Re: Childbirth

From: jeffrichard68 <jeff.richard_at_...>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:36:51 -0000


My own gaming group has been discussing this issue. Here are some comments from Pam Carlson:

Hmm -  

I am familiar with some of these stats from biology and anthropology classes. The numbers vary a bit with culture and wealth, but on average:  

Woman's chance of getting pregnant - 50/50 doesn't sound too bad. If you wanted to get more complex, you should add a choice element. If a couple pays attention, they can drastically increase or reduce their chances of conception - even with non-modern methods.  

Child survival in utero. Even today 30% of all pregnancies end very early without ever being known about, probably due to catastrophic gene pairings. I guess you could wrap this up in the stat above, and assume that there is a 50/50 chance each year that a woman will concieve a healthy fetus, with maybe a +/-25% chance for trying/avoiding.  

Childbirth: Even in places with poor medical care (and without magic ) , healthy women have a t least a 90-95% chance of surviving childbrith. The children have probably a 90% chance of surviving, with maybe a 85% chance of surviving each year till 5 or so, then probably 95 % /year till 15 years old. An epidemic can change this, but those are special events. Many of the high infant and child mortality rates we hear of today are associated with unclean water caused by crowding and poor sanitation. Malnutrition and inbreeding also cause high child mortality. How often these situations occur in Glorantha is debatable.  

Twinning is rare. In humans, only 1 pregnancy in 100 result in twins. (Coincidentally, this is about the same ratio as in cattle!) Triplets are even rarer - 1:10,000 maybe. Identical twins are VERY rare. I don't recall the stats, but I would make a wild guess at around 1:10,000 births.  

Magic:  

In Glorantha, magic would definately help. A woman's own magic should actually be a large part of her abilty to conceive, carry a child to term, etc. She might not be able to do much DURING childbirth, but she could do a lot magically to prepare for it. She would probably have a special, magic place, lots of fetishes around, etc. Definately a "women's hut" sort of ritual.  

I would think that super spiffy successes on a birth roll might result in the child having some sort of cool ability, or guardian, of extra vigor during some week or season , something like that. Marked by the gods or spirits, however slightly.

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