No fathers, no adoptions

DestinyCall · 2020-09-18 19:54:30

A long while back, I had an idea that would solve the problem of fatherhood, while also introducing an interesting new gameplay mechanic that has value beyond roleplaying - partnerships.

Basically partnerships would be a way to forge a lasting mutual relationship between two villagers. I'm thinking this would be done by using a text command or similar interaction - for example, both players would stand near each other and simply say "We are partners." A partnership could be formed between any two villagers, old or young, male or female, related or not.

This partnership would have three meaningful effects.

First, after forming the partnership, both you and your partner would gain a in-game arrow that points to the other person when activated. Using a text command like "/partner" would ping the marker, pointing you toward your partner, similar to the /leader command. This would allow you to keep tabs on your partner's general location and could be used to coordinate movements in-game. Long distance travel or migration would be made better, since you wouldn't be able to lose each other as easily. As long as your partner is alive, you will have a rough idea of where they are located and how to find them in-game.

The second effect of a partnership only comes into play if the two players are male/female and both of reproductive age. In this special case, the partnership is also a kind of "marriage" and any children born while the partnership is active will have two parents - mother and father. Last names and native language would inherit from the mother and children would display in her family tree. However, race is passed in a sex-linked fashion - ALL girls will take after their mother. ALL boys will be the father's skin-tone. So a ginger mom could give birth to a dark skinned boy, but all her daughters would be ginger and pass on ginger to their daughters.

This would prevent true melting-pot towns and maintain the racial profile for each family since a ginger family would never stop being ginger, but still allow mixed marriages and multi-colored families if people choose to actively seek out mixed partnerships, hour after hour.

Also, these partnerships are life-long commitments, so you should chose your partner wisely. You can only have one partner at a time and your current partner would need to die (somehow) before you can select a new partner.

Lastly, you gain a small icon on the HUD to let you know the status of your partnership and whether or not your partner is still alive. When you are in a "fertile" partnership, the partner HUD icon will be slightly different to indicate that your partnership is valid and fruitful. For example, the standard partnership icon could be a pair of clasped hands ("handshake"), while a fertile partnership could be two interlocked rings ("marriage") - or maybe a smiley face and a heart, whatever works. The HUD icon would update if your partnership status changes during your lifetime. So if an unrelated girl and a boy form a partnership and one of them is too young to bear children, the icon would indicate a neutral partnership - clasped hands. When they are both of an appropriate age, it changes to indicate the relationship is now fruitful - overlapping rings. And when either partner becomes too old, it changes back to the neutral partnership icon. In the unfortunate event that one of the partners dies, the surviving partner's status icon will change to a skull or other suitable death marker, to let them know that the partnership has ended. The survivor can now start a new partnership, if they so desire.

...

And a cool thing about partnerships is that even if you don't care about marriage or children, you can use neutral partnerships to help coordinate with another villager within the game and work more efficiently. Maybe you are an old man working on an engine and you form a partnership with your young apprentice so you can find him more easily in a large village. Or you are an Eve with just one girl child and you want to know if she lives or dies, so you partner up to gain the partnership status icon. Or your town is attacked by griefers when you are just a toddler and you feel with one of your siblings. You decide to partner so you won't lose each other if you get separated while traveling together in the wilderness.

There are many possible stories that could naturally evolve from marriages and partnerships. I think it would be a really cool mechanic that could serve as a foundation for more complex features down the road.

Spoonwood · 2020-09-18 22:22:20

DestinyCall wrote:

There are many possible stories that could naturally evolve from marriages and partnerships.

If marriage is for life, then there's no divorce story, or drama from divorce. If the ending of a marriage requires divorce or death of a spouse, that suggests more drama.

People probably would care more about their partners dying than their parents dying in game, or at least more than their cousins or children. At least if they don't think about genetic score. Do you think the longevity of one's partners should affect genetic score?

