So I've hung out around my forest home at Mother and talked to some people. One girl was roleplaying that she was holding a baby of hers. It seems like, from my PoV, people talk about having children a LOT in Lusternia, at least in Serenwilde they do, and I have a difficult time telling whether they mean IC or OOC.

I figured out they most likely mean IC, since that's what roleplaying is all about, and that the deal is that once their kids get old enough, they send them away to train, decide what they want to become, whatever, until they're ready to return to the basin and seek their parents out.

I would appreciate it if someone would explain this whole thing to me. I'm an avid roleplayer, but when I joined Achaea, there was no roleplay that was very in-depth. When people are bloodlined there, there's no talk of "having kids" or remembering family members from the past. This meant that when I got to Lusternia, I didn't realize just how much actual roleplay would go into it.

Here's the point I'm getting to: I want to roleplay having kids, but don't know the best way to go about this. Anyonehave some advice for a long time Achaean, first time Lusternian?

Well, everyone does it a bit differently of course, and I don't have any kids in Lusternia (yet), but roleplaying having children is easy and fun. It does take a bit of commitment, unless you're not too serious about it.

Basically you just act out your interactions with the baby and child/ren with emotes and/or illusions if you're in a situation where it makes sense for your children to be around. (Hanging out at the Mother Moonhart Tree is a good example of such a moment...bashing things on Astral isn't.) During times when you're doing something where your kid(s) wouldn't need to be around, just imagine they're at a sitters or hey, other family members could roleplay babysitting for you. Kids are fun for everyone.

Then, depending on your dedication to it, you can either have them killed off (if you get tired of the whole thing and decide you want to roleplay the grieving parent) or something less sinister like sending them off for some kind of schooling where you only see them now and then (so you don't have to roleplay interacting all the time) or if you're really dedicated you can roleplay their entire lives up to the moment they are old enough to enter the Portal of Fate and then you can find someone to roleplay them and turn them into an actual character.

The options are endless really. As endless as your imagination.

You can also not have to deal with -any- of that, since well..there are thousands and thousands of sentient beings that we don't see on a day to day basis, or don't interact with, because the fates haven't determined it's their time

Ala. The Portal of Fate

When it is time, people are sent through the Portal of Fate to be measured. No one knows why they go there, but the Fates determine that their time is not yet over and so they sent them into the Basin, with 'no memory' of their life.

Even people that have had established RP forever, can 'remember' something new.

*laugh* Well of course, but Inutenma asked about rping having kids and raising them. Unless I misunderstood the question... which is possible.

Since you can't have a baby "object" you just have to put the baby into your description, or refer to the baby indirectly in emotes.

Since ~16 game years is a long time to wait (over 6 months) some people "fudge" how long it takes.

Some parts of the process are done "off camera". Lots of people play out the sex, and lots of others don't. The actual birth is generally kept at least partially off camera.

Until someone takes up the challenge of establishing the rules of midwifery, you'll have to fudge the details of gestation, and hope you're not contradicting what others have established. A few things I know have been established, but others have probably contradicted:

- Aslaran have litters of 2-4 or so, with a gestation period of 6 months. Kits can crawl almost immediately; their eyes open after 2-3 months, and they start walking on all fours shortly thereafter. They start talking around 1 year. Like cats, aslaran mothers eat the afterbirth, and think nothing of it.
- Elfen take 11 months to gestate and usually have singletons, though twins are not unheard of. For them, the afterbirth has some kind of mystical power connection to the baby, and must be protected.
- Humans work the same as in the "real" world.

Might be nice if others posted their established things here so we can try to follow them with some consistency.

Other than that, it's really no different from roleplaying anything else.

Yeah, I'd love to know if there are some established rules for Faelings....for future reference.

Furrikini have litters too? Not that anyone's THERE to go against it, but still.

Sounds pretty good, I appreciate the input.

Now, since I don't fit in either the Aslaran, Elfen or Human categories, being Loboshigaru, I'll have to figure out the specifics with pups. I would imagine it would be similar to Aslaran, but I don't really know much about dog pregnancy and birth. I actually knew all that about cats...heheh.

More input from anyone is great.

Oh, and AmajoS, you got it right

I would imagine faelings have relatively short gestation periods (since their tiny) and only one to two kids at a time. Furrikini would also have short gestation periods (think rabbits ) and would most likely give birth to litters.

I imagine Tae'dae would have very long pregnancies (15-16 months?) and give birth to only one cub.

Furrikin lay eggs, usually in a clutch of 500-600 at a time. Sort of like a spider's egg sack. After growing fully the eggs are each about the size of a human fist, and upon hatching almost all of the babies are eaten by predators. Sometimes a handful crawl to safety to continue the legacy.

*Sagenod*

Those horrible, HORRIBLE hungry faelings.

*gasp* Faelings are vegetarians! *lies with a straight face*

Since age and time really don't mean all that much in the game. I've always found the RP of infants, a bit strange.

Although, we do now have the opportunity to care about age in Lusternia since we pick ours when we start.

Will we be able to handle it?

Lies! That never happens in MUDs!

All Magnagoran children are sent to an off plane military academy where they are raised and trained until such time they are ready to return and be conscripted into to the ranks of the empire.

I hate the people, who, are like 30 years old, and are all snuggly to their parents and don't want to become their own individual. All of Aetolia was like that.

misty

Never, I repeat NEVER got to achaea Silvanus, you will cry..seriously.

HAH. You're saying you don't see that here? There's tonnes of things that make me cringe in Lusternia. Luckily, in Aetolia, idiotic things you can punish with esteem. Whether it can be abused or not, it makes me feel a lot better when they go, "omfg wtf u guys stop disesteeming me11!" over public channels, then I disesteem again, and they end up being shamefully weak.

wow...so they're like spiders? That's kinda scary...I guess spiders are furry...*shudders*