Pregnancy rules

[Heavy Arms]

Even the creator of GNS theory, which popularized "simulationism" in game design discussions, was clear that he meant it as emulation of a fictional world via rules, not a real world simulation mentality, even if some games are very close to each other in that regard. The goal of that concept (which even he has disregarded at this point) was to categorize a way of thinking about mechanics where the rules create an experience that feels true to a described reality with the presumption that experience will facilitate fun via exploration based play.

[monteparnas]

The problem with simulationism in RPG is that it is inherently a fallacy, and not understanding this tends to lead to several problems down the road.

It is a fallacy because not only no system can really be accurate about reality, but also and even more because the system never actually tries to simulate reality, but instead to simulate someone's expectations about reality. In the end it is not about realism as people understand it, but about verisimilitude. Here is the fallacy: you have the impression of an objective quality, but this quality is actually subjective, because people have distinct expectations about reality.

From a design perspective Simulationism have been dropped out of this understanding. It is not about ignoring that people sometimes want to experience simulation, but that offering this experience is inherently different from actually creating a simulation, instead involving the identification of the expectations of those people to create an experience they'll enjoy.

And in the end this is also a form of drama. One of the things we must deconstruct is the idea that drama or interpretation is something dissociated from rules or from mathematics and dice-rolling. Those are all tools for drama, and a story can deliver drama and emotion in many ways without giving the impression of being theatrical. After all, a roll to decide if you hit an attack, for example, is inherently a dramatic moment as you hang on the dice to figure out what will happen next, with character's lives, possessions and decisions on the line.

[CaptOtter]

My two cents[.]

I don't have a strong opinion on your points numbers 1 and 3; I agree strongly with your numbers 2, 4, and 5 (with a caveat on 5,) and I think I'm mostly on board with your points nos. 6 and 7.

5. Related to this, no explicit “pregnancy check” rules. Pregnancy only occurs when the player and Storyteller agree to it. The closest you should ever come to this would be to point out that Life Magick can be used to promote fertility or barrenness, but that even that should be subject to player and Storyteller veto. (This is where the sorts of techniques I referred to earlier might come in handy, with a Rewind letting everyone backtrack to before the spell was cast and to come up with some alternate course of events.)

I'm with you on not doing anything against the Players' wills when it comes to reproductive issues (among other things.) I just want to point out that it's entirely possible for Players (and ST obviously,) to agree on the front end--before it ever even comes up in-game--on a set of rules not only for what it's like to be pregnant (mechanically,) but also becoming pregnant. In my Googling around, I've seen instances of people deciding that they're okay with (and opting into) a system for determining (via rolls and other factors,) whether a pregnancy occurs. Based on your other points about players agency, I suspect you'd be down with this, but I did want to point out that there are apparently groups out there that affirmatively like to play with a system in which they leave this sort of thing to fate and the dice.

I'd appreciate it if they would take pains not to treat pregnancy as some sort of Flaw, or other inherently negative trait. Just musing here for the moment; but maybe it could be framed as working through a creative process, where the creation is a new human life. And instead of talking about the penalties of having a swollen belly, for instance, talk about the effort that's directed by the mother toward bringing the child to term.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your approach re- a highly collaborative creative process without much or any mechanical considerations, and I agree with not referring to pregnancy as a "Flaw". However, I can easily see someone desirous of roleplaying a pregnancy also wanting some mechanical elements to reflect some of the basic difficulties that pregnant people can and do deal with just going about their lives; or feeling like they need to some mechanical challenges to maintain the verisimilitude of the game. It seems to me that as long as your No. 2 point is heeded, it's less likely that you'd end up with particularly insensitive or problematic language or treatment on the subject.

7. Focus on what sorts of stories can be told. Whatever mechanics are introduced should be presented in the context of enabling the story, not as a “reality simulator” . . . . [W]hen dealing with the Storyteller System, the goal shouldn't be simulation; it should be drama. (I wouldn't quite go so far as to say that simulationist games are inherently bad design; if a gaming group likes simulations, I'm not going to tell them they're wrong to like it. But if your goal is a “drama engine”, then simulationism is definitely out.)

