[MUD-Dev] Same-Sex Marriage (was: Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens)

[Jon Lambert]

Ananda Dawnsinger wrote:
>
>How did you end up dealing with same-sex marriages?  It's an issue our
>design team is most likely going to have to face at some point (and the
>project leader is perfectly content to ignore it until a player asks).
>
>In the specific circumstances, I'm inclined to leave the decision up to the
>players.  (Yep, I'm a coward.)  If there were consensus among the GMs, I
>might feel differently.


On my first mud we never dealt with same-sex marriage.  Honestly we 
wouldn't have been kindly predisposed to it if it had come up.  We did 
have a number of queer players and eventually did ban a few for religious 
bigotry.  We knew that most of our player base was at least nominally 
religious in some form or another, and we had no interest in catering to 
people who by and large had little interest in mudding, but came instead 
to proselytize and exercise their organs.  This was after all just another 
HnS game, not a social roleplaying game.  These few abused public 
channels with anti-papist garbage and generally offensive anti-religious 
comments coupled with hilarious hypocritical requests for daily affirmation 
and tolerance (your typical leftwing penis thumpers).  

However my current project will have a strong separation between public 
chat areas and in-game areas, a disconnection between user and player.  
It will be heavily weighted to storytelling RP as opposed to HnS.  It's also
an adults-only game that will deal mature subject matter.  
Typically one logs in as user Bob and is placed in the public area.  From 
there user Bob enters the in-game areas as one or more characters such 
as Hercules the hero, Sheeva priestess of Aetheopia, etal.  Noone will
know exactly what character or characters Bob plays, unless of course 
Bob wishes.  The public area is basically an IRC/Talker, allowing pretty
much anything, including user channel creation, private channels, etc.

There are only three things that I have very little tolerance for.  The first being
OOC speech and behavoir in the in-game area.  The second being common
profanity either in-game or in the public chat area (not private user channels).  
And the list of verbotten words is frankly rather short and unambiguous.  
The third thing is children in the game.  
 
>The issue is complicated because ours is a multi-racial system and IMO it's
>neither realistic nor desirable to sanction marriage between species of
>fundamentally different kingdoms.  Will players accept it if two humans of
>the same sex can marry, but a female human can't marry a male dragon?
>
>The solution I would (will) suggest is to decouple the legal and the
>social/religious aspects of marriage.  Any two (or more) people can register
>a union with the city-state, giving them property and inheritance rights. 
>The various religious and racial orders and institutions would be more
>restrictive.

>
>This means that race X can have a long history of blessing same-sex
>marriages, race Y can have different customs and names for same-sex and
>opposite-sex unions, and race Z can officially deny that homosexual Zs even
>exist...


My theme is based on ancient Greece and the surrounding environs.  Same 
sex marriage is ridiculously contemporary and out of theme.  Culturally it's 
more a property and political issue.  There will be however many cultural rituals
that will embrace same sex relationships. 

I suppose any implementation is possible.  One could implement a mud
which attached quite a bit of in-game importance to marriage.  Red Dragon 
for instance allowed female characters to have babies, and penalized them
in combat whilst pregnant.  One might want to implement dynasties, inheritance
and political intrigue using marriage as game system tool.  Hmm...on a more 
modern/post modern note, alimony and child support code might be 
interesting, or at least farcical, "What!?!....she gets half of all my equipment 
and gold in the bank".  
If player characters had marriage flags or family flags, one could implement 
mobs which kidnapped and ransomed spouses or relatives instead of 
killing them.  This might be a lot of fun for players since it would make the 
dramatic and romantic rescue scenes (a staple of fantasy novels) possible. 

One could even go whole hog and implement player queer-flags and bi-flags
and make the game totally revolve around proper feeding, care and use of 
genitalia.  Naw...that's already being worked on.

--
--*     Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD Email: jlsysinc at nospam.ix.netcom.com     *--
--*     Mud Server Developer's Page <http://jlsysinc.home.netcom.com>      *--
--* "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Thomas Jefferson *--





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