Making the Breeding Pits Less Disgusting

[cttw]

If you were a deranged orcish geneticist, by far the most logical thing for you to do would be to somehow implant uteruses in the men and use them to breed your army. By far. The fact that the... things... giving birth in the pits started out as women, instead of as men or a 50/50 mix of the two sexes, is nothing but a reflection of the zone author's flagrant sexism and male privilege.

You've watched that Schwarzenegger movie too many times.

[Grey]

You've watched that Schwarzenegger movie too many times.

One of my favourite Arnie movies :D But it still required a woman donor. The ovum is generally considered the most valuable part of the whole process, and the power of the womb shouldn't be understated. If I was a crazy orc geneticist (especially if I was a male crazy orc geneticist in a male-dominated society) I would probably choose women as the subjects of my warped operations as all you have to add is plentiful male seed. But then I'd probably feel a bit shit about it all afterwards and kill myself... ;)

[cttw]

Yes I understand you being graceful. But I want to point out that evouga accusing the zone's author of "flagrant sexism and male privilege" shows a troubling amount of crazy, is rude and unwelcome here, and the worst sin of all, incorrect.

Additionally, it shows ignorance on genetics, orcs, the meaning of the word "flagrant" and basic logic.

[stinkstink]

Yes I understand you being graceful. But I want to point out that evouga accusing the zone's author of "flagrant sexism and male privilege" shows a troubling amount of crazy, is rude and unwelcome here, and the worst sin of all, incorrect.

Additionally, it shows ignorance on genetics, orcs, the meaning of the word "flagrant" and basic logic.

This post is both unhelpful and makes the community as a whole look bad.

[Grey]

Yes I understand you being graceful. But I want to point out that evouga accusing the zone's author of "flagrant sexism and male privilege" shows a troubling amount of crazy, is rude and unwelcome here, and the worst sin of all, incorrect.

There are many worse sins than being incorrect! And on male privilege evouga isn't incorrect - I do my best to look beyond it but it isn't going to just go away.

Criticism should be taken in the most positive way. If evouga is willing to come here and say that then how many people privately think much worse? Such honest opinion is always of value for showing how people really think.

[Torokasi]

I think I'm done with ToME for a good long while, too. The 1.1.4 change is absurd in that it basically has to resort to Nazifying the Sunwall to even attempt to equate the two -which should be an apt demonstration of how problematic this all is- and I've got a ton of sympathy for the person who just bailed on the game last page, myself.

DarkGod, I've zilch regrets for buying the game, for what it's worth. Gameplay-wise, this has been a very long and very enjoyable game outside of the problems that've been discussed. But.

- the lore, - the breeding pits, I'm done. This change feels like a really horrific move to try and get any of this "intent" across and just tells me I don't want to associate myself with the game any further.

[cttw]

Play by my rules or I'm leaving. Well, go.

[Luceid]

I don't believe the breeding pits narratively pulls back any kind of curtain, and throwing in a reference to the holocaust was probably not a very good idea. You need a very frank editor for your work.

[Gatewalker]

I don't believe the breeding pits narratively pulls back any kind of curtain, and throwing in a reference to the holocaust was probably not a very good idea. You need a very frank editor for your work.

This 20x over. Trying to make the situation seem more morally ambiguous by having a sunpally talk about a "final solution" in regards to going and killing all the orcish mothers and young? Yeah badideas.

I'd be fine with really paring down the descriptions of the mothers to reduce body horror, and most decidedly NOT including the bit about the sunpally telling you to go purge the race. But I'll be honest, I think a zone full of vengeful ghosts or horrible mutated experiments gone wrong would be more interesting.

[StelasEldrasia]

Play by my rules or I'm leaving. Well, go.

You're being self-righteous at someone who is upset at a literal reference to the Holocaust. Good going.

The reference shouldn't be in there. Sure, have a moral quandary. Sure, have a way to gracefully bow out of the region. But perhaps don't call everyone's attention to it by slapping up a direct Holocaust reference onto the screen, because not only is that going to be offensive to a fairly large chunk of people who may or may not have read the lore up until that point (what's worse than a holocaust ref? one where the person hasn't caught the background yet), it's also extremely tasteless.

