy player of dwarf fortress for five years now, and I've not once been dependent on children born in my fortress. And if you even have a handful of opposite-sex couples, they'll crank out a baby each every year for over a century.

So I think that the whole "but we need babies!" argument really, really doesn't hold water in dwarf fortress.

[Broseph Stalin]

Imagine if all your starting seven were gay, and after that there was a high percentage of gays. It would have too low a child yield, especially in forts that need children. I don't like it as a feature at all, but I could live with/mod it out.

I guess that could be an issue if you were dealing with a fort that 1. included an entirely gay starting seven, 2. had an unusually high number of gay dwarves, and 3. lived long enough for children to have ANY value whatsoever.