WF question (activity & gestation)

Hiya there!

I was just wondering if we could maybe discuss the rules regarding WF and any leniency regarding the activity requirements once a character becomes pregnant. 

For wolves, if the mother falls inactive while she is pregnant, she must either lose the litter or have the pups off-site and they can’t come into the game until they’re a year old. 

A wolf’s pregnancy is 2 months-ish, but for a horse it would be much longer than that (I’ll find out, but it’s close to a year, I think!) so I was wondering if there might be some leniency offered for WF with long-term pregnancies. It was permitted for a horse to come into the game pregnant, so I was wondering would it be alright if we dropped the activity rule that would make a horse lose a foal if they fell inactive over the course of a year? 

Thankya muchly!

Hey, I just wanted to let you know we're discussing this and we'll follow up as soon as we can.

Thanks :D

I’m going to tag @Selenia in this in case as well for visibility/if you also want to request the same :) 

Maybe it’s a matter of their activity not effecting their pregnancy until the last two months of it?

these are good questions to ask <3 I had wondered the same

Hey gang, the CMs are still discussing this matter. In the interest of fairness we have decided to wait until breeding season is over before implementing any potential changes. We’ll circle back with an update when a decision has been made. <3

So we won’t have a decision until June 30? I understand if you’d want to hold off on guideline changes for wolf pregnancies until then, but no wolf characters would be affected by differing gestation guidelines for WF characters if they were species appropriate. 

I understand that it states in the guidelines that WF are to follow the same guidelines for activity as wolves but also- we allow for leniency here and there because there are so few WF and because they are biologically much different than wolves. I imagine it was such differences that prompted you to allow a WF to enter the site pregnant, which I think was wonderful! 12 month gestation is wild and it was great that you were willing to make that exception.

If you want to put off the decision-making, it leaves a 3 month period during which if I let Fancy fall inactive, technically then her foal will be aborted before these guidelines even get discussed again. Wolf writers only have 2 months to worry about such a thing happening. Hence why I’m pushing a bit- waiting until June 30 is fair for those whose breeding season goes until then, which is everyone except for Selenia and Fancy. 

I’d like to at least open this up for discussion, now, as I’m curious to see what the community feels would be fair for different species of WF. I think there would be a lot of neat points to discuss!

Discussion is never discouraged, the community is more than welcome to drop thoughts or concerns in here.

The revisions we're discussing would actually significantly impact all characters: wolves and wild fauna alike. I wanted to mention since it's important context. This is why we will not be implementing any decisions until after breeding season is over -- out of fairness, as Lauren mentioned.

Feel free to discuss in the meantime. Thank you for your patience.

Sweet! My main thought clusters are:

1. Gestation duration: Should there be leniency for WF regarding activity throughout their pregnancy depending on how long their gestation period is? For wolves, we have a two-week activity requirement, and their total gestation is two months. Obviously, the two-week activity would apply to all characters but I propose a “forgiveness” should a pregnant WF fall inactive during their pregnancy PROVIDING that their pregnancy is longer than that of a wolf. 

Some options might be as such:

A. The WF may fall inactive periodically (with no limit) throughout their pregnancy so long as it is 2 months or more, but in the FINAL two months of pregnancy, they must be active with no drops whatsoever. Two small thoughts:
——i. The character may go off-site for a number of months, but must return for the last two months of pregnancy (with no activity drops) if they want the baby to be born on-site.
——ii. The character must remain on-site for the duration of their pregnancy. Drops in activity are permitted up until the last two months of pregnancy without repercussions, but the character must not be inactive for more than X amount of days before being reactivated.
—iii. If the character falls inactive in the last two months they must stay off-site until the baby is born, at which point they can return with the baby in tow.

B. WF may fall inactive during their pregnancy without repercussions but they will only be given one “forgiveness”  for every two months of their pregnancy term. (I.E: an animal with a 10 month pregnancy must not fall inactive more than 5 times in that period.)

C. “forgiveness” would be given on a tiered system. For 2 months, there is no forgiveness and the mother must either lose the pregnancy or go off site and give birth there. Perhaps same rules for 3 months, but when we hit 4 months maybe there is one forgiveness. If a gestation is 7 months or more, then they get two forgivenesses. If their pregnancy is 10 months or more, then they get 3 forgivenesses.
—i. Forgiveness is given even if a character falls inactive in the last 2 months of pregnancy.
—ii. Characters must not fall inactive during the last two months of their pregnancy. 

C. WF must adhere to the WOLF guidelines and may not fall inactive during their gestation regardless of how long it is. (Currently the rule in place)

Also as a topic:

2. Wild Fauna Conception
Sometimes you are playing the only WF of a certain species on WOLF which by current guidelines means no babies unless another character is made for reproduction. This doesn’t happen very often but we could discuss:

A. Allow WF to become pregnant through the use of NPCs
B. Allow WF to come to the site, pregnant, but must have at least 2 months remaining in their pregnancy. Pregnancy activity guidelines apply. 

All thoughts and comments welcome! I know this is a WOLF roleplaying site but it’d be cool to discuss some nifty options for WF so we might see more of them around, and maybe they’d stay around longer plus BABY WF are adorable. ?

I’m a sucker for these discussions lol.

I believe there should be no rule such as this at all. I don't feel that someone should lose their litter (or foal) just because the character fell inactive at some point during gestation. I feel that this rule is a hold-over from when offspring were treated as a sort of reward or as something more special than adult OCs. This was reflected in old policies (such as minimum requirements to breed) which have since been changed.

Besides eliminating the disappointment that comes with lost pregnancies due to a lapse in activity, removing the rule would negate all need to make special exceptions or separate rules for wild fauna characters and keep the administrative burden to a minimum. In my opinion, removing the rule is altogether more adherent to the core philosophy of "simple, casual, and fun," and keeping the rule has no tangible benefit that I can discern.

That said, I don't think policy changes of any kind should be made until this current season is over. It eliminates the potential for hard feelings and is most fair to all. :)

I agree, I think forcing a mother-character to be active feels more like a punishment in most cases, and it can be a real drag to play out that part of the character's arc. The rule itself doesn't make sense given that we don't have puppy caps or slots anymore.

As for the question of WF: The different ideas mentioned above are very interesting to me, but for the sake of "simple, casual, fun," the less rules, complications, and "paperwork" the better, imo.

If we do not change the current system (requiring activity):

I was thinking that for WF, since they all have different gestational periods, the requirement could be 25% of that period. So for example (using horses): Fancy being pregnant for 12 months, but the requirement of 25% of that time being written IC, so their activity window would be 3 months. So for those three months leading up to the birth of a foal they'd have to be active, or risk losing it.

just chiming in to say this discussion is really fruitful <3

i agree we could relax the restrictions on every type of character, while regulating things a bit to avoid hanging out in any sort of limbo.

i like the idea of the "percentage of activity requirement" based on gestation, and i like the forgiveness rule for WF specifically.

expanding it across the board would remove the need to sort of monitor WF more than anyone else. in keeping w the OG question, some leniency for WF in specific based on gestational time would be a nice thing to implement

I never thought about removing the activity requirements for mothers in general, but I do agree with others that this makes sense. Given that pups are no longer in their own category in the pack member slots and there are no caps on their numbers, I'm not sure why people playing mothers need to remain active for the entire two months during the pregnancy in order to maintain the litter. Mothers no longer even have to be in packs to give birth/the pups can be loners from birth, even, so I don't think we need that activity requirement from mothers at all.