I agree with the idea that if you want a "drama engine," it's counterproductive to make decisions about game mechanics based purely (or even predominantly) on whether it makes the game more or less true to real life--i.e., accurately simulating reality cannot, under those circumstances, be the end unto itself. That said, on my first reading of this point (no. 7) I thought you might be implying that leaning into a real-world-accurate portrayal of pregnancy would necessarily be antithetical to a story/drama-first approach, though I may just be reading too much into it. But even as confident as I am that a simulationist approach to pregnancy can walk hand-in-hand with, and serve the desire or goal to put drama, story, and narrative first (particularly if you're involved in a more magically stripped-down game that aims to highlight the grittier day-to-day human difficulties of being a mage,) I would stipulate that I do not believe it's possible to achieve a perfect or satisfying '50/50' split; the best of efforts to split the baby is invariably still going to have moments in which the needs of the simulation will conflict with what's best for story and drama.

[Amethyst]

I tend just to add a level of difficulty to physical roles. Simple really.

Makes sense.

[Ragged Robin]

I tend just to add a level of difficulty to physical roles. Simple really.

[Amethyst]

I think a character should be able to get pregnant if her player (and the father’s player) wants that, but I don’t think there should be official pregnancy rules for the reasons everybody else said.

[Sergeant Brother]

I’ll throw in my two cents, another vote against pregnancy rules. If a character is pregnant, it should be part of a role playing plot line that the player wants their character involved in, so it should be handled through role playing. Dice mechanics aren’t necessary.

Some days you just get a headache. Why? Who knows, but it happens to everybody sometimes. We don’t need a Stamina roll every day to see if your character has some random ailment with some minor penalty, though doing so might be realistic in a sense.

But it might be interesting to say that your character has the sniffles today, there need be no mechanical penalties. Likewise, if a pregnant character’s player wants her to have morning sickness that day, the character can complain about feeling nauseated. Maybe even throw up after the fight. Not because of a roll, but as part of role playing the character, because it would be fun and flavorful.

The only pregnancy I’ve even seen in table top gaming happened during down time, which you would expect for a woman involved in physically strenuous life threatening activities to take a break if they get pregnant.

I’ve not been pregnant, but my wife has on several occasions and I’ve seen, and had described to me, her symptoms often.

[Dataweaver]

My two cents:

I wouldn't mind a supplement that deals with pregnancy. However, I would have a few stipulations:

1. The supplement shouldn't be about pregnancy; to the extent that pregnancy is addressed, it should be within some wider context; say, a more in-depth look at Child Mages, and finding some way to stay reasonably true to the official source material about them while fixing some of the more problematic elements such as the assertion that everyone starts out Awakened, but most are forced into Sleep sometime around their birth. (We've haggled over this issue before, so I'm not going to get into it again; I bring it up merely as an illustration of what sort of supplement might make sense to include material about pregnancy in.)

2. Whoever writes it should either be an expert, or have an expert on tap, about whatever that larger context of the book is.

3. Make it a STV supplement, so that it is inherently unofficial.

4. Several games and supplements that I've seen lately have included a section about techniques for letting gamers who are uncomfortable with the course that the story is taking to do something about it. Things like forcing a “fade to black” when a scene is getting too graphic for their comfort, or a “rewind” when the plot takes a twist that's traumatizing to the player. Something like that should at least be considered for the hypothetical supplement that I'm envisioning; and even if it doesn't make the cut, there should at least be a frank discussion about understanding and respecting the boundaries of your fellow gamers: something like the aforementioned player's experience with a forced pregnancy and forced abortion should be pointed to as an example of what what not to do.

5. Related to this, no explicit “pregnancy check” rules. Pregnancy only occurs when the player and Storyteller agree to it. The closest you should ever come to this would be to point out that Life Magick can be used to promote fertility or barrenness, but that even that should be subject to player and Storyteller veto. (This is where the sorts of techniques I referred to earlier might come in handy, with a Rewind letting everyone backtrack to before the spell was cast and to come up with some alternate course of events.)

6. I could see some game systems to help reflect what it's like to be pregnant, for use after the player and Storyteller mutually agree to go ahead. On the one hand, I'd want them to be fairly basic (because, as I said, this sort of thing shouldn't be the focus of the book); but on the other hand, I'd appreciate it if they would take pains not to treat pregnancy as some sort of Flaw, or other inherently negative trait. Just musing here for the moment; but maybe it could be framed as working through a creative process, where the creation is a new human life. And instead of talking about the penalties of having a swollen belly, for instance, talk about the effort that's directed by the mother toward bringing the child to term.

