Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NW_Kohaku]

e.g because there's no explicit Marxism in the game, it's a Capitalist Conspiracy! Every second fortress should be overthrown by an anarcho-syndicalist commune run by the haulers. And they should stop following your labour designations or order for extra realism.

And animal rights - every second dwarf should be a PETA member or it's just not fair. We treat animals worse than gays, it's Auswitz 24/7 for the animal kingdom in Real Life. So every frame of DF should be filled with animal rights activism. After all, it's got animals in it.

Both of these sound great.  I'd really like to see these somehow put into the game.

I need to go amend the Class Warfare thread for anarchist revolutions based upon explicitly Marxist ideologies.

PETA should be for the elves, though, that's really up their ally.  I mean, they already go to war over trees, right?

[NW_Kohaku]

For the record, there should not be a gay caste.  That's really rediculous, since they'd be considered like a gender, able to have different traits, body parts, maturing ages, attributes, etc.  That's not what castes ARE.  Castes are genders, like Male, Female, Queen Bee, Worker Ant, and stuff like that.  And the things you could add to a caste aren't remotely necessary for anything resembling human sexuality.

Being gay would have to be put in as a Personality Trait, maybe two (Homosexuality and Tolerance).  That means you're born with it, it can shift over time, and you could have people that are right in the middle, instead of just "either or".  This would allow lots of behaviors like gays in love with straights, self-hating gays, homophobic straights, and the whole gammut.  That's MUCH better, I think.  Really captures the representation of a wide spectrum of sexual behaviors without alot of kludgy mechanics.

I should point out that the difference between a "gay caste" and a "gay personality trait" that can go up or down over time is the difference between being "born gay" and it being a result of culture (or rather, personality is already something you're born with now, I guess...) 

This happens to be one of those dividing lines of ideology, as well.  As I said before in the thread, there is research pointing both ways on that topic, so be sure that you explain your ideological frame of reference when you are arguing over which of these you are supporting... Maybe you're not agreeing on the solution because you are identifying different problems, here?

[devek]

This could even be a farming nerf. If you want straight dwarfs who can father 100 children, you need to feed your dwarfs high quality meat cause nothing is more straight than a juicy sausage.

[knaveofstaves]

Post deleted.

Yeah, I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry.

[Reelyanoob]

@nw_kohaku:

Let me decode it for you - you said, if i didn't like the ETHICS tag for capital punishment of gays, I could just take it out my copy of the game. That was your specific example I was responding to. I made an analogy, just because you want something added to the existing product, everyone has to have it too, just the way you like it. They can remove it to play like now if they want, but you and others imply there's something mentally defective if we so wish to do so. I outlined a potential future modding scheme which would allow a range of behaviours to be modelled, mainly arguing against the civ-level persecution idea, and i'm labelled a redneck hater for this suggestion.

Thus my analogy of you dictating the flavour of a cupcake I can purchase, based on what you want on yours, insinuating I have dishonest/hidden motives if I state my reasons for preferring the old versions.

I basically know all about the history of persecution, but I don't want to deal with a treatise on the topic every time I turn the computer on, make it something in the background, like the sims 2 - 3. They had the themes there if you wanted to pay attention, but never rammed the issue down your throat or had gays being beaten up in the streets.

I have tried to be careful not to resort to any "straw-man" arguments or mischaractisation of the other viewpoint, but I see you guys questioning the character, ethics and stated motivations of those who don't think this is such a good idea, at least as outlined.

And to those who doubt this will be a big forum topic, consider the volume, pace and polarization this issue has already caused, and it's not even in the development pipeline at all. If it becomes a standard game feature, complete with anti-gay / pro-gay civilizations, porgroms etc, it'll be totally and unnecassarily politicized. My main motivation is I'd hate that real-world politics intrudes into the DF community.

As for the "pron fest", I don't know where you get that notion, since I was explicitly talking about having relationships not sex. 

Hold on weren't you saying before that the straight relationships necessarily implied sex? Or was that someone else? Now your distinguishing that a gay relationship doesn't necessarily imply sex.

[Jeoshua]

Ok knaveofstaves.  I want you to do something for me.  Try talking to me like you aren't assuming you can read my mind, please? It would really help me not get so annoyed with you, if you weren't pretending that you know everything about me.  And it would make me feel much better about chatting with you if you didn't seem to have the attitude of "if you disagree at all then your reasoning must be stupid".

