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[FantasticDorf]

So anyway what does the theory of deterrence have to do with the thread subject?

I was acting by myself to answer your derailing statement posts because you misunderstood the content of 'it was a metaphor' as a summary answer, instead taking to talking about the quite literal nuclear deterrents i put in on the side as a bit of flavour to flesh out the post. 'its a metaphor' is a reference to the film 'the fault in our stars' in which a conversation is delivered talking about how a cigarette is a metaphor because it can kill you parsed between your teeth but it's unlit and therefore useless, a metaphor for being non-literal.

The animated gif is just being self satirical about the point, effectively pressing that even if rape is added to the game (which it is with night trolls) it can't even hurt anybody explicitly because its so ambigious that its barely active and non-applicable. To draw more relevance, david tennant's mouth and hands are completely covered in cigarettes, indicating that there are so many things that could kill you, and if they were lit (as per mods and game mechanics surrounding rape) it'd kill you a multitude amount faster.

I please hope this was a satisfactory explanation, it was a entertaining derail but now we've veered off to much and must get back to the task at hand.

[Random_Dragon]

Never has such a waste of time been illuminated in such a verbose manner.

[Egan_BW]

So anyway what does the theory of deterrence have to do with the thread subject?

I was acting by myself to answer your derailing statement posts because you misunderstood the content of 'it was a metaphor' as a summary answer, instead taking to talking about the quite literal nuclear deterrents i put in on the side as a bit of flavour to flesh out the post. 'its a metaphor' is a reference to the film 'the fault in our stars' in which a conversation is delivered talking about how a cigarette is a metaphor because it can kill you parsed between your teeth but it's unlit and therefore useless, a metaphor for being non-literal.

The animated gif is just being self satirical about the point, effectively pressing that even if rape is added to the game (which it is with night trolls) it can't even hurt anybody explicitly because its so ambigious that its barely active and non-applicable. To draw more relevance, david tennant's mouth and hands are completely covered in cigarettes, indicating that there are so many things that could kill you, and if they were lit (as per mods and game mechanics surrounding rape) it'd kill you a multitude amount faster.

I please hope this was a satisfactory explanation, it was a entertaining derail but now we've veered off to much and must get back to the task at hand.

TL;DR you threw in nuclear deterrence in order to buff your word count, got it.

[Random_Dragon]

As both of you are aptly demonstrating, this is why I've been shitposting instead of contributing to this argument. While I don't particularly mind the potential inclusion of such a thing to adventure mode, and personally advocate adding the ability to form romatic attachments with NPCs before any such mechanics are considered, put simply:

This suggestion is not going to generate much in the way of useful, intelligent discussion. It has been, currently is, and will continue to be mostly just arguing over prudishness and/or perversity. With a side order of people who seem to think this will turn DF into an H-game, further causing the argument of people who WANT such an unlikely development to occur, versus people who are afraid this suggestion makes it inevitable.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I'm sorry but no matter how much you guys sweet-talk, you ain't gettin' any.

[Random_Dragon]

Swiggity swooty, we're coming for that booty. o3o

And familiar bork is familiar.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

As both of you are aptly demonstrating, this is why I've been shitposting instead of contributing to this argument. While I don't particularly mind the potential inclusion of such a thing to adventure mode, and personally advocate adding the ability to form romatic attachments with NPCs before any such mechanics are considered, put simply:

This suggestion is not going to generate much in the way of useful, intelligent discussion. It has been, currently is, and will continue to be mostly just arguing over prudishness and/or perversity. With a side order of people who seem to think this will turn DF into an H-game, further causing the argument of people who WANT such an unlikely development to occur, versus people who are afraid this suggestion makes it inevitable.

I agree with this assessment.

[SixOfSpades]

This is a game where you can take someone and . . . beat him to death with his own eyeballs, and yet the idea of sex is off-limits.
. . . I just find it curious how mass, incredibly gory violence is okay but sex is not.

Oh, for Armok's sake. Violence is waaaaaaay less tabooed than sex. Imagine yourself as a kid, watching some gory action movie. Will you feel yourself guilty? Hell no, you would be enjoying the process all the way without fear of being caught watching. Now imagine yourself as a kid, watching some movie with a lot of sex scenes. Do I even need to explain further?