That last bit was inspired in part by what Chronicles of Darkness did when they shifted from their first edition to their second edition: specifically, Flaws (a game system inherited from World of Darkness, though changes mechanically from a one-time point discount to an ongoing source of xp) were part of the original “new World of Darkness”, albeit a part that went largely ignored by most (to the point that while they were developing the second edition, I pointed them out to one of the developers, and he admitted that he had forgotten that they were there). Flaws aren't in the second edition; instead, you have Persistent Conditions, which do the same thing but are presented differently. That's the sort of shift in perspective that I'm thinking about.

7. Focus on what sorts of stories can be told. Whatever mechanics are introduced should be presented in the context of enabling the story, not as a “reality simulator”. monteparnas is right about that: especially when dealing with the Storyteller System, the goal shouldn't be simulation; it should be drama. (I wouldn't quite go so far as to say that simulationist games are inherently bad design; if a gaming group likes simulations, I'm not going to tell them they're wrong to like it. But if your goal is a “drama engine”, then simulationism is definitely out.)

And again, if it's something like a Child Mages supplement, all of the above would form no more than part of one chapter, with the other part of that chapter dealing with the pregnancy from the perspective of the still developing child-to-be, and the chapter ending with how to handle birth. And then you get to the rest of the book, with the next chapters dealing with infancy, toddlers, and more generally early child development — and how being Awake would factor in. One thing I'd like to see addressed would be the question of exactly when the child has developed sufficient mental facilities to be a playable character, and how to roleplay someone who is so young — especially with Magick in the mix.

[Heavy Arms]

...but I'm assuming that you used it as support for your point based on the notion that it was popular enough and a well-populated enough WoD game that its player base constitutes a statistically significant sample group from which to make larger sweeping declarations about the fanbase as a whole.

It's hard to quantify exactly because NB's software was essentially one login per character rather than per user. The admin and ST teams had to separately track information like email and IP addresses to make sure people weren't breaking rules (like making a character to find out private information to the benefit of their main character). According to Conrad the highest point of activity was ~400 individual IP addresses logging in during one week, and the chat had ~2,000 unique IP addresses over its run. Not sure how you want to treat that as statistical significance, but I hope it's enough to assure that it's not a small sampling.

I'm not sure whether this is satisfying to you, but please don't let me stop you from moving on.

The lack of satisfying content in there is what monteparnas just posted: you're continuing to ignore that the objection is to official rules, not people creating rules for their home games.

You continue to come at this under a presumption that those disagreeing with you are disagreeing with the broad concept of pregnancy in RPGs, not the specifics we're talking about.

[monteparnas]

The further fact that the topic of rules for pregnancy in RPGs is obviously not categorically offensive or totally out there to gamers that can become pregnant, tells me this is not absurd.

Here's the main point, directly from the link you posted:
"My first suggestion, of course, is to decide on the rules with the group."
My first suggestion, of course, is to decide on the rules with the group.My first suggestion, of course, is to decide on the rules with the group.

What you missed here is that we didn't disagree with everything you thought. We disagree with the idea of official rules.

A lot of my games had pregnancies happening. A lot of my players decided their characters would go through it or their partner would. It happened in D&D, WoD, L5R, 3D&T and other systems. Sometimes we did fine without rules. Sometimes I made rules after talking with my players.

But we never had or wanted official rules. You can, as she said in the article, look for rules elsewhere if you need. You need rules that do what your table needs them to do, and that is a degree of customization far beyond reason in official rulebooks.

Official rules are a problem. They inform starting points, they foment behaviors, they precede and sometimes preclude agency. And this thread started by asking after official rules.

Non-official rules or rules made on the fly are ok, and I asked LastCourier why the need precisely to offer an adequate, customized advice.

[CaptOtter]

Eh, it mostly just comes off as CYA after getting called out:

A: "If you talked to women you'd agree with me!"
B: "I am a woman..."
C: "I totally talked to women about this."
A: "Um.. I talked to lots of women that absolutely agree with everything I said esp. anything around C being offensive."

It's not really much of allaying feelings of your posts being less that well reasoned.