Okay? We're all adults here and we can try to act like it (using big words doesn't automatically make those words not inflamatory or offensive). Moving on.

Kohaku:
Dwarves are born with personality traits already set.  This isn't an argument over birth/choice here, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let's not touch that subject.  We're close enough to a flame war boiling over into the rest of the forum without opening that pandora box.

The logic of using a personality trait is that homosexuality becomes, then, a spectrum. Caste-level homosexuality would be akin to a "you're gay or you're not gay, and that's all there is to say about it" switch.  There would be no room for anything like bisexuals or "fairweather gays" or people so straight their butt squeaks when they walk.  That's why I want it as a personality trait.

And yeah I kind of view it as my job to evaluate things in this forum for how they could best work.  I'm just getting a bit annoyed with people who want it "by whatever means necessary, now now now" instead of considering the how of the situation.

Most of the people discussing in this thread agree that it should go in, we're just disagreeing on methodology and the timing of the endeavor.

[NW_Kohaku]

hilarious and awful trolling of which /b/ would be proud  -- knaveofstaves' translation

Why exactly would you be so put off by there being gay people in your video game? Do gay people offend you that much?

G, dude, no feeding the trolls! He said "homosexualism"! No sentient being says "homosexualism"!

I have to again say that while you may be arguing for something that is noble in intent, you don't help your cause any by assuming someone who disagrees is trolling, or by using offensive terms with Jeoshua, who is clearly agreeing with you in almost all the basics of what we are talking about.

[kaenneth]

I don't think 'Homosexuality' would be an appropraite trait.

Why not?

I meant 'appropraite' in a technical sense, as in 'suitable', not a moral sense like 'acceptable'

Because it's dependant upon the caste of the person who has it; making same-caste attraction a special case instead of treating it as an ordinary attribute of the individual. I think it's better quantified as an attraction rating to each caste in the species or even to castes within other species, such as when horses and donkeys make mules. Allowing one module of code to handle the mate selection for LBGT Dwarves, Night Creature spouse-nappers, Ameoba men that can asexually reproduce, furries, a tri-sexual species, or even that disgusting dwarf that wants to spore with an elf.

Calling out gays specifically, and attaching a special "Homosexual" label to it also has more potential to offend people on both sides, and get low-brow laughs than a more abstract and flexable system of representing what a creature considers valid targets for bed-sharing.

(Are Mules hard coded, or is there something i missed in the raws that makes them possible?)

[Jeoshua]

Mules are a separate creature, and that is a seperate topic entirely to what we've been discussing.

I don't agree that Homosexuality wouldn't be apprioriate as a trait, obviously, if you've read my other posts.  I think that's the only place it legitimately could be places.  Caste-level homosexuality would be too limiting.  On the other hand, a Personality Trait would be able to handle a broad spectrum of sexual behaviors with reguards to which gender a dwarf will pick.  It would even be possible, if added as a Personality Trait, to have a person who is directly in the middle, and very gregarious, and outgoing, and friendly.... they'd probably end up being a hit at parties, doncha think?

It would also allow people who are very attracted to their same gender, but completely uninterested in sex whatsoever.  They'd pretty much only make friends with their own gender, but wouldn't be technically homosexuals.  They'd just like hanging out with the guys, and wouldn't like girls (or vice versa, please let's agree not to flame over political correctness )

[knaveofstaves]

And to those who doubt this will be a big forum topic, consider the volume, pace and polarization this issue has already caused, and it's not even in the development pipeline at all. If it becomes a standard game feature, complete with anti-gay / pro-gay civilizations, porgroms etc, it'll be totally and unnecassarily politicized. My main motivation is I'd hate that real-world politics intrudes into the DF community.

Alea iacta est. Dwarf Fortress reflects a real-world politics already. The game as designed is heteronormative in its politics. Your claim that real-world politics has not yet intruded -- that the status quo is apolitical and change is political -- is itself a political claim.

As far as the in-game consequences go, well, let an invading civ come and hunt me for letting two men share a room. You want my freedom? Μολὼν λαβέ besieging scum. I know where the magma is.

[Reelyanoob]

The logic of using a personality trait is that homosexuality becomes, then, a spectrum. Caste-level homosexuality would be akin to a "you're gay or you're not gay, and that's all there is to say about it" switch.  There would be no room for anything like bisexuals or "fairweather gays" or people so straight their butt squeaks when they walk.  That's why I want it as a personality trait.

