BETA RULES DISCUSSION

This is a temporary topic that will be replaced later once we've decided on rules we all agree with.  Until then, feel free to leave feedback on what I've posted!

~Pan

I like it for the most part. Only parts I think could be revised are the pregnancy rules involving coin toss and dice. 50% chance of pregnancy when mating seems a bit too low. I do think a random game of chance should be used litter size and pup deaths, but the values maybe should be changed. Not too sure about using chance for determining if they get pregnant or not.

With the other rules, maybe allow the female's owner to bar off 2 numbers of their choice for litter size so that there's at least some choice. As for chances of pup survival, I like the current rule, but maybe, just for plot purposes and special rights, dominants have higher chances than subordinates for pup survival.

Also, how will these dice rolls be carried out?

Also again (lol), can this be done a reasonable time before a planned mating if we choose, so that we can plan ahead for the results?

Thanks for your feedback, Meyerm! I appreciate it a lot! So let's break it down here.

Unfortunately, I'm rather adamant on those rules.  They help a LOT with controlling the character count, which also helps with hyperposting.

The reality is that females of every species don't get pregnant every time, and this keeps it more realistic.  We especially want to control the litters of subordinates, since they're not often tolerated in real life, and it was certainly a problem before.  But perhaps we could use a dice to even the odds a bit? Maybe 1, 3, 5 and 6 mean yes, and 2 and 4 mean no for dominant litters.  For subordinates, we could still flip a coin.

I think I forgot to mention that you're welcome to go down on the number of pups, but not up.  That allows for some freedom while still controlling numbers and keeping things realistic.

What do you mean by "allow the female's owner to bar off 2 numbers of their choice"? I don't understand that.  owo

Also we could certainly allow for higher chances for dominant pups.  I'll add that ^^

The dice/coin things would be done by an admin.  I'm not sure if it should be just any admin, or a certain one... I would be willing to do it, at least.  

Also, as for planning ahead... well, it would probably be calculated when the meerkats mate in the roleplay.  That's easiest because they can try again the same day if that doesn't work.  Unless you have another idea? The problem is that not all matings are planned, particularly with rovers.  Maybe planning ahead can be optional?

Anything else? c:

Honestly, I'm quite interested in the idea of us formulating some sort of chance roulette regarding pregnancies and pup casualties. The unpredictability of it would add a bit of a dramatic effect to the role play and it would keep the amount of individuals in the mobs in check. Maybe we could also decide that once a mob exceeds a certain amount of individuals in the group, say maybe between twenty five and thirty, the chances of that particular mob experiencing a split increases considerably, along with that, the larger a mob becomes, the more likely subordinate females are to be evicted. Another way to keep the numbers in check is to make the mobs more susceptible to a TB outbreak. Really, though, all of what I've read has me eager to see the mobs in action. X3

Of course planning ahead is optional. Some are unplanned, but say you have a plot where they'll mate on a particular day, you can roll the dice that game day before they mate if you so choose, and all of it. Decide if they get pregnant, how many pups, and if any will die when they mate so we can plan ahead.

As for dominants, I was talking mostly of the very start as far as probability of getting pregnant. Can we make a single exception where any DF on this very first game day when we get started will guaranteed get pregnant if they mate? Just so we can get plots going and don't have to wait extra time.

And what I meant about barring numbers is, if the range is 1-6, but the owner really doesn't want a single pup, they can choose to make 1 mean "try again," or choose 6 if the owner doesn't want a large litter.

I also think survival probability should depend on size of the litter. A single pup has higher chances than a litter of 5.

How will this be done? Is there some electronic dice roller feature we can paste in or something?

There is a feature I played with during time on a Hunger Games RPG, I am looking into if again.

It should be easy to either calculate everything when the mating happens, or when it's planned... if it's the latter we'll need a waiting period before you can try again.

Yeah, I think that would be fair.  All dominants can get pregnant this upcoming game day.

