[MUD-Dev] Same-Sex Marriage

[Ananda Dawnsinger]

----------
>From: John Hopson <jwh9 at acpub.duke.edu>
>To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
>Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Same-Sex Marriage
>Date: Sun, Apr 9, 2000, 10:27 AM
>

> What has been less successful is our stand on interspecies relationships.
>We said the races were separate species and that relationships between them
>were taboo, similar to necrophilia in real life.  This has caused a lot of
>friction with the players and has contributed to an imbalance in the
>proportions of the races.  ("Well, if I can only sleep with my race I
>should pick the most popular race")

Hmmm.  I just got finished responding to Matthew Mihaly on why taboos on
interracial marriage can be a good and necessary thing...

But I think the more you try to control player behavior that's not under
your control, the worse results you're going to get.  It's reasonably easy,
in a moderated game, to enforce marriage taboos -- you recognize the
marriages that meet your criteria, and don't recognize the ones that don't. 
Those that don't meet your criteria may be long-term, stable relationships,
but they don't get the validation that marriages do (which can be as simple
as an in-game record, or as complex as inheritance, property, and taxation
laws).

Enforcing sexual taboos -- that's more tricky, because any two players can
theoretically sneak behind your back and fire up the tinysex.  Perhaps if
you have a heavily moderated, MUSH-like environment in which player choices
and decisions must be "passed" by admins... I'd think it would still require
a lot of strong-arming, which sounds like exactly the place you're in.

My gut reaction is that "similar to necrophilia" is a bit too strong of a
taboo for sex between creatures which are of separate species, but of
similar intelligence, sentience, and ability to communicate.  I'd think that
such things would be regarded as falling somewhere in between "kinky sex"
and bestiality, depending on the physical difference between the races.  The
ability to communicate as equals would, I think, raise it above necrophilia.
 What you have may well be right for your world -- I don't mean to judge --
but it seems extreme.  Perhaps right, perhaps necessary, but extreme.

Fundamentally, players don't want to be told "no."  But unless you're
designing an entirely free-form, tennis-without-the-net game in which
players can do and be anything they like, you're going to have to say "no"
to keep the game in line with the design.  There is, I suspect, an artform
in learning what lines to draw and where to draw them.  And it will be
different for every game.

> Taboos seem to be particularly bad in this way.  They're enforced by
>social pressure, but how do you get players to police themselves?  It's
>easy to make mobs salute the way they should or to address players
>correctly, but they can't snub someone who was being publicly drunk.  The
>social consequences for violating an in character taboo have to come from
>the players, but there's no real reward for doing it.  Why should they stop
>speaking to their friend just because of some arbitrary ic taboo?
>
> Has anyone had any luck getting fictional taboos established?

In my message to Matthew Mihaly, I talk about a game that definitely
developed fictional taboos relating to "weird" couplings and relationships. 
These taboos were not universally held, were not generally enforced, and
were frequently broken -- but they were there.

Another example, from the same game: One of the races, in matters pertaining
to love and marriage, was -- oh, let's not beat around the bush -- overly
romantic to the point of codependence.  They mated for life (like swans). 
If one died, the other had a tendency to pine away and die shortly
thereafter.  One thing these folks NEVER did was remarry.

Given the churn rate of these games, you can perhaps guess how unwise it is
to decree that members of a given race can marry only once in their
lifetime.  My character spent the vast majority of her in-game life in a
"long-distance" marriage after her husband's player left for college.

As I recall, the taboo survived as long as the document containing the taboo
remained available.  But then the admin who wrote the document left the game
and removed the doc from the libraries, and sure enough, several months
later a prominent character (who had not read, or not remembered, the taboo)
decided to remarry...

A war broke out (the taboo wasn't the only reason, but it was a point of
contention), the document returned to the libraries, and as far as I know
the taboo has more or less held ever since.  The last I had heard, the taboo
is now supported by code.

I have to reiterate, I think taboos that are unsupportable by the code and
unrealistic given the nature of the game and players are a Really Bad Idea. 
You might be able to get them to work given a player base devoted enough to
the world and design.  But appealing to new players may present a problem.

   -- Sharon



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