Uhh, that might be pushing it there, Heph, though a marked improvement over:
I think it could get a nice skill. With a catch.
Better they are at sex (excluding they do it by spores anyway), bigger the offspring. So while it could be nice letting them have sex, to advance their repertoire of skills, you don't wanna get too good at it. Imagine the dwarfsplosion at Legendary+5.
Besides, what would they be called anyway? Legendary Sexer?
For a game that seeks to simulate a fantasy world and deals with things like specific heat, how
exactly does this make any sense in even a remotely realistic manner? UNLESS you mean "more children," which...wait, no, not really. Still weird. I mean, just because you can please another person doesn't mean that the pairing will result in triplets instead of one kid.
Considering the
Romans had birth control methods that were so effective that they
harvested a plant species to extinction in procuring one, I doubt a Dwarven society capable of using the power of magma that is ostensibly at the level of technology of the 1400s would have much trouble at all controlling the birth rate
in some manner.
Furthermore the birth rate of a culture is a factor of just that: the culture in question. Infant mortality, public health, access to effective, affordable medicine, and historical expectations all factor into the birth rate far more than how well you can copulate. A sex skill would be like having a
defecation skill: juvenile, amusing, but really not necessary nor terribly professional. The only thing it could possibly affect in game terms would be the divorce rate (possibly) and political relations if there was some religious sect devoted to sex, a la Tantra, or an enemy that was
very into having/not having sex (sex god worshiping elves comes to mind) in opposition to your civ. That would actually be interesting to have to play through.
That said, if one wanted to make DF really...well, dark I guess, or possibly add a more gritty real-world overtone, how to control the birth rate would be an interesting game challenge alone, and at least an arguable one for a society sim. Would you simply allow mothers to dump unwanted children in the garbage pile, or suffocate them? Institute a Spartan policy that culled the unfit, beardless dwarflings from the population? Order your alchemists to prepare birth control potions from the rare Tuberous Clover plant, but only the noble elite can afford it? Orphanages? Hit-or-miss folk remedies? State-organized pairings a la Plato's Republic? Ritual sacrifice? Hard, dangerous child labor? Forced sterilization? Religious dogma? Pray your dwarf civ simply has a cultural bias against families with more than two kids? Let them starve? Those are interesting things to worry about, and given DF's delightful descriptions of battle and players' murderous experiments, the game certainly has the stomach for it. One could even argue that it would be
wrong for a game to model the destruction of individual organs appropriately in a fatal fight, have a race that explicitly is described as cannibalistic, but gloss over the whole issue of creating life by assuming "it all works out." Nothing in DF ever "just works out."
Forgive the exposition, but I thought it would be necessary to bring a more complete argument to bear before the subject was thrown out the window. As I alluded to, the geek community is far too accepting of revolting levels of violence and gore but incredibly squeamish when it comes to reasonable sexuality that doesn't exclusively involve impossibly hot warrior babes wearing impossibly slim and down-right uncomfortable looking chain maille battle-thongs. As is oft brought up in the 'dwarven waste' suggestions, civil engineering isn't all hydro-power plants and grand causeways.
You may now continue with your regularly scheduled...whatever we are supposed to post in the dev-list, save stupendous amounts of squees and questions.
Author
Topic: Future of the Fortress: List of Remaining Items (Read 3666050 times)