Pregnancy in Video Role-Playing Games

[kvnchrist]

I always thought that armor was for protection. Just because you are pregnant, doesn't mean you won't be in a dangerous situation.

[marharth]

Armor is fine, but if your pregnant it wouldn't be very fun for a RPG realistically.

 

Not really a problem though if its not realistic, just saying that it isn't.

[draconix]

I agree... Several things that take place in Fallout on a regular basis would likely cause a miscarriage... Not to mention that exposure to radiation would likely cause serious birth defects, if the fetus even survives. Plus with radscorpion stings.. massive trauma, loss of blood.. Also, not all pregnancies show, making a pregnancy mod that makes the woman look 7-9-months pregnant indefinitely would be rather silly.

 

I just imagine that pregnancy in Fallout in particular would have to be handled a very different way than life as we know it. Life is more scarce, more special, and has to be protected much harder. Pregnant women would likely be best off be sheltered in a re-claimed vault, or some kind of bunker stronghold. I would find it hard to find anybody casting out a pregnant woman in Fallout, even the Brotherhood of Steel. *shrug*

 

Pregnancy is realistic because it's part of life, I just don't see a pregnant protagonist in a realistic action game as something that would work realistically.

 

Edit:: I understand that by saying pregnant women shouldn't be the protagonist, I'm probably going against all of the empowered women out there who think that a women in any state is fit enough for action of any kind, but realistically, no it's not true. A person with no legs cannot jump, and a woman carrying a baby is scarcely agile in the last few months of carrying. As far as I'm concerned, a woman on her own, pregnant in the capital wasteland is a death sentence if un-aided. Game over.

Edited August 11, 2011 by draconix

[LadyMilla]

I agree... Several things that take place in Fallout on a regular basis would likely cause a miscarriage... Not to mention that exposure to radiation would likely cause serious birth defects, if the fetus even survives. Plus with radscorpion stings.. massive trauma, loss of blood.. Also, not all pregnancies show, making a pregnancy mod that makes the woman look 7-9-months pregnant indefinitely would be rather silly.

 

I just imagine that pregnancy in Fallout in particular would have to be handled a very different way than life as we know it. Life is more scarce, more special, and has to be protected much harder. Pregnant women would likely be best off be sheltered in a re-claimed vault, or some kind of bunker stronghold. I would find it hard to find anybody casting out a pregnant woman in Fallout, even the Brotherhood of Steel. *shrug*

 

Pregnancy is realistic because it's part of life, I just don't see a pregnant protagonist in a realistic action game as something that would work realistically.

 

Edit:: I understand that by saying pregnant women shouldn't be the protagonist, I'm probably going against all of the empowered women out there who think that a women in any state is fit enough for action of any kind, but realistically, no it's not true. A person with no legs cannot jump, and a woman carrying a baby is scarcely agile in the last few months of carrying. As far as I'm concerned, a woman on her own, pregnant in the capital wasteland is a death sentence if un-aided. Game over.

 

When you live in a post-apocalyptic world, you cannot chose what is realistic and what is not. If your husband dies on you, if your community is wiped out but you manage to hide somehow, then you are forced to survive on your own. Yes, probably your best bet would be to find a settlement, but chances are they won't look kindly upon new arrivals, especially if resources are limited, and the newcomer is about to give birth to another hungry mouth. Courtesy is quickly obliterated by deprivation. So you may need to travel more than you want to to until you find a place and a community to settle down.

 

Also, no matter how many times you use the word 'realistic' in your last sentence, Fallout New Vegas is not realistic. Ghouls are not realistic. Removing near lethal doses of radiation by drinking some sort of 'wonder liquid' is not realistic. The wonder device, G.E.C.K. is not realistic. Stealth boys are not realistic. A sentient computer playing president is not realistic. When you pile up all these unrealistic things in the game, I must say the presence of a pregnant woman with a gun in her hand as she tries to survive and find safety before it's 'baby time' seems to be the least unrealistic thing.

[draconix]

When you live in a post-apocalyptic world, you cannot chose what is realistic and what is not. If your husband dies on you, if your community is wiped out but you manage to hide somehow, then you are forced to survive on your own. Yes, probably your best bet would be to find a settlement, but chances are they won't look kindly upon new arrivals, especially if resources are limited, and the newcomer is about to give birth to another hungry mouth. Courtesy is quickly obliterated by deprivation. So you may need to travel more than you want to to until you find a place and a community to settle down.