Well, I did address this in my follow-up post which used 6 castes, POP_RATIOs, and a boolean matrix to link them together. It wouldn't be totally realistic, but would give a fair illusion, of straight, gay, bi mixed population. The bi's just by chance of who they form relationships with, would fall into a bell-curve (binomial distribution) from those who had had mostly same-sex partners, to those who ad had mainly other-sex partners.

This would require much less change to the code than an entire new personality trait and hard-coding it.

And I laugh at the logic of the poster who said this scheme couldn't work because in theory I could add 17 heads or whatever to the MALE_BISEXUAL caste. Yeah, and In theory I could drive my car of a cliff, so that makes driving on the road impossible.

[Jeoshua]

Which seems easier to code:

6 castes of varying amounts of gayness, which don't really cover all the posibilities,  and don't use the caste options of differing body types, statistics, and all of that stuff that normally goes into a caste

or

1 parameter which can encompass the entire spectrum of homosexual types, but of which all types might not get recognized and coded in immediately

[Reelyanoob]

Yeah, but with the smaller change for Toady WE would create the Castes. That's my point.

And the fact that it only makes the most simple use of caste-level features is an advantage, not a disadvantage. How is lack of complexity a problem? Thanks for pointing out how simple and compact the castes will be with my system, compared to the 'average' caste.

Toady adding in the new trait explicity is more work for him than creating a modding opportunity.



EDIT: And if Toady implements it directly, the code will do that thing, and only that thing. Caste-level relationship control could be used for that thing, and countless other mods.

And can you outline the missing possibilities for me and how would someone tell the difference from my system, which would have :-

Male_Gay : relations with Male_Gay or Male_Bi
Male_Bi : relations with Male_Gay or Female_Straight
Male_Straight : relations with Female_Bi or Female_Straight
Female_Gay : relations with Female_Gay or Female_Bi
Female_Bi : relations with Female_Gay or Male_Straight
Female_Straight : relations with Male_Bi or Male_Straight

Since I can create all these castes right now, just not control the relationship choices, in any POP_RATIOs I like, exactly which possibilities am I missing? And how will a player distinguish this system from what you have in mind?

[NW_Kohaku]

@nw_kohaku:

Let me decode it for you - you said, if i didn't like the ETHICS tag for capital punishment of gays, I could just take it out my copy of the game. That was your specific example I was responding to. I made an analogy, just because you want something added to the existing product, everyone has to have it too, just the way you like it. They can remove it to play like now if they want, but you and others imply there's something mentally defective if we so wish to do so.

How, exactly, am I implying that you are mentally defective if you want to mod the game or alter an init option?

I'm not even saying what setting I DO like or want it at, either.  I said that the vanilla settings are up to what Toady wants to decide.

Toady recently said he wanted goblins to not need to eat, but be capable of eating meat just for funsies.  That's a fairly weird choice, but it's his game, and if he wants vanilla goblins to be autotrophs, it's his game, and if I don't like it enough, I can just mod out the goblins not eating part. 

If I do mod goblins to eat, it's not because I'm somehow "mentally defective" for not agreeing with Toady in what fantasy creatures want to eat. 

If you want to mod the game so that there are no gays, want to mod the game so that straights and gays live together in total peace and harmony, mod the game so that some societies don't give gays full rights, mod the game so that some societies outright persecute gays while others are accepting, or even mod the game so that there is a homosexual uber-class that rules the world with a handful of "breeders" kept in the pits, it's all your own choice to enjoy the game however you want.

You just have to handle the fact that someone else may not be playing the game the same way you are, which shouldn't be too much to ask.

I outlined a potential future modding scheme which would allow a range of behaviours to be modelled, mainly arguing against the civ-level persecution idea, and i'm labelled a redneck hater for this suggestion.

I think you're conflating a lot of different arguments for different things into something entirely different, here.

Nobody was declaring you a "redneck hater" for saying that you could have a "gay caste". 

Jeoshua was saying that a personality trait system would be better, but that's not a personal insult by any means. 

G-Flex said that we shouldn't avoid adding in homosexuality just because it would be controversial, since that would be allowing the game to be intimidated by a force that hasn't really even shown its face in the forums, anyway.

Neither of them were calling you a "redneck hater".

