Pregnancy

[Super Squirrel]

I want to design pregnancy in game system. I want to figure out everything from chance of conception to effects during the various pregnancy stages.

 

One of the first things I thought of was creating a disclaimer for the rules.

 

Disclaimer:

Pregnancy is a serious issue. The rules on pregnancy are intended for a guide to both the GM and players. This optional set of rules should not be used unless both the player and the GM are willing to use these rules.

 

I did find an old thread that discussed effects of pregnancy that may help come up with this information.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27830&highlight=pregnancy

 

I want to note that in my Valdorian Age game, I have determined that one of my player's characters is, in fact, pregnant. This is something the player was actually asking me about. The player is aware that her character is pregnant but no other details have been determined at this time.

[Lucius]

Pregnancy

 

Someone in my household has expressed an interest in playing a character with Life Support: Immune to Pregnancy.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks it has a much simpler system....

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Pregnancy

 

Someone in my household has expressed an interest in playing a character with Life Support: Immune to Pregnancy.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary thinks it has a much simpler system....

Heh.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Pregnancy

 

I did find an old thread that discussed effects of pregnancy that may help come up with this information.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27830&highlight=pregnancy

You should disclaimer that link about the flame war therein.

 

Oh. I guess I just did.

[archermoo]

Re: Pregnancy

 

You should disclaimer that link about the flame war therein.

 

Oh. I guess I just did.

 

Seemed like a pretty minor flare-up more than a full flame-war.

 

[L. Marcus]

Re: Pregnancy

 

. . . And I thought you were anouncing a happy occasion . . .

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Pregnancy

 

. . . And I thought you were anouncing a happy occasion . . .

Heh. Sorry. Not for another 4 years, at least.

[Solomon]

Re: Pregnancy

 

Heh. Sorry. Not for another 4 years' date=' at least.[/quote']

 

Gasp! Owls have truly looong pregnancies!

[L. Marcus]

Re: Pregnancy

 

. . . Incubations . . .

[Mantis]

Re: Pregnancy

 

I did find an old thread that discussed effects of pregnancy that may help come up with this information.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27830&highlight=pregnancy

Not this thread, then: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=506561?

 

On a more helpful theme: The chances of a pregnancy occuring are governed by the period of time when the woman ovulates, which is a few hours (IIRR) every 28 days. Copulation in this time frame gives a high (but not 100%) chance of impregnation. For the rest of the 28 days, your chances are nada.

 

Effects of pregnancy: Vary wildly from woman to woman. I have known women to unwell all day every day throughout their pregnancy. OTOH, we have all seen news stories about women who go to hospital with tummy ache and delivery a baby they never knew they were carrying. Between these two extremes, the most common "symptoms" are morning sickness (first trimester) and backache (last trimester), along with some weight gain, in addition to the extra weight of the growing foetus being carried. There is an alleged increase in endurance in the very early stages of pregnancy, there are tales of East German athletes becoming pregnant just before an Olympics and having an abortion straight after in order to improve their performance, but I don't know if this is just an urban legend/propaganda.

 

Other things to consider: 1/3 of all pregnancies result in miscarriages. Depending on the time period/location, infant mortality rates from live births will vary (the mortality rate of premature babies in particular has declined dramatically in the Western world in recent times).

[archermoo]

Re: Pregnancy

 

Not this thread' date=' then: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=506561?

 

BAD Mantis, no biscuit!!!

 

[Solomon]

Re: Pregnancy

 

. . . Incubations . . .

 

It's an Owl/Squirrel we're talking here. Well, the Owlbear is a mammal, Gary Gigax says so!

[Tornado]

Re: Pregnancy

 

Maybe it's a monotreme? They give birth to eggs, but are warm blooded and breast feed their babies.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Pregnancy

 

I think having rules for conception and the effects of pregnancy is asking for trouble.

