One Hour One Life Forums

There was a really effective birth control back in the day before contemporary times. Ya wanna know what it was? Abstinence. Even back in ancient times people were able to put two and two together and realized that not having sex= no babies (except that one time with Mary, God Bless!).  Now, OHOL is different from real life as all women in the game reproduce asexually without the help of men, so this couldn't be implemented. As for me, would I want an herb or plant i could eat in game that would at the least greatly decrease the liklihood of my popping out a kid? YES. Nothing sucks more than going out in the wilderness for whatever reason and popping out a kid that you have to abandon. When I am eve-ing and am already hauling a kid around I don't want to birth another that I am then forced to abandon. Because abandoning kids suck and being abandoned sucks and I've been at both ends. If there were a way to prevent this or decrease the liklihood even more I would take it in a  heartbeat. Do you know how many towns I've been in with 7+ fertile women just pumping out baby after baby after baby? Too many times and for the past couple days, every town I've been born has had this exact problem with the exception of one due to the population getting wiped by a duo bear attack with a knife stabbing griefer.
I can kind of see where you're coming from but the current 'birth control' in game, if it can even be called that, doesn't really operate that well if at all. I don't mess around with yum hardly at all and the times I did in the past were for really long trips. Now I can't even use it for that without getting shat on with fifteen kids. Even with no yum and being cold as balls I still. get. kids.

I really want bodies to have a purpose later on as a lot of cultures have used bodies for various types of medicines and fertilizers.

This whole drama/problem could easily be avoided if there was some form of birth control available in game so that overpopulation is not an issue. I don't want to have kids if I am focused on hunting or scouting and my sister already has five living kids. Having children makes doing certain tasks harder and does put a strain on food sources. Even with the world's most dedicated baker, you can run out of both soil and water because one of your kids broke the shovel or killed all the sheep.
If players had more control, like in real life, over how many kids they have and when, the overpopulation issue would be more easily dealt with and you wouldn't have to be put in the dilemma of 'do I keep this kid and potentially ease my town closer to starving to death or keep it for more workers?"

A huge problem is that men cannot carry on the family line. They cannot produce children or even adopt children or marry a girl from another town over and work to keep both family lines alive. Thus, we are forced to pray for one girl to be born smart enough and lucky enough to make it to maturity and produce a smart and lucky daughter of her own and so on and so forth. But eventually, you either have too many daughters popping out babies and you over populate-due to players having no control over how many children they have unlike how things are in rl civilizations- or you have a bout of bad luck where all your daughters die young and you're left with only sons.
The point of this isn't to say boys are useless or anything like. Being a guy has its benefits but I wish there was a way for a guy to continue their family line in some way or form, maybe having it so family trees can be intertwined? I know Jason wanted to avoid boys being able to reproduce for the sake of avoiding incest and issues of consent, but I really really want it so family trees can be connected. By doing this, you would encourage villages to be closer to each other. Marriage ties and family are huge essential parts of human history and by having our men being unable to contribute directly to the production of offspring and avoiding the iffy topic of marriage we are losing half of human culture and history in one swoop.

That is definitely looking at it in a different light. I agree that this system might actually help eves in that they don't end up with loads of children before they're ready. It would certainly help me with my eve runs if I had more control over when and where I started producing children. Its just that even as an eve you have to multi-task so many different things and keep track of everything that adding another to keep an eye on makes it easy to forget it which is my main concern. I know I often forget to get enough milkweed for rabbit traps when I first start up a base and then have to run around for five minutes looking for it.
But with kids- when you have a fertility window of 14 to 40- you only have about a half hour where you can produce kids starting right away when you spawn in as an eve. You spend most of your fertility time trying to set up base and get it to the point you're farming or have a lot of food in storage for when you can actually keep your children alive to maturity. Chances are, you won't reach this point until you're thirty-something. This leaves a less then ten minute window to produce children- more specifically a daughter and a spare to carry on your lineage. Which is why I still stand by my stance that this system wouldn't help eves in a long run as even when you have a plenty of food around your children often die and if you only birth 2-3 kids your chances for producing a competent daughter drops dramatically in comparison to popping out twelve. The best chance for an eve to succeed in starting up a village is birthing loads of kids over the whole of their lifetime while still getting stuff done and having enough food around for the competent kids to find and hoping that at least some of your children survive to adulthood, know how to proceed in the tech tree, and have the ability to continue your line.