One of the women you've implied I either didn't consult, or made up as a beard for my opinions here, linked me to this article after I showed her the last couple of replies: http://www.dnd.kismetrose.com/DMRomancePregnancy.html It's a blog article by a woman gamer about not only the roleplaying potential of pregnancy, but all sorts of rules (for d20/Pathfinder) for how to run it, and pitfalls to avoid--which I will note include rules for becoming pregnant (which I would have thought was a no-no, though she stipulates that everyone agreed ahead of time that there'd be these rolls to determine whether someone became pregnant, so consent still factors in.) Embarrassingly, it only occurred to me after I got linked to that article to Google "pregnancy in RPGs"; had I done that, not only would I have found that article, but also a lot discussions on this subject on various forums going back years. I thought the exercise we're engaging in here would be rare and esoteric; I was wrong. This is well tread territory. After reading through a few of those threads on other forums, I will note that there is less questioning about whether there ought to be rules for pregnancy in the first place, than there are discussions that amount to workshopping what the actual rules themselves (and often enough, someone chimes in with 'I have been pregnant, and here's what I think you need to have in your rules...' sort of thing.) There's also more than a few horror stories of players having their character being railroaded into being pregnant without any prior warning or discussion about it even being a possibility (which is sad, but predicable.)

Great, so, what's your revised position then so we can move on?

My revised position (re- whether pregnancy is something that should have WoD rules) is that this may not be the sort of thing most WoD players are actually interested in, and I'm persuaded of this by your anecdote about New Bremen. I could take position that maybe they just had bad pregnancy rules, but it sounds like they just abandoned the endeavor, so it was probably more than just 'bad rules'. Notably, I don't know much or anything about New Bremen (other than having the heard the name, and probably landed on the front page a few times back in the day,) but I'm assuming that you used it as support for your point based on the notion that it was popular enough and a well-populated enough WoD game that its player base constitutes a statistically significant sample group from which to make larger sweeping declarations about the fanbase as a whole. I don't actually know one way or the other, but I don't think you'd try to win this argument by literally tricking me.

With regard to the issue of why there is no mention of pregnancy rules in WoD in the first place, I started off very sure that reason there weren't pregnancy rules in there was because the overwhelming majority of the devs back in the day were young white guys, and pregnancy just wasn't something that they thought about very often or at all, and that therefore it was the product of an implicit cis male bias. I'm prepared to concede that argument. I still think that my former take is plausible, but after your New Brenan anecdote, I'm more prepared to believe that the devs thought about it and made the deliberate creative choice to steer clear. I also thought more about the fact that the first gameline was vampire, and was the template for the other games (like, I'm sure a lot of the systems and drama language was just copy/pasted,) so the fact that vampires cannot get pregnant set up an assumption that could easily have just carried forward into every other WoD game.

With regard to my larger ideological position (i.e., that this is a potentially interesting and rewarding thing to roleplay; that people need to ultimately do what's right for their table; that player consent is important, and that for that consent to be meaningful it needs to be informed--i.e., the rules must be stated on the front end; all the principled positions) the fact that I formed my opinion based on consultation with people in a position to be aggrieved or not by a bad take, makes it unlikely I was going to be convinced otherwise. The further fact that the topic of rules for pregnancy in RPGs is obviously not categorically offensive or totally out there to gamers that can become pregnant, tells me this is not absurd.

I'm not sure whether this is satisfying to you, but please don't let me stop you from moving on.

[monteparnas]

Just to be clear, do you think I'm proposing that there should be a rule for determining whether or when a character becomes pregnant?

No, I figured out your idea earlier. My point stands for the whole process. The effects of each stage, the differences between each woman and each pregnancy, risks and limitations that apply or not, and so on.

Because, just so you know, pregnancies vary to the extreme. Some women start feeling weak 2 weeks after conception and are basically bedridden from then on, with pain, nausea and several other symptoms in an ever evolving biological nightmare. Some go through the whole process without even noticing, they don't feel pain, don't have a noticeable gain in weight, don't suffer complications despite continuing their normal physical activities, and the baby comes out as easy as going to the bathroom.

I wasn't ignoring what you've posted, and explicitly acknowledged that you'd weighed in

As a rule of thumb it is bad form to make statements as that even if at present only one participant seems to be engaged in the discussion. One tip I can give you is to pay some attention to likes in the posts, not because this is some form of popularity contest, but because they are a sign of "silent engagement" of other people.

I'm not holding that against you, it is just a trick for using forums.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by 'no other decision comes after them.'