And thus, your character dies alone with only a fetus to mourn her passing. Game over. And in truth, your best bet would be to abort the thing. Better that one lives than both die.

 

Also, by "realistic" of course you realize that the realism we refer to is relative to the world which the game presents, right? When something does not appear to fit in, it causes disbelief. Thus, one aim of game designers is to suspend this disbelief by presenting things that look like they fit together. Do you understand now? A pregnant woman as the player character is no more believable in Fallout than is Mickey Mouse. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/rolleyes.gif

Edited August 12, 2011 by draconix

[Sepherose]

 

When you live in a post-apocalyptic world, you cannot chose what is realistic and what is not. If your husband dies on you, if your community is wiped out but you manage to hide somehow, then you are forced to survive on your own. Yes, probably your best bet would be to find a settlement, but chances are they won't look kindly upon new arrivals, especially if resources are limited, and the newcomer is about to give birth to another hungry mouth. Courtesy is quickly obliterated by deprivation. So you may need to travel more than you want to to until you find a place and a community to settle down.

 

Also, no matter how many times you use the word 'realistic' in your last sentence, Fallout New Vegas is not realistic. Ghouls are not realistic. Removing near lethal doses of radiation by drinking some sort of 'wonder liquid' is not realistic. The wonder device, G.E.C.K. is not realistic. Stealth boys are not realistic. A sentient computer playing president is not realistic. When you pile up all these unrealistic things in the game, I must say the presence of a pregnant woman with a gun in her hand as she tries to survive and find safety before it's 'baby time' seems to be the least unrealistic thing.

 

I just wanted to point out that there actually is a fabric that can bend light around the wearer, and due to that I have to say that the stealthboy falls into the realm of far off plausibility.

 

And thus, your character dies alone with only a fetus to mourn her passing. Game over. And in truth, your best bet would be to abort the thing. Better that one lives than both die.

 

Also, by "realistic" of course you realize that the realism we refer to is relative to the world which the game presents, right? When something does not appear to fit in, it causes disbelief. Thus, one aim of game designers is to suspend this disbelief by presenting things that look like they fit together. Do you understand now? A pregnant woman as the player character is no more believable in Fallout than is Mickey Mouse. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/rolleyes.gif

 

I have to point this out to you: There are women in real life that due to necessity go onto battlefields and fight to defend their home and family while pregnant, sometimes near birth. It happens in the real world, why in the name of reality, couldn't it happen in Fallout, let alone with custom gear? Likely, the reason it wasn't something in OB/FO3/FNV isn't due to suspension of disbelief, but due to cost and functionality. For example: They would have needed multiple models for the female version of each race in the game that covered at least a couple different potential looks for pregnancy, plus the ability to gradually change the character as time progressed. This could NOT be done easily in the gambryo engine, if at all. Now, Skyrim's engine allows you to morph your character body, so for those, like myself, that would love to see this level of realism in games, we may see it sometime soon, if not in a retail release, then in a mod. And by that I mean the actual cycle, not the look.

[Lisnpuppy]

When you live in a post-apocalyptic world, you cannot chose what is realistic and what is not. If your husband dies on you, if your community is wiped out but you manage to hide somehow, then you are forced to survive on your own. Yes, probably your best bet would be to find a settlement, but chances are they won't look kindly upon new arrivals, especially if resources are limited, and the newcomer is about to give birth to another hungry mouth. Courtesy is quickly obliterated by deprivation. So you may need to travel more than you want to to until you find a place and a community to settle down.

And thus, your character dies alone with only a fetus to mourn her passing. Game over. And in truth, your best bet would be to abort the thing. Better that one lives than both die.

 

Also, by "realistic" of course you realize that the realism we refer to is relative to the world which the game presents, right? When something does not appear to fit in, it causes disbelief. Thus, one aim of game designers is to suspend this disbelief by presenting things that look like they fit together. Do you understand now? A pregnant woman as the player character is no more believable in Fallout than is Mickey Mouse. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/rolleyes.gif

 

And suspension of disbelief is dependent on the INDIVIDUAL. So what may suspend mine may not suspend yours.

