1. Allow one parent to start the consideration process for a child, but require the other parent to agree before the countdown starts. e.g. Nihmriel takes Ileein to the Hall of Records and signs his consideration papers, then Arel takes Ileein to the Hall of Records and confirms. Good for parents and kids who can't always log in at the same time.

2. Allow members to continue contributing to their original family after marrying out. Good for Skyplumes who marry into Shevat.

I don't want to be negative, but I'm a little worried about this revamp considering the reception of the last two. Please be kind to families. It's my favorite part of the game.

I know you've already said you're not looking at this right now, but my biggest, baddest, most frustration-inducing gripe with the family system is how when someone marries out they completely stop existing for your family. I know you think this is somehow, in some bizarre universe, fun, but it's really not. I can't tell people NO YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO MARRY THEM, TAILOR YOUR RP TO MY NEEDS DANGIT. But at the same time, I want my family to, you know. Not die out because I'm not an ass.

I would also really appreciate something that would allow just one parent to begin the child consideration process. The player behind my character's husband is currently in basic training and cannot be around, but my character's life goes on. I've considered divorcing him and re-marrying just so my family could try to survive as its members marry out, but I don't want to do that, because it doesn't really make any sense from an RP perspective. She doesn't suddenly not want to be married because he's gone. I just want children.

Likewise, the same sort of thing applied to bloodbonding siblings would be good too, as that's also a situation where smaller families trying to start out can hit trouble. If the other half of the pair is unable to play, right now, the family is pretty much screwed. The consideration period could be 1.5x longer or something to make up for the missing half, I don't know.

I would love if families were more of just an RP thing, because I'm sorry, as a conflict system they are not working. Unless you count the frustration over losing members because they want to marry someone else, which has nothing to do with the conflict system at all (which is so impossible to make headway in that I don't think anyone actually bothers), and is still just an RP choice. Even conflict systems should be based on fun, not frustration.

Shacking up with somebody else while he's gone to get pregnant? 8D /segue

I always thought that some of the restrictions that exist were a bit funny, forcing a morality that maybe not everybody would adhere to. Though I guess it's done for mechanical reasons, it's just amusing thinking of the entire population of the Basin strictly adhering to a no nookie before marriage morality. Also monogamy. I know of at least one case of some people RPing polygamy. And don't forget incest, system won't let you get married to close relations, if I recall.

So how 'bout it?

• Marriageless births.
• Polygamy.
• Incest.

And I'm going to go hide under a rock before I offend anybody else. <,<

EDIT: Oh also, maybe some official way to adopt kids, could mechanically be the same, but just a mark somewhere stating they are adopted? I know some people RPing they adopted all their kids as they came out of the portal rather then being their actual parents.

Well if you ask Sylandra, Lusternia was made for incest. I do believe she can be quoted on that.

I've actually never RPed bringing in children as suddenly "o hay I got pregnet an hads a 30 years old babby". It just seems a little too...well, I'm sure you can infer from the way I typed that out. I've always approached it as either adoption (as has been the case for most of my children) or formally accepting a child into the family proper. Pregnancy RP is something I will stay far and away from, forever and ever, and laugh at whenever I see it. It's just so unbelievably silly to me.

I support the Lusternian single parent movement! And...perhaps the polygamy one...

How about this, why not add a faction/point/honour system based on the deeds of a family member?

For example, they get 5-10 points for doing an honour quest. .5 points per each person killed under the family's black list, 10 points for winning an arena battle etc.

The points then can be redeemed for more flavour like converting an existing manse into a true family manse, complete with guards, servants, slaves, family banners, etc.? Minor blessings from the family head such as increased exp per lusternian month, several family artifacts that can be bought and must be maintained monthly, etc.

At first it had reminded me of one chapter of Jack (occsionaly NSFW, also furry), lady wants to have a kid but husband away with military stuff, but decided it made a good segue into the points I wanted to bring up.

There are a few problems with pregnancy RP, one of the biggest being that traditionally, IRE players are so hilariously uninformed about the mechanics of the delivery part - I recall one incident in which the child's head was "too big" so everyone decided it would be a fantastic idea to break mom's pelvis. I think the biggest mechanical issue is the timeline:

1. Phoebus gets pregnant - clearly she's keeping her husband chained up somewhere in Hallifax for these purposes.
2. Nine RL days later: Phoebus has the baby, hopefully sans broken pelvis.
3. Wait approximately 200 RL days, during which time you can try and find someone to play your precious bundle of joy.
4. Hooray! You have someone to play your kid, and they create the character.

In Hallifax this can be manipulated slightly if you're willing to de-age the player down to 12 years (or is it 13?), but it's still a ~150 RL day waiting period.

Teal Deer: Yes to official adoption mechanic of some kind.

hahahahaha

Ah, right. I'll go for that too.

3. An option to recognize adoption. The adoption option.

Oh no, it's a half undead baby, you've got to rip her asunder, if her spine breaks that's okay, just inject lichseed into her heart! If you don't feed her blood beforehand, she'll die but if you do it right she'll be sparkly.


There are all manner of odd things involved with the family system. Perhaps we could have a way to recognize your parents after you've already gotten married? Getting married currently stops you from ever having parents.

Also, if someone came up with a quasi-scientific work explaining why we, in all our part-godly power, don't really need to get pregnant in the same way as normal animals (and how our children can be different races then either the parents) then I think there would be a little more actual parent RP that isn't laughable and doesn't have Twilight based birthing.