 

I'm more interested in the genetics side of it: would a child inherit superhuman abilities (assuming superhuman parents) or would the child (assuming heroic characters) have a 15 INT like mum or an 11 INT like dad, or something else?

 

However, whilst you can come up with rules for this stuff it would have to be a pretty long campaign to matter, and dramatic sense will probably have taken over long before it does.

 

EG: assuming that the ability to manifest superpowers is controlled by a single gene (S/s for dominant/recessive) and is recessive, two parents with superpowers will always have a superpowered child (it would work much like eye colour), but two normal parents could either be SS (double dominant - normal true breeders) or Ss (have the gene but it does not manifest). One SS parent and the child will never have superpowers, two Ss parents and there is a 1 in 4 chance....and so on.

 

[b]SS	Ss	           ss[/b]
[b]SS[/b]	SS	SS/Ss	           Ss/Ss
[b]Ss[/b]	SS/Ss	SS/Ss/Ss/ss	   Ss/ss
[b]ss[/b]	Ss/Ss	Ss/ss	           ss

 

It gets a lot more complicated if the ability to manifest superpowers/cast magic or whatever is controlled by more than one gene.

[DangerousDan]

Re: Pregnancy

 

I think having rules for conception and the effects of pregnancy is asking for trouble.

 

I'm more interested in the genetics side of it: would a child inherit superhuman abilities (assuming superhuman parents) or would the child (assuming heroic characters) have a 15 INT like mum or an 11 INT like dad, or something else?

.

.

.

It gets a lot more complicated if the ability to manifest superpowers/cast magic or whatever is controlled by more than one gene.

 

Since Superheroes have to pay points for nearly everything, one can argue that in game terms, they are sterile unless they have paid for "Duplication (creates 0-point form), Cannot Recombine (+0); Gradual Effect 9 months (-2 3/4)":rolleyes: Of course, since this is a 0 active point power, anyone can have it. But when do you start have to worry about keeping up with 200+ point super-babies.

[Eosin]

Re: Pregnancy

 

Pregnancy is something that shouldn't be stipulated by the dice. It is something a character wants or doesn't want. There are literally a metric boatload of serious psychological issues tied up in that little state and in peoples mind about getting pregnant so I would leave it alone.

 

Even more importantly, I would leave out any discussion of how the character feels and any effects of or on the pregnancy. There are about 3 dozen common "pregnancy" pathways (the glowing pregnant, the puker, etc...) and so no set of rules is going to work, unless you plan on making "THE ULTIMATE PREGNANCY BOOK."

 

Finally, and most importantly, keep your hands off the character and her child-to-be during the game. Unless you happen to be intimate with the person there are strong chances that you don't know their sexual history - nor any landmines that might be lurking. The fun to risk factor is 0.0002 to 100,000,000. Unfortunately, if someone suffers it is almost never the person who decided the rules would be cool.

[Solomon]

Re: Pregnancy

 

I think having rules for conception and the effects of pregnancy is asking for trouble.

 

I'm more interested in the genetics side of it: would a child inherit superhuman abilities (assuming superhuman parents) or would the child (assuming heroic characters) have a 15 INT like mum or an 11 INT like dad, or something else?

 

However, whilst you can come up with rules for this stuff it would have to be a pretty long campaign to matter, and dramatic sense will probably have taken over long before it does.

 

EG: assuming that the ability to manifest superpowers is controlled by a single gene (S/s for dominant/recessive) and is recessive, two parents with superpowers will always have a superpowered child (it would work much like eye colour), but two normal parents could either be SS (double dominant - normal true breeders) or Ss (have the gene but it does not manifest). One SS parent and the child will never have superpowers, two Ss parents and there is a 1 in 4 chance....and so on. (snip)

 

Going by source material (eg comics) I'd say superpower-genes are dominant. Every single son or daughter of a superhero/heroine seems to be able to manifest powers. And there are instances of characters who inherited a Focus power or a training power.