On top of that Tome is no longer a roguelike tucked away in the corner of the internet - it's a product sold on Steam with reasonably high visibility and that means you have more of a responsibility to uphold regarding conduct and taste - and more accountability in the wake of it. If someone rolls up to Steam to complain, going 'hey this guy just added writing referencing the Holocaust outside of any kind of historical context and is now selling it to anyone in Europe via your service, what the hell?' what are they going to think?

[Ivels]

...Aw hell. All I wanted was to post an amusing picture, get on the highest horse I could find and gallop into the sunset, secure in the knowledge that I'll never find myself typing the word "vagiant" outside a CAPTCHA box. But there's something about Breeding Pits that encourages people to post really terrible opinions that they'll feel really silly about in a few weeks. Future me, if you're reading this, I am SO sorry.

Although Breeding Pits are apparently a federal - issue, I don't actually have a problem with them. It's a place where I go to after Ardhungol, because I need more loot and less orc patrols. The first time I've read the lore, I found it so hilariously out of place and at odds with the rest of the narrative that I couldn't resist taking a screenshot of Orc Greatmother's description. Seeing "ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: GENOCIDE" pop-up made me press PrtSc several more times. It was just too good. It's probably the single most memorable moment in this game for me, one that I will forevermore associate with ToME. Because of the twisted fondness I have for the place, I'll be sad if the future generations are robbed of this cultural artifact.

Holy shit, have you noticed that every time your character kills a baby, he actually takes time to cut out its heart? Have you listened to the music? Once a baby confused my character with Bellowing Roar. True story.

ToME's plot and gameplay aren't the most functional of families but this particular murder-suicide case is destined to become an urban legend and a straight-to-DVD movie.

And that's really the issue here, isn't it? Up until the master drops the plot stick, the gameplay and the lore go if not hand in hand, then at least on the same side of the road. Your character is an adventurer and his motivation in exploring the world is murdering wildlife for drops. Consequently, the lore you find are mostly disconnected flavor bits with little relevance to the plot, which is nonexistent at that point. Because there is no plot, there are no plotholes and you don't miss out on much if you decided to ignore the texts that the game bombards you with and get back to the gamePLAY. That being said, some of the pre-east lore is pretty enjoyable.

Then the master drops Staff of Absorption and we have about 10 more zones to do. Suddenly the game realizes that since it gave us the plot stick, there should probably be some plot to go along with it. We're taken to the east and...Oh shit, we'd better tell you what the East is. Oh shit, we probably should tell you who the people of Sunwall are. Crap, since we told you that Sunwall has been at war with the orcs for only a billion years we'd better tell you about the orcs now. And because we don't want to be too cliche, we're going to try and make them sound sympathetic. Don't you feel like a monster for killing all those children, you vile person you?! The death of an entire race is on your shoulders now, Player!

At this point, the story, however short-lived it may be, starts breaking down. Well wait a second, the orcs had that Far Portal right? How come they didn't evacuate women and children first? Maj' Eyal is a big place, why are there no splinter orc settlements hidden in the mountains where they don't rely on crimes against nature to reproduce? How come Angolwen is so - incompetent? Seriously. Tannen, Urkis and now Sorcerers? Lin is functionally a demigod, yet she can't keep tabs on a couple of bad apples who may very well blow their whole cover and trigger a second Spell Hunt? There's serious shit going down and Archmage Tarelion is playing dress up and hassling adventurers on the overworld map! And what's with the timeline! Sunwall and the orcs have been at war for a hundred years with absolutely nothing happening. They couldn't establish contact with Maj'Eyal in all these years? HAVE YOU PEOPLE HEARD OF BOATS? YOU SHOULD HAVE BECAUSE YOU'VE ARRIVED IN ONE YOU ASSHOLES.