The honor system seems cool, but so few get to use it, and there are too many issues with getting big enough to use it. Even lesser houses only really get a very tiny amount of control over how much honor they receive, and for some reason marriage into the family has no effect.

Speaking of marriage, can we please get rid of ninja marriages? Code in some sort of message over family aether if the family has one, and a message to each of the married parties, at least. Currently, you could be married if standing in the same room and no one would notice unless you checked honors or family trees. It would be sort of cool to have a small flavor message that is different for each god, perhaps as a third party message, but unnecessary.

Just focusing on parenting and marriage, myself have crossed a few times I wish other things could have happened.

Marriage:
- If the family was created by marriage and there is only say one active in the family for some reason or another, give that one remaining family member the option to DISBAND FAMILY.
- If no one is active in a family, have a system clean up every so often to remove families so that the names are available for others if they want to use it.
- Does founding a family through marriage still make your born into the family if you were not previously in a family?
- When divorcing, allow the spouse who is divorcing out of the family, keep the family name or can choose to take up the name they had before.

For this last one, the reason in saying this was from actual experience. Revan and Arimisia were married, at the time, the family was Xandul (I think). Revan decided he wanted a historic great house so he went through the process of founding the House n’Kylbar. Arimisia is mentioned in the story and everything, yet, when she divorced him, has nothing what so ever to do with the family anymore even though she was there for the founding of n’Kylbar. So overall I got the low end of the totem pole in this and it seems to be because it was easier to change a name that to actually refound. Even more, Ravin who is considered a founder, had nothing at all to do with any of the process and had been inactive for probably years before any of this happened.

Children:
- In the case of a divorce, the kid should be able to choose which parent they wish to stay with IF there are two families involved. The reason for this, usually, kids are brought in cause on parent asked them or at least this has been my experience, felt closer to one parent.
- When/if a parent suicides, please please just remove the second parent from them or make sure it is set to who that parent was. I have a character who constant has a different second parents because of this bug, and that second person has no relation whatsoever to the character and is usually a new person out of the portals or names that should not be showing up (unidentified).

Before I go skiing for the day, I have a couple ideas to share.

Firstly, when doing FAMILY TREE , have anyone bloodbonded into the Progenitors generation not show up in that generation. I know that the Ama'nar'isil family was started by Otem and Tirenae, and each marrying their respective spouses. The spouses, while yes they did help in the adoption process, they weren't the creators of the family, and thus shouldn't really be given the title of Progenitors.

Secondly, allow for two family spots. We already allow for more than one clan spot, so this can easily be ported over into families. For example, my IRL Mom was born a Welch, but married my Dad and became a Dziura. She's still technically a Welch, even though she has a new surname. Allow for that sort of flexibility. If you divorce away from a family, obviously you are no longer a part of it, but if you simply marry out, then technically you should still be allowed to be in your first family... Right? It shows up that way on FAMILY TREE!

Thirdly, and branching off my second point, allow for two family aethers, switchable by doing FAMILY SWITCH <1/2>, same way that you do clans. That way, you'll be able to talk in both family aethers (if they exist) relatively easily.

Please, again, we're not looking at the House system, just the underlying family system.

I don't have time to read all of the suggestions, sadly, but some things I'd like to see:

- Ability for a single parent to adopt, perhaps with a longer period or a trust option for the other parent.
- Ability for families to ally with banner houses or great houses. I'd love a mechanical way to do what I'm doing with m'Viraz. The m'Viraz family is mine, but we're all mechanically Kalas. I want to be a part of Kalas, but it'd be nice if m'Viraz had it's own tree.


More to come later after I have time to catch up and think.

There will be no single parents, incest or polygamy.

If you want a child, you have to bond with someone through marriage. Yes, that means you may need to marry for purely procreative reasons if you want a child--consider it another aspect of RP.

If someone marries out of a family, they still show up on your tree, just inactive. You will always only be able to be active in one family.

There will be no special case for adoption. I have said before that you can RP however you want how the child came to be (there are same sex parents after all), but in all cases it is permanent. You cannot undo having the child--no matter how much you may wish!

Again, I do not want our family system to be a casual RP where anything goes but one with strict and inflexible rules which you must work around to grow your family. I know some people don't find that fun and would rather RP the whole thing with a clan (nothing stopping you from doing that BTW), but I also think our system ultimately makes families more meaningful and important.

Ok then.

I give up and will always be completely disappointed in the family system.

What about the other ideas?
- bloodbonding without needing the other sibling for confirmation for an increased amount of time
- being able to be adopted even if you have been married before, but still meet the age/no previous birth family reqs
- Ability to join bloodlines together as a single bloodline
- Children potentially remaining in the family with the strongest bloodline

(have to stop making the list right now because my internet is acting up again and making it difficult to look through the pages)

As an aside though, would it be possible to set it so family honour resets after a number of IG years? I can't remember but that would definitely add to the competitiveness of the system.

Did you say what you meant to say? You can bloodbond someone without them ever having to confirm? They will always have to confirm! You can't bloodbond anyone against their will.


Again, there is no distinguishing adoption. We are looking into the feasibility of allowing married persons to find a child.


We are looking into the feasibility.

Lists are good!

Sorry! Alas, we can't please everybody.