 

This angle would be interesting to explore in a "legacy" campaign. Say, one might run a pulp-era or Golden Age scenario, then fast-forward to the Silver Age, to the present, and maybe to the future.

[Solomon]

Re: Pregnancy

 

Maybe it's a monotreme? They give birth to eggs' date=' but are warm blooded and breast feed their babies.[/quote']

So the Owlbear is Grayhawk's Platypus? That computes.

 

Since Superheroes have to pay points for nearly everything' date=' one can argue that in game terms, they are sterile unless they have paid for "Duplication (creates 0-point form), Cannot Recombine (+0); Gradual Effect 9 months (-2 3/4)":rolleyes: Of course, since this is a 0 active point power, anyone can have it. But when do you start have to worry about keeping up with 200+ point super-babies.[/quote']

Well, a small child would be better represented as a DNPC, and a grown-up one might be everything from an indipendent character to a Hunted. Lots of dramatic potential here.

What? You were kidding?

 

Pregnancy is something that shouldn't be stipulated by the dice. It is something a character wants or doesn't want. There are literally a metric boatload of serious psychological issues tied up in that little state and in peoples mind about getting pregnant so I would leave it alone.

 

Even more importantly, I would leave out any discussion of how the character feels and any effects of or on the pregnancy. There are about 3 dozen common "pregnancy" pathways (the glowing pregnant, the puker, etc...) and so no set of rules is going to work, unless you plan on making "THE ULTIMATE PREGNANCY BOOK."

 

Finally, and most importantly, keep your hands off the character and her child-to-be during the game. Unless you happen to be intimate with the person there are strong chances that you don't know their sexual history - nor any landmines that might be lurking. The fun to risk factor is 0.0002 to 100,000,000. Unfortunately, if someone suffers it is almost never the person who decided the rules would be cool.

I do agree with your sentiment, game rules should not overshadow dramatic rules. Of course SS mentioned it was his player that specifically asked for it, and from a theoretical viewpoint I'm very interested in seeing how he will pull that off.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Pregnancy

 

What Eosin said, 100%.

 

We have had one pregnancy and birth 'in game' but it was done between campaigns, so one ended, and the next started several years hence (by which time the child was a teenager and, together with his mother, largely in charge of the USA.....long story)

 

The genetics of superpowers are interesting and I've based more than one campaign on different suppositions about how it works (I did not trouble the players with this information as it was not widely known in the game world).

 

One idea we had was that superpowers are controlled by a number of different factors: first off the power cells (humans have mitichondria which provide power for our cells (OK - bit of a simplification but run with it)), which had been deliberately removed by viral surgery at some point in our past. Second the power control mechanisms which usually interact witht he pronciples of evolution to produce an overall racial power type: that is how it happened in the rest of the galaxy.

 

Because of the lack of our 'power cells' though, the control mechanisms developed entirely randomly and appeared, in human genetic material, simply to be random strings of meaningless DNA.

 

Then someone introduced a retrovirus to replace the 'power cells' and suddenly those random strings of junk DNA started lighting up like Christmas trees. Without evolutionary pressure, the powers that were produced were often of patchy use, or non-functional, sometimes fatal, but, on the infinite number of monkies principle, occasionally threw up a synergistic power set that outstripped anything anywhere else in the galaxy.

 

Like I said, the players didn't know that....

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Pregnancy

 

The point is, there will always be someone who wants to know the rules on pregnancy. Whether we like it or not it will happen. In my game, the character will be pregnant. It will be a state of being, not much more. After 9 months the character will give birth. It will be an event.

 

I don't see any harm in designing the rules.

 

I've been trying to find some information on general percentages for getting pregnant. What I understand is that three days out of the 28 day cycle, a female is the most fertile. The rest of the time it is still possible to get pregnant but the chances are far less. I, however, have not been able to find any average percentiles on this information.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Pregnancy

 

Going by source material (eg comics) I'd say superpower-genes are dominant. Every single son or daughter of a superhero/heroine seems to be able to manifest powers. And there are instances of characters who inherited a Focus power or a training power.