[LadyMilla]

I just wanted to point out that there actually is a fabric that can bend light around the wearer, and due to that I have to say that the stealthboy falls into the realm of far off plausibility.

 

I know about it, but the Stealth Boy in the game is a device that emits radiation to hide the wearer (and drives the Supermutants who use them mad). Technology in general, and electronics in particular, in FO3 and FNV are one of the things that refute arguments based on the internal consistency of the game world because they simply demand that you suspend your disbelief. You have devices that obviously require extremely advanced micro-electronics and miniaturization, while other things, even military equipment, use tubes, bulky components and insufficient memory capacities. (e.g. Enclave terminals have 64k of RAM).

 

Also, by "realistic" of course you realize that the realism we refer to is relative to the world which the game presents, right? When something does not appear to fit in, it causes disbelief. Thus, one aim of game designers is to suspend this disbelief by presenting things that look like they fit together. Do you understand now? A pregnant woman as the player character is no more believable in Fallout than is Mickey Mouse.

 

So let me take a look at your claims based on relative plausibility, that is, "if something does not appear to fin in, it causes disbelief".

 

What is the starting point of the story in FNV? The protagonist (let's use the name 'Courier' to avoid gender related complications) is shot in the head, considered dead by the attackers and buried on the spot. Soil with every infectious agent that is usually present comes into contact with the wound. Still, miraculously, the Courier survives and treated by a local doctor, who, also miraculously, happens to be knowledgeable and well-equipped enough to treat cranial and brain injuries in a non-sterile environment, and extract the bullet. When the Courier recovers with a severe case of amnesia, the good doctor donates some used stuff... and then the Courier, who is handicapped because literally his/her attackers may walk up to him/her with a big smile and finish the job without the Courier ever see it coming... decides to turn tail and leave the area pronto to avoid unwanted attention?

 

No. The Courier decides to pull a Steven Seagal, and go after the attackers.

 

I think this is the point where you are supposed to suspend any disbelief because, let's face it, this is the start of a cheap Steven Seagal movie. Sure, the Courier has the advantage that the murderers think he/she is dead, but seriously, what are the chances that the Courier, asking all the wrong questions, snooping around where he/she is not supposed to, and causing ruckus in the area, will go unnoticed very long?

 

I'm sorry but your arguments and your witty comments about believability and Micky Mouse simply do not hold. If you are so fond of analogies then here are a few: "A pregnant woman as a protagonist is about as believable as old Agatha surviving in her cabin on her own in the middle of the Capital Wasteland." or "A pregnant woman as a protagonist is about as believable as Sierra Petrovita the Nuka Cola Quantum collector." or "as believable as a bunch of kids surviving in a cave, no matter how defensible it is, without slavers making a serious attempt to storm them and sell them off to the highest bidder." (I know Big Town is an easier target, but slavers did make an effort to storm into Rockopolis that was probably much better defended.) or "as believable as the Lone Wonderer surviving lobotomy in Point Lookout".

 

In the game, pregnancy would be just another 'difficulty factor', like dehydration, deprivation of sleep and chem/alcohol addiction. In Fallout 3, the benevolent mutation perk that you get once you irradiate yourself enough for Moira Brown's tests causes you to regenerate limbs - it is something that is completely implausible but since the game is built on the - unrealistic - assumption that extreme radiation may cause beneficial effects in a fraction of the cases (while in the real world it causes death invariable), this perk does not seem to be out of place. The same would be true of pregnancy. Once you declare it realistic and you build a consistent framework of rules around it, it is not less believable than limb regeneration or the survival of the Lone Wanderer who left Vault 101 with virtually zero knowledge of what to expect outside and how to survive in an extremely hostile environment.

 

Long story short: plausibility in these games is declarative, and for this reason you cannot prove with any degree of objectivity that a pregnant woman as the key protagonist is implausible. If you say that personally, unlike other inconsistencies in the game and regardless of the implausibility of its most basic assumptions, a pregnant hero would set off your subjective implausibility buzzer, that's something I can perfectly understand.