Miss-typed. I meant to say 'before them'. I'll correct the original post later, sorry.

I've run my posts by, and shown this thread to, a handful of women a number of times both before and after I've post

Good to know.

there should be rules and thought around it

Two different things, rules and thought. As I said myself, I think they should dedicate some space to thoughts about that. Those thoughts may, still, conclude that no rule is a better option.

[Heavy Arms]

If you think the position is so absurd that you're acquitting yourself well by being deliberate flippant, but rather than just saying that and moving on (and allowing my patently absurd comments to stand as a monument to my inanity or whatever), you instead decide that you're going to engage in the discussion for sole purpose of trying to dunk on people, or otherwise for sport, you're basically going out of your way to waste my time. Stop wasting my time.

You don't seem to be willing to grasp there is a difference between your position(s), which I think have some merit however much I think are ultimately incorrect, and your argumentation in defending those positions, which is what I think deserves the flippancy I've given it.

Also, this is a forum about playing pretend fun games. It's an exceedingly frivolous endeavor in any honest estimation of the world, that only has merit due to our mental amusement at it. Or in other words, we're basically here to "waste" our time on things that basically don't matter because it's still fun. I can't force you to read or respond to my posts, that's an active choice you're making to do with your time. You can always ignore me if you think it would be a waste of your time to engage with me.

So, I'm left to conclude that you want to engage with me, and thus I'm not actually wasting your time within the context of why we're here, and this is just more ad hominem argumentation to get away from the actual points at hand.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by 'no other decision comes after them.' There are plenty of rules that people don't play with, or they use modified versions of in their home games. I've never played a werewolf game where we used 'animal magnetism' because everyone tends to agree it's a gross, rape-y power. Similarly every WoD game I've ever played with my core group of friends has included a single reflexive dodge during combat. There rules are the starting point, but then we departed from the rules as written in these specific ways.

This screams of confirmation bias based in playing with long standing RPG gamers that have been through all the problems with following the RAW and know to read carefully to avoid various pitfalls.

That's the result of a learning process, that takes time for most people to develop. The vast majority of players just do what the books say, or what someone they trust to say what the books say says. Some of that is a lack of interest in learning rules, but more is because people need experience before they get to the "always be tinkering" mentality of reading a RPG book.

Mind you, I'm not citing this as an appeal to authority in support of my position of being absolutely correct, but rather to rebut the implication that this is all just my male ipse dixit, and that I haven't done any work of running this by members of the actual class of person who has standing to be personally aggrieved.

Eh, it mostly just comes off as CYA after getting called out:

A: "If you talked to women you'd agree with me!"
B: "I am a woman..."
C: "I totally talked to women about this."
A: "Um.. I talked to lots of women that absolutely agree with everything I said esp. anything around C being offensive."

It's not really much of allaying feelings of your posts being less that well reasoned.

This is the probably the most persuasive thing I've seen on the matter so far; the fact that his has basically been play tested at scale and proved unpopular.

Great, so, what's your revised position then so we can move on?

[CaptOtter]

I'm being flippant to highlight the absurdity of your argumentation.

If you think the position is so absurd that you're acquitting yourself well by being deliberate flippant, but rather than just saying that and moving on (and allowing my patently absurd comments to stand as a monument to my inanity or whatever), you instead decide that you're going to engage in the discussion for sole purpose of trying to dunk on people, or otherwise for sport, you're basically going out of your way to waste my time. Stop wasting my time.

The first function of a rule is to take agency out of the player's hands and put it on the dice. That's why you say that you shot at, not that you hit it.

Just to be clear, do you think I'm proposing that there should be a rule for determining whether or when a character becomes pregnant? I ask because you wrote this in response to my saying that characters shouldn't be getting pregnant in the first place without their player's consent; I think there's a solid chance I'm misreading this bit of your response, but I want to emphasize that I am not saying there should be rules for determining whether a character does or does not become pregnant; rather, rules for how actually being pregnant would affect a human character at different stages of same.

Thanks for ignoring previous posters.

By your own admission in the line following this one, you "agree[d] with almost everything Heavy Arms said, that's why [you] was not posting anymore." I wasn't ignoring what you've posted, and explicitly acknowledged that you'd weighed in, but I noted you didn't respond to my previous reply to you, and figured you were, in fact, not posting anymore/departed from the discussion.