 

Luna (daughter of the mutant Quicksilver and the Inhuman Crystal) is a perfectly normal baseline human. [so far...]

 

Aquaman and Mera's son died very young, but had manifested no evidence of Mom or Dad's abilities, and could not survive outside of water.

 

Of course, the longer the child is in the comics, the more likely some writer will decide giving Junior powers would be a good story arc. Ant-Man's daughter Cassie Lang had no powers forever, until SpiderGirl set her up as the Avenger Stinger, and now Young Avengers provided her with a different powerset as Stature. However, the same seems to happen to DNPC's and other supporting cast, so I'm not sure we can blame genetics.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Pregnancy

 

After pondering the things in this thread for a bit, I've been thinking that maybe Kessa wouldn't have much of an averse reaction. She is, after all, very strong and healthy to begin with. So long as she's active and continues training and practicing, I think she could adjust to most of the changes fairly well. Focusing on these changes, I think, would bring too much focus on her and bore the other players. We can probably just timeskip over the last couple of months when she might be having some maneuverability issues, making rules completely unnecessary.

 

I mean, I don't mean to make light of modern pregnancy, but it's called a game for a reason. You can gloss over things like that.

[Kristopher]

Re: Pregnancy

 

After pondering the things in this thread for a bit, I've been thinking that maybe Kessa wouldn't have much of an averse reaction. She is, after all, very strong and healthy to begin with. So long as she's active and continues training and practicing, I think she could adjust to most of the changes fairly well. Focusing on these changes, I think, would bring too much focus on her and bore the other players. We can probably just timeskip over the last couple of months when she might be having some maneuverability issues, making rules completely unnecessary.

 

I mean, I don't mean to make light of modern pregnancy, but it's called a game for a reason. You can gloss over things like that.

 

 

I don't know any details about that game, obviously, but the only other issue I can think of is whether or not a pregnant woman would go adventuring unless she had no other choice.

 

 

(Having seen the way other discussions of this issue have blown up, I have to add the disclaimer that the above statement is purely abstract and hypothetical, and merely intended to ask an honest, well-intended, and good-natured question.)

[Lucius]

Re: Pregnancy

 

One idea we had was that superpowers are controlled by a number of different factors: first off the power cells (humans have mitichondria which provide power for our cells (OK - bit of a simplification but run with it)), which had been deliberately removed by viral surgery at some point in our past. Second the power control mechanisms which usually interact witht he pronciples of evolution to produce an overall racial power type: that is how it happened in the rest of the galaxy.

 

Because of the lack of our 'power cells' though, the control mechanisms developed entirely randomly and appeared, in human genetic material, simply to be random strings of meaningless DNA.

 

Then someone introduced a retrovirus to replace the 'power cells' and suddenly those random strings of junk DNA started lighting up like Christmas trees. Without evolutionary pressure, the powers that were produced were often of patchy use, or non-functional, sometimes fatal, but, on the infinite number of monkies principle, occasionally threw up a synergistic power set that outstripped anything anywhere else in the galaxy.

 

Like I said, the players didn't know that....

 

That actually makes sense......

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary has a Y chromosome and a Y-not? chromosome...

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Pregnancy

 

I don't know any details about that game, obviously, but the only other issue I can think of is whether or not a pregnant woman would go adventuring unless she had no other choice.

 

 

(Having seen the way other discussions of this issue have blown up, I have to add the disclaimer that the above statement is purely abstract and hypothetical, and merely intended to ask an honest, well-intended, and good-natured question.)

It's a Valdorian Age game, and she doesn't know about her condition yet. They just started on a very long trip, and likely won't be back until after she's given birth.

 

It wouldn't seem strange to her, though, adventuring in her condition. She comes from a mostly female tribe, and has witnessed almost all of her female relatives going about their daily lives while very pregnant.

 

It's definitely a valid question, though.