Yes, I believe you do. If you have a gut or emotional reaction to a sexy movie, or to the idea of a kid watching that movie, that's fine, you're perfectly entitled. But unless you can justify your reaction, unless you can explain why your emotions should have bearing on a logical argument, then your opinion is nothing more than that--one person's opinion. It brings nothing new to the table, and so convinces no one.
(Tangent: It's like those people who oppose breastfeeding in public, under the logic that "It's disgusting!" That seems to be literally their entire argument: They say, "It's disgusting," and then they just stop, they have nothing more. As if they expected the entire debate to be over because one person thought breastfeeding was icky.)
Back to sex-sensitivity. It's time to trot out the GRRM quote:

“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”

Personally, I have no idea why American culture is so a-ok with violence and so horrified by sexuality. Given the choice of what my hypothetical child would grow up viewing as a positive human behavior, I for one would FAR rather have them be comfortable with two people being intimate and giving pleasure to one another, than be blase about two people engaging in bloody, savage violence against each other.

. . . But because of today's culture of rape apologists, willing to downplay real attacks as "twenty minutes of action" and the like, I absolutely will not accept any attempt to portray sexual assault as something that is "okay" for the player to do, or even "allowed".

That's an extremely paternalistic viewpoint. You seem to want to control what other people do in their own homes with a single player video game.

That's a valid point, and I suppose I am on the side of the Thought Police in this particular case. I once saw a meme that summarized a related argument in this fashion:

Playing Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney doesn't make me a lawyer . . .
Playing Surgeon Simulator doesn't make me a doctor . . .
Playing Starfox doesn't make me a pilot . . .
Playing Diablo III doesn't make me a wizard . . .
Playing Guitar Hero doesn't make me a rock star . . .
But playing Grand Theft Auto will inevitably make me a criminal? 

But let me respond to that. I am not worried about Adventure Mode DF turning players into brutal killing machines ready to deal out ultraviolence at the slightest provocation. No one (well, hardly anyone) is afraid of a bloodthirsty lunatic suddenly going berserk with an axe anymore. That's because, these days, we're all afraid of a bloodthirsty lunatic suddenly going berserk with an assault rifle. Melee violence seems merely a quaint, relaxing interlude by comparison. And romanticizing medieval combat (which has been done for hundreds of years) has not provoked a real-world epidemic of armored swordsmen running amok. In short, the violence of Dwarf Fortress does not represent a threat capable of destabilizing or harming modern society.
On the other hand, suppose that Adventure Mode DF did include rape, and allow it to be committed against enemies (or other creatures) who lacked the ability to resist. The game already allows the maiming and killing of even sentient beings, and a character who is strong enough can perform these executions casually, as an everyday event. To allow the player to rape these creatures risks causing the two acts to achieve parity, in the player's mind: He is already inured to killing bandits, it's what the game is about. What if he slowly comes to regard the idea of raping them first as being similarly commonplace, or even expected? Now, I'm no sociologist, I don't have the statistics at my fingertips, I can't tell you exactly how many rapes are committed each year, but I'm pretty sure that it's too many. And while it's easy for a player to tell fantasy from reality as far as dueling a goblin is concerned, that distinction tends to blur when you have to have to morally distinguish raping a prostitute from . . . raping a prostitute.

So yes, call me paternalistic if you wish. Accuse me of wanting to police how individuals play a single-player game in their own homes. But all I'm arguing for is that Toady simply not include a way for combat to turn sexual in the game. Introducing sex is OK, just don't let it mix with the violence. If players want to play rape games, that's their call, but in my view DF would only be cheapened and degraded by such an inclusion.

This suggestion is not going to generate much in the way of useful, intelligent discussion. It has been, currently is, and will continue to be mostly just arguing over prudishness and/or perversity.

