Of Pogue the Dwarven Minstrel in Lord of the Rings Online.
I had you goin' there for a minute, eh?
You see, there's a nifty but somewhat pointless (unless you're into Roleplay) feature in LotRO. People of the same race can form parent/child relationships.
I was peaking into my character's Bio tab on the character journal when I was reminded of the feature. So I asked in Kinship chat if there was any dwarf who was willing to let Begud be their daddy. Surprisingly, my good buddy Djerbyll (his alt is Pogue) said yes. Huzzah!
No annoying papers to fill out, no long trips to foreign countries (unless you count the horse ride from Lone-Lands to Thorin's Gate), and no Brangelina taking my baby. I met Pogue, my son-to-be, in Thorin's Hall, targeted him and typed "/adopt".
But it did not work... it said something about our generations being incompatible. This directed me to another nifty feature. Not only can you have a kid, but you can create a whole bloodline. I had to set my own generation to 1, and Pogue had to set his to 2, and then we were able to make the adoption official.
Presumably, I can now come on with Tundrin my Dwarven Guardian and Pogue could adopt me, making our Dwarven family 3 generations long!
The coolest part is, say Pogue left the game, or for some reason he wanted to delete that character, or for an even stupider reason we got into a fight and he didn't want to be my kid anymore. All we have to do (either one of us I presume) is visit the local Notary and have the relationship erased for a small fee.
Adoption is a great feature added in the later stages of beta for LotRO, that's just another in a long line of things that make me enjoy my time in Middle-Earth. There's really just so much more depth than my previous MMO and I had almost forgotten what it was like to be in a virtual world with more to do than kill stuff and grind dungeons.
The adoption feature got me thinking though... what about Marriage? Where's that feature? Why can't my friend make a "female" dwarf (there are no male or female distinctions between dwarves in LotRO, as is fitting with the lore) and have us get hitched?
Apparently, the issue at hand was that this posed the question of same-sex marriages. Ruh-roh. I recall the stink that happened in WoW when Blizzard made the decision to not allow Gay and Lesbian Friendly Guilds to advertise themselves as such. It just shocks me, that in today's day and age, we're still having such problems accepting people for their personal choices.
Call me left-wing (I am, to the far side, very likely if you want to do go that far), but far be it from me to say what's right and wrong for another person's sexual choices. I'll tell you rape is wrong. I'll tell you murder is wrong. Stealing, lying, assault? All wrong. But there's no clear moral distinction, in my eyes, of what's "right" when it comes to being homo or hetero-sexual. Call me crazy, but I believe there are far more pressing issues in this world than whether someone is attracted to a member of the same sex.
And before rumors or insults start flying this is just the opinion of a hetero married man. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, if you will. So it rubs me the wrong way when I see things like this debated heavily and paid too much attention to, when there are far more pressing matters to tend to.
Okay, I'm done. God... anyone who's seen the movies knows that Sam <3's Frodo... sheesh. *wink*
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3 comments:
Congrats! But you don't have to be the same race! I am the proud human mother of a hobbit:) I suppose since you are /adopt them that they don't have to be the same race:)
Holy cow, really? I'm going to need to adopt a Hobbit then.
Yep. Definitely.
Your title reminds me of two famous sayings... "Luke, I am your Father!" and "You keeeled my father, prepare to die!".
I believe the adoption feature was put in because some beta testers requested a "son of" etc. title for roleplaying purposes. The funny thing is, the same people who wanted that weren't too happy when the adoption system was introduced. I think the idea was that they wanted to create a history for their characters, and not to have other players (who all look like they're the same age) as their ancestors.
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