Thus my analogy of you dictating the flavour of a cupcake I can purchase, based on what you want on yours, insinuating I have dishonest/hidden motives if I state my reasons for preferring the old versions.

I have tried to be careful not to resort to any "straw-man" arguments or mischaractisation of the other viewpoint, but I see you guys questioning the character, ethics and stated motivations of those who don't think this is such a good idea, at least as outlined.

... Umm... No, I don't think you have some sort of dishonest motives, and I'm not sure what I've said that would insinuate that.

In fact, trying to set up some sort of ideological purity test would be fairly harmful to the entire idea.  Most of the people in this discussion generally agree on the basics, so there isn't any reason to go about trying to play some game of judging and shaming others.

Mature people can disagree over facts, not over each other.

I basically know all about the history of persecution, but I don't want to deal with a treatise on the topic every time I turn the computer on, make it something in the background, like the sims 2 - 3. They had the themes there if you wanted to pay attention, but never rammed the issue down your throat or had gays being beaten up in the streets.

And to those who doubt this will be a big forum topic, consider the volume, pace and polarization this issue has already caused, and it's not even in the development pipeline at all. If it becomes a standard game feature, complete with anti-gay / pro-gay civilizations, porgroms etc, it'll be totally and unnecassarily politicized. My main motivation is I'd hate that real-world politics intrudes into the DF community.

You know, there's this game called Liberal Crime Squad that Toady made...

Anyway, this game is a single-player game.  It doesn't have the capacity to judge you for picking one setting or another.  If you are honestly terrified that someone might start an argument with you because you didn't want to see gays not receiving full civil rights even in other cultures besides dwarves and change it, then you just don't have to tell anyone, and they'll never be able to argue or judge.

I'd like for at least one civilization to have a gay community that has to keep it on the down low for fear of being shunned by society, and I'd like for a great deal of social strife to be introduced into the game, generally. 

Right now, DF is a game where dwarves are practically "color-coded robots" that just perform tasks and have no autonomy or personality.  Having dwarves that form some sort of proletariat and try to overthrow the bourgeois nobles, or at least just decide to move out if you can't provide decent enough lodging, and have the ability to form factions within the fortress so that you have to actually worry about the stresses inside the fortress, not just the threats from without, these are all the ways that you can truly expand what Dwarf Fortress is really all about.

As for the "pron fest", I don't know where you get that notion, since I was explicitly talking about having relationships not sex. 

Hold on weren't you saying before that the straight relationships necessarily implied sex? Or was that someone else? Now your distinguishing that a gay relationship doesn't necessarily imply sex.

OK, chalk this up as a miscommunication caused by using the same term to mean different things, then.

When I say "we don't need sex in this game", I mean we can keep "sex" the same as it is right now - not sex, just magically having creatures get visits from the stork or something.  That's implied sex, but it's not displayed sex.  We don't need to display sex.  We should, however, display intimacy - the actual act of building up relationships, and make social mingling a more major portion of the game. 

I'm saying lesbians are just girls that really like spending their off time throwing rock nuts at the goblins in the zoo with other girls more than spending time with guys, and getting relationship values that go into "lover" range with other women, not with men.  (Or have the ability to go into the lover range with both...)  Meanwhile, we need to have the ability for dwarves to want to seek out taking breaks with the people in their serious relationships, and having those relationships become more important and more detailed in the game.

None of this has to involve any displayed sex.


HAHA! 6 ninjas in one post!

[knaveofstaves]

I have to again say that while you may be arguing for something that is noble in intent, you don't help your cause any by assuming someone who disagrees is trolling, or by using offensive terms with Jeoshua, who is clearly agreeing with you in almost all the basics of what we are talking about.

I am grateful for the reminder to check myself and I hope I have not strayed too far beyond the line. I guess the applicable rule is: "Be respectful.  If you don't intend to show respect, do not post.  If there is a problem, use the "Report to moderator" button on a post in the thread.  Do not handle it on your own."

My problem is that if I hit "report to moderator" every time I saw a post on this thread that I found either outright offensive, or "think of the forums!" concern trolling, I'd have flagged half the thread. And if I also flagged the posts that have what I perceive to be latent homophobia, I'd flag a further quarter of them. I wish I lived in a world where I felt I would be supported in hitting that mod button every time, but, hey, it's not in my knapsack o'privileges.

It is my own fault that I did not hit it once, that's probably acceptable, right? Sigh.