So when the author breaks into my house through a window that he probably won't pay for, and I feel his heavy breath on my neck as he tries to create some morally ambiguous gray area and trick me into taking the whole thing seriously, I feel naturally resistant. Sorry, Shakespear, it will take more than one vagiant (finally!) and a couple of Garkul stories to stop me from kicking this baby. Ahaha, this little tyke can sure take a punch. Time to take out the Prides.

If that is the author's intention anyway. I suspect that, like us, he had no ulterior motives. Just a lot of free time and a text editor.

[Mewtarthio]

The "final solution" reference was a bit much, yeah. I like the idea of both sides being so desperate they resort to monstrous measures to ensure their survival: The orcs with their breeding pits, the Sunwall willing to wipe out the orcs' only means of reproduction to save themselves. By comparing the Sunwall to Nazis, you're kind of making it impossible to sympathize with them. What should be treated like unleashing the krogan genophage or detonating the Little Doctor on the bugs' homeworld comes off as "Mwahaha! Now we shall purge the orc swine from the face of Eyal!" just because of those two words.

[Grakor456]

Many of the points here are very contradictory, which does make it hard to change anything beyond just stripping the zone out entirely. But since many have said they like the zone it's not easy to do that either! The suggestions for changes so far are just too short of what the zone is intending to achieve. Specifically it must:
- Show desperation from the orcs, to the point of using a short-termist, self-destructive solution
- Some realisation from the orcs that what they're doing is wrong
- Pity from the player for the individuals involved (requiring persons, not vines or pods)
- Disgust from the player, on moral and physical levels, at what is going on
- Require killing that the player is uncomfortable with
- Result in a form of irrecoverable genocide for the orcs
- All be optional, with no reward

Alright, let me try my hand at this, then. I fancy myself a writer after all, so this will be an interesting challenge!

The idea of cloning vats was posed before, I believe. I think this is a possibility (without the need to resort to them being "vats of necrotic filth" because that really does add nothing to the story). Let me try to expand this idea to fit the above goals:

- The orcs are dying out from the last war on their race. They know this. They set out their few doctors to try to figure out a solution.
- Using magic (and perhaps some tech if you want to foreshadow the next campaign?) they create the idea of making clones using the blood and life force of another orc. There are some flaws in the process and the results, however: the new orcs are sterile, and attempting to clone a clone creates mutations and other body-horror issues.
- The orcs take their few remaining females, and a few male volunteers, to strap into devices that constantly siphon blood and life from them in order to mass-produce clones. Perhaps they volunteered at first, but after years of torture have quite changed their minds, but have no voice to truly convey this.
- The devices have extended their lives, however, and are necessary for them to live at all now. Perhaps the orcs know both this and that they're in constant pain, but can't do anything about it without killing off their own race. Alternatively, they keep hoping that someone will find a way to perfect these techniques without these negative problems, but no luck so far.
- When the player comes down, outside of the door guards the majority of the complex is filled with non-combatants: caretakers and the "newborn" clones, fighting without skill but still doing so in the vain attempt to save their own race.
- The end results in a possibility to shut down the devices and kill off the clone production entirely.
- Disgust levels can be tweaked with the actual descriptions of the objects/critters in the zone. Body-horror clones that need to be put down optional.

Not a perfect solution (and admittedly borrows several sci-fi staples,) but it'd try to achieve the above goals while removing the "gross-out" mothers and the "stab the baby IN THE FAISE" fights.

[cttw]

Not everything needs to be Disney-safe. Some people can think for themselves.

[SageAcrin]

STOP THIS.

Stop acting like it's wrong to sanitize a product sold on Steam without any warnings of its content.

Stop it.

Stop now. It's inane and worthless. Stop.

It is not censorship. It is actually telling what the product is.

This is something that is getting to the point of being worth complaining to Valve to, if ToME does not at least put warnings on its content.

I am sure they will just be thrilled to hear that there are twenty foot tall vulva monsters that they probably missed due to them being tucked into the latter half of a hard Roguelike, and that the game has no warnings about it anywhere.

If this is a mature game it needs to act like it, at the very least. Consistency-one way or another-is required.