Visible Features and Gender

Have a new general feature to suggest, or think one should be tweaked? Share your ideas here.
FainWelkin
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Visible Features and Gender

Post by FainWelkin »

Would it be possible to allow players to pick only a few of their character's features to display when they're unnamed instead of all of them? There are seven presently: height, build, hair, age, gender, skin, and eyes. So an unnamed person might appear as thus:

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a short average-built dark-brown-haired mature woman with dark olive skin and golden eyes
That's a mouthful. What if you were to pick, say, your three most prominent features? If this woman were to pick her skin, hair, and eyes we might see:

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A dark olive skinned woman with dark-brown hair and golden eyes.
In my opinion, this is much more readable and pleasing to the eye. You could still look at the person to see their full list of attributes. Perhaps there's even an option to always see the long "name" of all attributes if you haven't named someone. This way people can opt into the shorter descriptions.

In a similar vein, would you consider allowing a character's sex to appear as androgynous or indeterminate? Since not everyone can be easily sorted with a cursory glance. Personally, I'd like a non-binary/other option at character creation, but I realize that might be a little too "out there."
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Rias
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by Rias »

I've been pondering for a while how to potentially cut down the lengthy non-introduced appearances. Making it an option for characters to narrow it down to their preferred prominent features could work.
FainWelkin wrote: Sat Oct 17, 2020 10:09 am would you consider allowing a character's sex to appear as androgynous or indeterminate? [...] Personally, I'd like a non-binary/other option at character creation
Androgynous could be an option. I'd probably have it use 'their', 'them', 'they', 'themself'. Hmmm, which would in turn require hunting through the code for situations where I'd have to consider whether to use is/are. That could actually take some significant doing, so I'll have to think on it.

The gender a player chooses for their character at character creation is birth biological. Would it be better to label it as "sex"? Characters are free to gender identify however they feel or choose, and that would be a great thing to include in their backstory with the BACKSTORY command.
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FainWelkin
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by FainWelkin »

I think sex (or even assigned sex) would be the preferred term for most NB folks if you're set on that route. Although, for the sake of argument, intersex people with ambiguous genitalia or chromosomes that do not match the sexual characteristics they present also exist and are not so easily categorized. Like most things, biological sex isn't black and white.

An androgynous option would be great. Characters marked as such could appear as "person" instead of "man" or "woman" in their non-introduced appearance. Those pronouns are good, too. I'd prefer "theirself" to "themself" but that's mostly stylistic.

Forgive my ignorance, but if it were a sex option like the choosing of male or female at the beginning, could you not tie it into whatever is pulling out the he/she pronouns where appropriate?
Acarin
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by Acarin »

I think we should just ignore gender identity within the confines of the game. I expect that it wouldn't be a prominent concept on a frontier struggling to survive. I doubt anyone would be asking what someone else's pronouns are. Would suggest going entirely off of biological sex alone.
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FainWelkin
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by FainWelkin »

Queer people have existed across history in all time periods and all conditions. Even harsh ones. Often in societies that did not accept them and sought to erase them. But still, they existed and will continue to exist, like it or not.

While the setting of this game may be that of a harsh frontier, it is still a game being made and played in the context of the modern age. There is an opportunity to broaden the kinds of characters being made and to make a group normally excluded feel more included.

No one is advocating for forcing you to ask what someone's pronouns are. The game would explicitly tell you with every action the character performed.
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Rias
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by Rias »

FainWelkin wrote: Mon Oct 19, 2020 12:26 pmfor the sake of argument, intersex people with ambiguous genitalia or chromosomes that do not match the sexual characteristics they present also exist and are not so easily categorized. Like most things, biological sex isn't black and white.
Absolutely. For the sake of keeping the game's code and options on a sane level (for me, at least - an individual of greater capability might not be so limited) I do hope it's acceptable to stick to the more common cases when it comes to rarer biological outcomes. There are all sorts of rarer outcomes regarding height, build, hair color, skin color, eye color, sighted/non-sighted, hearing/non-hearing, number of digits or limbs, etc. that could technically occur outside the options available when creating a character. The truth of the matter is that I'm just not going to be able to keep up with the countless outcomes real-world biology can produce, though. Perhaps to my discredit, I choose to limit the game's options to a certain level of commonality.

Just to clarify: I have no issue with the idea of gender identity. I don't believe the concept is a new one, nor unique to the state of our own real world's current society. While none of the COGG NPCs are going out of their way to publicly proclaim details about their personal lives, if you ask the right questions and get to know some of them, you'll find there are some who would identify with what much of our own world is currently referring to as "progressive" ideas. Fortunately for these NPCs, Lost Lands prejudices do not mirror the troubling ones in many of our own real-world societies.
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FainWelkin
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by FainWelkin »

That's understandable. Your response was about the best I had hoped for. I'll hold out hope that one day an androgynous appearance option will be on the table.
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nobody
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by nobody »

It is by no means a full solution, but perhaps an easier step if pronoun overhaul is too labor intensive, would adding 'androgynous' to the available common character builds (http://cogg.contrarium.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=467) be desirable?
e.g. a short androgynous dark-brown-haired mature woman with dark olive skin and golden eyes
ItsYaBoiiRoan
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by ItsYaBoiiRoan »

nobody wrote: Mon Oct 19, 2020 2:16 pm It is by no means a full solution, but perhaps an easier step if pronoun overhaul is too labor intensive, would adding 'androgynous' to the available common character builds (http://cogg.contrarium.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=467) be desirable?
e.g. a short androgynous dark-brown-haired mature woman with dark olive skin and golden eyes
As far as my understanding of Androgynous...ness? goes, the point is you can't really notice whether one is male or female, so describing them as a androgynous woman would kind of defeat the point, in my opinion.
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Rias
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Re: Visible Features and Gender

Post by Rias »

Been thinking over the code side. The one thing I'm hung up on is the "They is/are" bit, but I think I could easily get to a place where many of the cases are taken care of. I'm certain a fair amount of cases would also slip past me. So players will occasionally see things like "They is sitting on a chair." I figure this could be an acceptable transition phase thing and I would just depend on people to bug report when they come across things like this, and I'll fix them as they come in. I think I prefer this over adopting another pronoun set that wouldn't require these changes, as tempting as that is to my inner laziness.

Would "androgynous" work as a gender choice alongside male and female? There are a few things in place that assume gender is one of male/female/it, but I can update those easily enough.
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