Ok, that sounds good to me.  I'll add that as well c:

That is actually what I added... the number of pups that survive depends on the size of the litter.

We would probably use a real dice and coin, unless we can find a flash thing somewhere that does it for us owo

How about the active moderator at the time will flip the coin & roll the dice? Or admin, probably admin.

Don't get the wrong idea, I trust all of you, but I was thinking about something that uses more than just the honor system, like a time stamp digital dice roller or one that has number of tries attached to the image.

I looked into it, there is only a forum-adaptle version for proboards.

Well, if we can FIND one, that should be fine, but I haven't had much luck.  We may have to just realize that you have to trust the staff members if we can't find one...

I believe Forumotion has something similar but... We need both something 6-sided and 2-sided.

I know of a program called the hat. You randomly put stuff in and it will draw it out. We could enter numbers like a dice, and then whatever the hat draws is the number that would be rolled on the dice?

I actually think I may have found one.

http://www.dice2d.com/dice-roller.html

A dice is thrown down each time you roll.  This is the closest I could find.

Unfortunate Stormy, I can't download and install programs right now...

That could work. Roll the die, printscreen, and post the image as proof. Maybe roll a control first so that the first one has to be a certain number, and then the others follow it .

I agree with Meyerm's idea.

"Maybe roll a control first so that the first one has to be a certain number, and then the others follow it ."

Could you explain that further? I don't quite understand.

But I'll make the edits, sure.

Is there anything else, or are we good?

Pancake wrote:

"Maybe roll a control first so that the first one has to be a certain number, and then the others follow it ."

First, roll a die, take a picture, and upload. This first roll is meaningless for determining what happens in the rp. Then, roll for the pregnancy options and screenshot that. If it is authentic, the first die rolled would match the original image. These means we need at least 2 photos posted per roll, but it could work. If we got clutter, images could be deleted after everyone sees the results.

Yeah, that sounds perfect.

This one actually has a log, so you can see everything that was rolled, which is even more useful.  



Anyway I'll add it all to the topic, and let you guys know so you can go over it again.

YoshKatgirl wrote:

Honestly, I'm quite interested in the idea of us formulating some sort of chance roulette regarding pregnancies and pup casualties. The unpredictability of it would add a bit of a dramatic effect to the role play and it would keep the amount of individuals in the mobs in check. Maybe we could also decide that once a mob exceeds a certain amount of individuals in the group, say maybe between twenty five and thirty, the chances of that particular mob experiencing a split increases considerably, along with that, the larger a mob becomes, the more likely subordinate females are to be evicted. Another way to keep the numbers in check is to make the mobs more susceptible to a TB outbreak. Really, though, all of what I've read has me eager to see the mobs in action. X3

I think saying 25 for splits and evictions makes sense, 30 is a real danger zone for that second one I think.  I'm not sure about TB though, since that requires characters to die, doesn't it?

Also updated the rules on pregnancies and litters.

I don't think we should randomly kill adult characters. We can impose character limits to control that.

I think we agreed that we'd consider a character limit once the roleplay gets bigger.

I've gonna add that less than 10 meerkats is a danger zone for predation and starvaton, and that over 25 is the danger zone for splits and eviction.  Is that ok with everyone?

Is there anything else or are we good?

Eh, come to think of it, a TB outbreak sounds like a bad idea. Imposing a character limit would be the best route to take.

I'm fine with those odds, along with the dice roll thingy. :3

Looks good to me. Anything else need to be done before we can start?

All that's really left, I think, is that we need to get dominants for all the mobs. No one's even tried for DF of the Fiddle Nips yet, Shadow hasn't gotten hers for the Nightingales DM up yet. Aside from that, so far we haven't had more than one tryouts for the others.

If everyone who's applied for dominants has an uncontested spot, we can decide those that are contested and apply the rule where there can be more than 1 dominant per member if no one else applies. Just remember you have to give up a spot if someone without a dominant contends.