The opinions and arguments presented in this thread may seem old hat to you, but for some they may be relatively new, or at least thought-provoking. For my own part, I never thought that in this day & age I would have to debate that rape is a bad thing to encourage, so this has been (and may continue to be) an interesting rhetorical exercise for me. I assume that Toady gave up trying to read this thread by the time it overflowed the 1st page, and indeed, I highly doubt that we could come up with any sex-related gameplay suggestions that he hasn't already weighed. But as long as there are intelligent points of ethics to be considered and discussed, I will most likely consider and discuss them.

[Bumber]

If Toady added rape to the game (he wouldn't,) it risks DF being thrown out of the Museum of Modern Art and ruining all it's done for video games as an art form. If you want to go around force-"wrestling" mermaids, mod it and keep it to yourself. History has made it clear Toady doesn't want DF to be that.[/discussion]

If Toady decided to add some innuendo on the level of Shakespeare, that's probably okay.

[Whatsifsowhatsit]

Yeah, I don't see rape making it in. To be honest, I wish it would—and it's not because I want to "go around force-"wrestling" mermaids"—but I can definitely see the problems with it, and I don't want it to make things difficult for Toady or to have it make the game less successful. So yeah, I'll take a mod about this at some point, and that should be fine, I guess... I prefer playing vanilla, but I also want to have stories that involve these kinds of elements, at least some of the time.

Anyway, about sex more generally, I do think that can get in easily enough. As people have mentioned, it doesn't have to be described in any level of detail; you can just have it as an activity, and you can see that now these two people are having sex from seeing their activity in the list (in Fortress mode) and from seeing that their smileys (or whatever they look like in your graphics pack) are in a room together. At the very least, it could prevent weird nonsense about impregnation from across the map in impossible scenarios, as can happen now. And I do think sex, even without the issue of consent (i.e. it always only happens if there is consent), could be interesting story-wise if it came with associated emotions, as it does in real life, and bonding, and jealousy, and all that.

In that form, I think it would be fine it if were added, and then anyone who wants 'more' can (begrudgingly or otherwise) find it in mods.

[Random_Dragon]

Small problem with this. In fortress molde, last I checked this already occurs and spores are no longer a thing. You need to pasture animals next to each other. I don't recall whether citizens need to actually have a lucky timing of sleep schedules though, or if they're still spore based, but eh.

[Egan_BW]

I think creatures already have specific pathing so they can breed, so this would actually only require making that take some amount of time.

[SixOfSpades]

. . . it risks ruining all DF has done for video games as an art form.
History has made it clear Toady doesn't want DF to be that.

Agreed, on both counts.

Yeah, I don't see rape making it in. To be honest, I wish it would ... I prefer playing vanilla, but I also want to have stories that involve these kinds of elements, at least some of the time. . . . I do think sex, even without the issue of consent (i.e. it always only happens if there is consent), could be interesting story-wise if it came with associated emotions, as it does in real life, and bonding, and jealousy, and all that.

Hoo boy. In my view, the only "story-wise" element that would argue for adding rape to the game is that, if invaders could commit rape but fortress residents could not, it would make goblins capable of being more cruel than the Overseer, which would be interesting by its very novelty. Apart from that, it just adds flavor to goblin towers & Legends mode, and gives extra justification to waging a war of revenge.

In that form [consensual only], I think it would be fine if it [sex] were added, and then anyone who wants 'more' can (begrudgingly or otherwise) find it in mods.

Which leads me to my next point. Toady can discourage modding in rape, by adding sex. As the game stands now, any modded attempt at sex (even Obok Meatgod) gets authenticity by default: It's the only thing, therefore it's the real thing. But suppose, for a moment, that Toady codes the orgasm. It certainly doesn't need to be explicit or anything, a simple notification like "Vucar Lobsterpaddled has reached sexual satisfaction" would do just fine. Toady also makes this notification be blocked while "interacting" with any creature that is either unconscious or outright hostile. This would prevent all rape by force, or threat of force, and by extension it would impose a psychological barrier: Any mod that tries to kludge in sex without that notification (or a matching one) would feel, quite literally, anticlimactic.

[Egan_BW]

Wait, why are we talking about intentionally limiting what modders can do? I was under the impression that PC gaming culture as a whole was for the opposite of that.

[Dyret]

Wait, why are we talking about intentionally limiting what modders can do?

Posturing.