Author: autumnchild (---.Rutgers.EDU)
Date: 04-18-2004 09:53
Since pregnancy seems to be the exclusive domain of women still, this seems the best place to post this topic. ^_~ Anyway, I've been working for some time on a netbook for a DM bootcamp my "club" runs called "the book of the mundane" which deals with the everyday sort of stuff and how it affects adventurers, societies and how it can be used to good plot device. One of the consistently controversial and never quite *right* sections of optional rules (generally using D&D d20) has always been the set regulating pregnancy.
I'll acknowledge that many people just don't include it in their games at all for one reason or the other and I'm not really about arguing that choice. This is just for those that feel like including it. I've always felt that it's better to have a rule for something like pregnancy rather than arbitrarily deciding the matter and leaving the player (whether father, mother or grand-aunt) thinking this pregnancy is really a key plot device rather than one of those things that just happen and becomes integral to the plot over time.
The problem, as always, has been the great complexity of the issue. I've found it difficult to make the rules succinct. Conception rolls are made one of two ways: by the encounter or by the cycle. The one representing a once off and the other representing a sexually active woman or partnership. Either way, the difficulty check to become pregnant is 20. (For those unfamiliar, in d20 you roll a d20, add your Con modifier in this case and any other reevant modifiers and attempt to roll over the difficulty check.) For the cyclic method, the difficulty check for getting pregnant is a mere 2. These are based on some statistics I found (remarkably difficult to find, actually) on pregnancy rates without contraception or other factor. In other words, two healthy, fertile individuals having regular sex without any effort to avoid conception. I employ a house rule that reduces effective rolls when you take damage, so the hero back from the war is less likely to concieve and that sort of thing. An extremely good roll may result in multiple births, the difficulty check for multiple births being 30. Roll over that somehow (shouldn't have drunk Rev. Derrick's +12 Con Tonic, now should you have) and you've got a multiple birth. I roll a d4 just for simplicity sake. If I get a 1 that means identical children and I roll it again to see how many identical children. Roll a 4 and I roll it again as d4-1, 7 being about the maximum I can imagine under the circumstances. Multiple births up would modify the next roll.
A second Con roll is made to determine complications such as placenta previa, birth defects, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and the like. The risk of these is so low I sort of fell off the bottom of the d20 scale. If they roll a 1 (taking into account all modifiers) they're looking at a relatively minor complication such as breech presentation. Manage a 0 and it's a prolapsed cord which is liable to kill the child, but there are nonmagical means of saving them. A -1 or lower and it's something massively severe such as placenta previa (placenta over the cervix so labor ruptures it and results in hemmorhaging) or an ectopic pregnancy. Without sophisticated medical intervention or magic, both mother and child die.
As for miscarriages, whenever circumstances might induce one, I roll a regular Con roll with appropriate modifiers. Since miscarriages take time, the players or NPCs often have a good chance of preventing the miscarriage and resulting harm to mother and child. By the time the pregnancy is in third term, a failed miscarriage roll simply means pre-term labor, which is potentially survivable for the cihld.
The advantage of this system is a fairly realistic (so far as the statistics are of good quality) means of resolving the issues that takes into account the racial variances. For example: elves are known to possess low fertility. Given their life span, the estimated cycle of an elven women is quite long. Furthermore, their constitution is lower. No need for additional modifiers.
As of yet, I have not incorporated rules for fanciful contraceptives. The people of the time period I base this on had very few available that would interfere with conception itself. Other methods would merely provoke a miscarriage roll (and a birth defects roll if I'm feeling nasty). Which, I suppose, gets us to abortion quickly enough. Forget whether anyone would have them or not, I simply incorporate them under miscarriages. Abortion attempts will force a miscarriage roll with appropriate modifiers. Notably, miscarriages/abortions are dangerous for both mother and child, whatever one may say. Depending on their method of choice, they may have deliberately poisoned themselves or attacked themselves with some weapon or other. In either case, they take the appropriate damage and the wound is open/bleeding/aggravated depending on the system in use. Given that I also incorporate rules for disease and hygeine in the book of the mundane, there is the very real risk of sepsis.
As for the labor itself, I've toyed with playing it out in rounds, but I feel that I'll reserve that trick for when it happens in a particularly dramatic fashion. Otherwise, a simple description works. Just like I don't make elaborate rules for sex (really, why are there books out there discussing a PCs "lasting power?" are we actually roleplaying such things out there on the table in graphic, personal detail anyway? isn't that a bit too private?).
These rules have worked adequately thus far for on pregnant PC/NPC (the party switches between worlds run by myself and another DM), a mare the party acquired and two nanny goats acquired as an impulse buy by said pregnant (N)PC.
When it comes to things like morning sickness and mood swings, I encourage the player to research pregnancy and cope with it in roleplaying rather than roll-playing. By the way, I've found that a pregnancy has an *amazingly* rapid maturing effect on male gamers who choose to play their personal fantasy of a slut. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to deal with an immature player of this stripe. Nothing cures such ailments like a dose of reality.
-autumnchild
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