But like it or not, rules are normative positions. They are the default, the starting point. No other decision comes after them, not even the decision of not using them. Here lies the danger.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by 'no other decision comes after them.' There are plenty of rules that people don't play with, or they use modified versions of in their home games. I've never played a werewolf game where we used 'animal magnetism' because everyone tends to agree it's a gross, rape-y power. Similarly every WoD game I've ever played with my core group of friends has included a single reflexive dodge during combat. There rules are the starting point, but then we departed from the rules as written in these specific ways.

I showed this thread to my mother yesterday. I'm pretty sure she's been pregnant... more than once even... even if she's not right now.

I'd have no problem showing it to any of my pregnant gaming friends, or ones that were or will or might be.

Have you [talk to someone who has been pregant]? Because I have.

I've run my posts by, and shown this thread to, a handful of women a number of times both before and after I've post--some gamers, some not; some have been pregnant, some haven't; a very small handful are in the literal business of providing reproductive healthcare services. The positions and opinions here are mostly mine though they've been guided by those discussions; I ran my takes by those people because they're ultimately who I'm directly socially accountable to when I start to drift out of my lane and into this one, and naturally I'm interested in adjusting my positions to the extent that they're problematic, ill-informed, what-have-you. The consensus thus far has been some combination or mix of "why are you wasting your time with this argument", and (substantively) that if a character is going to be pregnant in a game there should be rules and thought around it, and that the lack of thought around it is patriarchy in action. The only thing everyone had a strong reaction to (regardless of whether they were gamers, or think it's dumb that anyone is even having this discussion in the first place,) is that the comparisons to pregnancy thus far have been inappropriate or offensive; more offensive than I would have thought if I had not shown the thread to anyone and asked for thoughts. Mind you, I'm not citing this as an appeal to authority in support of my position of being absolutely correct, but rather to rebut the implication that this is all just my male ipse dixit, and that I haven't done any work of running this by members of the actual class of person who has standing to be personally aggrieved.

The attempt to put in pregnancy rules on the old New Bremen chat went over like a lead balloon... even as a lot of players went through pregnancy in character because the nature of persistent chats like NB and those that followed put more stress on the daily lives of characters and offers more time to dedicate to things that come up far less frequently when it's just a few friends gathering for a couple hours and focus more on adventures or narrative plots.

NB was run by someone that worked on WoD books back in the day and even had developer credits, and couldn't come up with something that anyone wanted to use instead of just letting people play out pregnancies how they wanted with the ST team adjudicating pregnancy related rules calls ad hoc.

Pregnancy rules (mostly for kinfolk) in the big WtA LARP groups were highly contentious back in the day as well, for the same reasons.

Official (within those organizations rather than from the books) rules applying to communities of hundreds didn't have any notable positive impact, and a lot of negative ones.

This is the probably the most persuasive thing I've seen on the matter so far; the fact that his has basically been play tested at scale and proved unpopular.

[Dataweaver]

I'll add only that Werewolf: the Apocalypse has some problematic features that are tied to the semi-hereditary nature of the Garou. When Werewolf: the Forsaken was written, it initially handled things the same way (i.e., werewolves are children of werewolves, meaning that for there to be additional generations of werewolves, werewolves had to have sex with humans or, in WtA, sometimes with wolves, and they then had to raise families complicated by the fact that werewolves and their Rage issues were involved, which all has strong overtones of abusive relationships); when the opportunity to write a second edition of Forsaken presented itself, they took that opportunity to shift the burden from “kinfolk being children of werewolves” to “kinfolk being children of kinfolk”, allowing all of the problematic elements involving werewolves being involved in matters of sex and pregnancy to be more easily bypassed — that is, it took those issues from being an “opt out” thing (“these things happen all the time; but if you don't want to deal with it, you can choose not to deal with it”) to an “opt in” thing (“these things might happen occasionally; so if you want to deal with it, you can choose to deal with it”).

Unfortunately, the issue is too deeply rooted in Werewolf: the Apocalypse at this point for that game to make a similar course correction. The devs for WtA are stuck with attempting to make the best of a bad situation; and I don't envy them.

All that is to say that I wouldn't be looking to WtA as a “role model” for how to handle matters of sex and pregnancy; I'd be more inclined to view it as a cautionary tale.