 

 

[WizardOfAtlantis]

Story-wise a mod built on a pregnant armor/body could present a few interesting twists - for example, assuming a female Courier, when she recovers she realizes that she is pregnant. Doc Mitchell did not do anything about it, because he was unsure if the pregnancy was related to the assailants or it predated the attempted murder... and now the Courier is also unsure because she does not remember. It could even be a motive stronger than mere revenge for the Courier to pursue the thugs: why did they try to kill her and is the baby a link to her past or an offspring of one of her attackers.

 

The mod would provide increased difficulty because you should also look after the needs of the unborn baby (you should avoid certain chems, you should eat fruits/vegetables regularly), later you would be more sluggish, you would be forced to avoid melee combat, etc. Before the baby is borne you should find a home and somebody (a companion) who looks after the infant while you gather the things a baby usually needs (like the toy collecting quest in the Pitt).

 

If the baby was not conceived because the thugs 'double wronged' her, who is the father (another possible quest line). And if the baby is Benny's, there is the moral choice if the Courier wants to keep the child, or give it to a childless mother.

 

Now... is that less realistic than adding flying guts and limbs for improved 'realism'?

 

What great ideas! Those would provide a whole arc of storyline, with enough branches for greatly enhanced replayability. If there were multiple suits showing the varying degrees of pregnancy, one could take it the whole arc (maybe with some time-lapse after key events to speed up 9 months slightly), and even introduce the npc child at the end. And here, I hadn't gotten much beyond, "Let's give this to Willow once we're BFF's" and see how that tickles my post-apoc fancy. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/biggrin.gif (my character's gender is visible in my sig, btw)

 

What I seem to see in many comments is a difficulty in relating the concepts of Preference versus those of Necessity. An easy way for us to think about it is that nobody would want to be alone and pregnant in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but that idea is only valid coming from someone that lives on Earth in our time. NPC's and PC's in the game world don't know that, they couldn't even relate to those thoughts. Post-Apocalyptia is the only world that they know, so what pregnancy would boil down to is, if there is even a choice to begin with, "Do I want to be pregnant or not?" So, of course it is going to happen. It's a biological imperative, if nothing else.

 

As for miscarriages, and even mutations (something I lament the lack of, for besides ghouls, there aren't enough mutated humanoids in the game for my tastes), yes, there would be a great many. All we have to do, though, is go back in time just a century or so (in this world of Earth) and we see once again incredibly high infant mortality rates and "large" families because with health care, disease, accidents, sickness, etc, you never knew how many of your kids would make it past childhood. What those difficulties do is increase the rate of pregnancy, not diminish it.

 

Also, it's good to keep in mind for our character that we're talking about the PC, here, as well. We are alpha material. Let's face it. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/biggrin.gif We are better designed, through greater skills and the Will of the Gods (the game and mod makers), to succeed where others fail. We are the Hero's and Heroine's, so we will be the ones to come up with round belly plates (like existed for men in the Middle Ages, I might add) except that now they have joints and straps to accommodate certain fluxes of growth with only our Repair skill, or maybe the idea of jury rigging some power armour servos to do the cinching for us. We will be the one to include in our pack home-brewed junkbots and robots as companions and house-guardians (even babysitters?....) to help us out, options that the residents of any Goodsprings/Freeside could only dream about over a hot Sarsaparilla.

[draconix]

I'm sorry but your arguments and your witty comments about believability and Micky Mouse simply do not hold. If you are so fond of analogies then here are a few: "A pregnant woman as a protagonist is about as believable as old Agatha surviving in her cabin on her own in the middle of the Capital Wasteland." or "A pregnant woman as a protagonist is about as believable as Sierra Petrovita the Nuka Cola Quantum collector." or "as believable as a bunch of kids surviving in a cave, no matter how defensible it is, without slavers making a serious attempt to storm them and sell them off to the highest bidder." (I know Big Town is an easier target, but slavers did make an effort to storm into Rockopolis that was probably much better defended.) or "as believable as the Lone Wonderer surviving lobotomy in Point Lookout".

 

This is probably true. I guess that I totally failed to take into account that Fallout is actually pretty zany, considering it's post-apocalyptic setting. I think the error in my logic was envisioning the real world and it's realities in the circumstances of the fallout universe, rather than comparing the idea to other ideas already in the game. I'll concede your victory this time.

 

...but next time, Gadget! :devil: