Same sex marriages are possible, but in order to make children you need a third party.

im surprised they dont just add some "magic" to allow same-sex couples to create offspring. im neither for nor against, it just seems like a simple solution for a videogame

Posted By Lemonsquid at 9:44 PM - Thu Nov 15 2018

im surprised they dont just add some "magic" to allow same-sex couples to create offspring. im neither for nor against, it just seems like a simple solution for a videogame

The world is mid-fantasy with a low-fantasy facade. Magic and daemons are all myths and superstition hidden behind a veil that will slowly crack open over time, but still remain rare when it does. So no, this is not a solution for CoE.

Posted By Lemonsquid at 9:44 PM - Thu Nov 15 2018

im surprised they dont just add some "magic" to allow same-sex couples to create offspring. im neither for nor against, it just seems like a simple solution for a videogame

Obviously they could just do it and say the childcontract can be done with any two people regardless of their sex. But i would say it has more to do with coherency in your world-building. When Mann can reproduce with either sex then why shouldn't animals be able to, then you will get really messy behavior in an living ecosystem. Most complex animals in our world reproduce heterosexual and Elyrian animals are (as of now) mostly chimeras or animals from our world with minor differences. If we remodel their reproduction it changes a lot.

And I would think same-sex marriage children would make it much more obvious to us players, that we create our children by signing a contract and then just magically hex them into existence.

So what I really mean is: You want to build a world that feels like it could exist it does not be perfect but it should give you the illusion it is coherently in it self.

Posted By Versith at 2:39 PM - Thu Nov 15 2018

Posted By Lemonsquid at 9:44 PM - Thu Nov 15 2018

im surprised they dont just add some "magic" to allow same-sex couples to create offspring. im neither for nor against, it just seems like a simple solution for a videogame

Obviously they could just do it and say the childcontract can be done with any two people regardless of their sex. But i would say it has more to do with coherency in your world-building. When Mann can reproduce with either sex then why shouldn't animals be able to.

This is a good argument. If any two creatures could reproduce then a lot of animal husbandry would be flipped over on it's head. You couldn't have 2 of any one breed next to each other without risk of offspring.

Likewise you could argue if a species can reproduce without 2 genders, at what point does one gender disappear or the two genders evolve separately?

This has gone through discussion many times and come to the same answer that will not change according to the devs.

I'll post Caspians input on this.

Caspian02/09/2018

Elyrians have reproductive organs. Elyrians are sexually reproductive beings like we are, however we removed the visualizion of sex both to maintain a ESRB rating in countries that forbid sex in games, and because the actual act of sex provides no real game mechanic that needs to be experienced in CoE.

We have child contracts as a way to agree upon the outcome of the childbirth - which parent is responsible for raising the child, which surname will the child get, etc.. It isn't a representation of sex, nor a replacement for it, but the actual process of creating a child isn't illustrated in game.

Now, we chose to make reproduction not asexual for many game mechanics reasons. It is what it is. We understood that people wanted same-sex marriages and same-sex relationships, and we believe in the freedom to choose your partners regardless of gender. However, as in our world, our chosen partners and the genetic requirement to have opposite gender people to reproduce are separate.

So yes, people have sex in Elyria. No we don't have animations for it. Yes, it requires different genders to procreate, no, there's no magical ring to fix that. Yes, you can marry people of the same gender, and no, married couple of the same gender cannot pop out children without finding a surrogate.

SOURCE

The discussion happened in another topic thread that has since been closed in

https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/23136/children-contracts-lgbtq-couples?page=3#post257854

Which resulted in the answer that I quoted above ^

Did a search about this topic and this came up...

Just wanted to note that while same sex marriages are allowed, it's not a perfect system. Say for example two married womann get a mann to agree to make a child contract with one of them.

The child still belongs to the one womann and the mann, not the womann's spouse. So even if the contract stipulates that the mother is responsible for the child, in the event that the child's biological mother dies...one of two things will happen:

1. The father automatically gains full custody of the child, and the adopted mother has no rights to the child.

or

1. The child becomes a ward of the state, in which the adopted mother still has no rights to the child even if she helped raise the child.

Unless there is something in a contract that can change either of these outcomes...same sex couples with children need to be careful.

I feel like it should be easy enough to grant responsibility to another person whilst doing the child contract? Ie. I agree to be the mother of this child but upon its creation I surrender all parental rights to this person.

Surely that would in the process add in the ability to put children up for adoption, rather than just adopting npc wards, which is an interesting mechanic in its own. So if you wanted to be a particular tribe combo you could approach players and pay them to surrogate for you.

It's a thought...but I'm pretty sure SBS already said they aren't allowing npc adoptions because it breaks game mechanics. All children are NPC's in game, which means unless their character code is locked..the child is available to be inhabited by new players looking to start as a child.

Therefore, minors (I think it's 17 and under)..are not adoptable. Neither can you go to an orphanage and adopt a child because those children are potential new players.

There is a work around that I thought of that could potentially work...

Every orphanage director can give a list of orphans and which ones are adoptable or not. Whoever runs the orphanage doesn't have the ability to determine who can be adopted or not...instead at the start of the game, the engine will randomly flag a certain number of current orphans as adoptable. (maybe 1 out of every 100 in a county)

This will happen only once. Going forward, children under the age of 12 who have NPC parents and become orphaned have a chance (uncommon) to be flagged as adoptable by the engine. This makes it possible to adopt, but rare.

Also, potential adoptive parents have to do a sort of social mini game with the adoptable child in order to even get permission to do so. The child has to grow to love you and the adoption can be granted by either the orphanage director, or by the County/Settlement. But as soon as the child turns 12 and hasn't been adopted, they are no longer adoptable and are re-flagged as a regular NPC orphan ready to be inhabited.

I think with a system like that...it makes adoption possible, albeit rare and only in cases with NPC families who have children on their own over time, that are orphaned and flagged by the engine. So if a NPC settlement is burned to the ground, instead of the nearest orphanage being overrun with 300 orphans, some of them can be adopted to other households to alleviate space issues.

So in a county of 1000 orphans...only 10 of them are adoptable. That still leaves enough orphans for new players to inhabit and still fulfill a need for adoption.

I would like to be able to adopt :(

Posted By Mozh at 11:37 AM - Thu Dec 27 2018

The child still belongs to the one womann and the mann, not the womann's spouse. So even if the contract stipulates that the mother is responsible for the child, in the event that the child's biological mother dies...one of two things will happen:

(...)

Unless there is something in a contract that can change either of these outcomes...same sex couples with children need to be careful.

I don't believe that is how it works. I'm fairly sure which ever parent claims the child in the child contract becomes the sole parent. In the event the parent (John Smith) dies then Jane (daughter) would still be a Smith. You may not be able to spark into them until they are of age, but they would stay in that family, and you would still retain the child code for that child. It would not automatically shift to the other party involved in the child contract.

In regards to a married couple, LGBT+ or Str8, it is still the child of a sole parent. Thus the smart thing to do is to arrange in your will that your spouse will become guardian in the event of your death, or vice versa depending on who had the child. Seems like a simple title transfer clause just like any other title transfer you can arrange in your will.