Hey Tyler! I found a note with your name on it- which is why I remembered your name. I traveled to your city twice in two different lives when I heard the town bell. It was a nice looking place with lots of interesting folk there. I always brought loads of iron as gifts when I visited there. The first time I went there I was Daniel Auvil and the second time I was Roger Toot.

In OHOL, you are constantly making decisions. Even doing nothing is a decision onto itself. For every choice you make there is a pro and con- whether to spend time gathering fire wood in comparison to bringing back more milkweed. When you find yourself with a child, be it a girl or a boy, you have to decide whether or not you're going to spend the time and resources to raise that child to a certain age and if you intend to continue contributing the child's life after they hit a certain point- like whether you intend to take on the role of a mentor or continue nurturing them at all in comparison to just letting them be and hoping they live. With every child you decide to raise to maturity you risk bringing a griefer or a sponge into your village. With every baby you decide to abandon you risk your line dying out or suffer from what I like to call an 'invisible loss' which is simply where you lose something valuable without ever knowing you had it- in this case a valuable hard worker.

When one is presented with the interesting case of multiple children at once with unknown strong connections to the other, the stakes are higher. They require more resources than raising a singular kid but generally less time as you can raise three kids at once faster than one at a time. Because there is no way to know what type of bond the multiple children share, you don't know by what string of similarity they are connected and what their intentions are to you and your family- much like any other child. But whatever they are is multiplied by their numbers and are, as the saying goes, 'double trouble.' Are they mentors and students? Fellow learners? RL friends? Complete noobs? Or Griefers? Theres no real way to tell.
Twins, triplets, and quadruplets in all their varieties are important to the world of OHOL and are simply another decision we as players have to make. Just like with every child, the first decision you have to make it whether to keep them- quickly decide first if you are capable of keeping them- if you have a food shortage now isn't the time to be raising very many kids if at all. Then decide this-should you keep them? Know beforehand if you or someone else is able to dedicate themselves full time to raising them to maturity or if you have a way to dispose of them should they turn out to be rotten. If you are the town hunter or baker- you might need to ask an aunt, cousin, or sister to look after them as your job is very important and time consuming. If your town can't afford the loss of resources due to the multiples not only because of feeding them but the resources lost by having a valuable player be dedicated to nurturing them full time to maturity then now isn't the time for twins. If you manage to get the twins to maturity, give them a reason to stay. People tend to feel loyalty to a town that has treated them well and if they feel welcomed are more inclined to stay if their partner has passed.
Moral of the story: Try to keep twins if you can afford the risk and welcome them as you would any kid. I don't think twins by nature are more inclined to griefing than other people but because they're more rare and can do more damage and often aren't allowed to make it to adulthood the few who do grief ruin it for the rest of the lot.

I think this thread reveals a lot about the different players of OHOL. Whether they're a risky gambler or conservative conformist and/or sympathetic nurturers  or cutthroat managers.

All I know is that everytime I saw you (which was alot) you weren't doing much and the last half of my lifetime you were literally just standing in front of a goose pond spouting pickup lines at a goose. Maybe you did do some stuff- in which case I retract my previously made statement of you doing absolutely nothing- but our village was in great trouble and it seemed that most of which you did was rp, which again isn't in itself bad and I normally encourage, when it would've been greatly appreciated that you instead got your rear into top gear.
That's it. Nothing personal, I don't dislike you as a person or player nor I'm I saying you're a bad person or player. This isn't an attack against your character.

Hi yeah this is your aunt Rider Etemandi. I'm totally ok with people rping and having fun but next time, please try and help the town a little more instead of staring at a goose dropping pick-up lines. We were having a massive population boom and a food shortage and needed all hands on deck, as the saying goes, and not another mouth to feed not helping. If you had helped us try and gather food or even at least tend the berry farm while spouting off pick up lines I wouldn't have cared.

LOL I was actually thinking of that song when I wrote this thread's title

omg yes