Villas · 2020-09-18 22:52:38

Well, mto suggestionabout fatherhood without creatig multi-Cultural Town without simples dropping a girl there keeps the same:

Villas wrote:

That's how would like to see (as a player):
- If a white man marries a black woman, their kids will be 50/50 black white.
The kids could have their traits swapped, like white boy with an affro, or black boy with a blond affro, swap their mouths, beards, eyes and whatnot.
- A multifamily girl will be fertile at her father and mother's homeland.
- After the divorce, the wife won't be fertile at the husband's homeland anymore, the kids keep both homelands though.
- If a person doesn't marry anyone, she can only have babies at their hometown and will share genes with the predominant race on her radius.
Ex.: I am a 50/50 ginger brown at ginger village, if I don't marry anyone I will share genes with gingers, then my baby will be 75/25 ginger brown. If a 75/25 ginger brown doesn't marry and have children at ginger town, their kids will be 100% ginger.
- A person can only have 2 family genes (for simplicity).
- A person can only do biome-specific activities if they have 50% or more genes from that specific family. If they have only 25% they can walk through those biomes without dropping their stuff (like when you a chasing someone), but they can't interact with anything on the floor nor drop anything there. For whites, they can understand anything with 50% or more white genes, but only understand a half if they have 25%.
If a 75/25 brown ginger marries a 50/50 white black, the first one has 75% chance of sharing ginger traits and 25% chance of sharing brown traits, while the second one has 50/50 chance of sharing any of the traits.
- You can't marry close relatives (this is not Alabama).
- Man/Man and Woman/Woman marriages wouldn't share genes nor homelands (for anti-exploit's sake).
- Rings should be made of gold.
- Gold should be mined on mountains.
- The family name should be mixed, for example Honey + Tarr = Honarr or Taney (I think that would be the hardest thing), the name of the parents should be changed as well, but go back to normal if divorced.
- Of course, the husband the wife have to say "I marry XXX" near each other, holding the golden rings.
- The rings should disappear if they divorce (to avoid spams, exploits and bugs), but could be recovered if they died while married.
As I said, I would like to see this as a player. But I'm not a game designer and I don't know if it is on his vision for the game, I don't know the effect on the long run nor the work needed for this, perhaps it would take 2 months making him stopping doing more essential stuff. I don't know, but I would like to see something similar.

A constant flow of immigrants would be needed to create a multi cultural town and they can change the family race if there are more immigrants than natives. Also, only a small part of people would be able to go to 2 expert biomes (only the 50/50). And a single ginger with hometown in brown family wouldn't last forever, since the offspring would become totally brown in 3 gens, unless more ginger people come and marry with them, what wouldn't be very easy since they can't be close relatives. I think this way we could enjoy fatherhood and multicultural townsbut not as easy as it was before, we would need a constant and controlled flow of immigrants and not just a fertile girl.

DestinyCall · 2020-09-18 23:13:31

Spoonwood wrote:

DestinyCall wrote:
There are many possible stories that could naturally evolve from marriages and partnerships.
If marriage is for life, then there's no divorce story, or drama from divorce. If the ending of a marriage requires divorce or death of a spouse, that suggests more drama.
People probably would care more about their partners dying than their parents dying in game, or at least more than their cousins or children. At least if they don't think about genetic score. Do you think the longevity of one's partners should affect genetic score?

I don't care about meme score, so I have no opinion about how to integrate it into the proposed mechanic.

...

Regarding divorce, I think it makes for better drama if a partnership is for life. It provides some weight to the choice. If you can "marry" multiple people at the same time or repeatedly trade spouses back and forth by divorcing, I think that undermines the significance of the commitment.

You are only alive for one hour. If you marry the wrong person, suck it up and deal with the consequences.

Or kill 'em.

One Hour One Life Forums

#26 2020-09-18 19:54:30

Re: No fathers, no adoptions

#27 2020-09-18 22:22:20

Re: No fathers, no adoptions

#28 2020-09-18 22:52:38

Re: No fathers, no adoptions

#29 2020-09-18 23:13:31

Re: No fathers, no adoptions

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