We're going to start mixing in fixes for older problems to these releases now, starting with fortress exotic animal taming. The dungeon master is gone, replaced by training knowledge at the civilization and fortress level. I put in that infrastructure this morning, with the ability to view it from the Animals screen, and next I'll be adding the training status of individual creatures and changing how training jobs work (after another crayon run!). Right from the beginning, you'll be able to attempt to tame any critter you capture that is eligible (those with PET/PET_EXOTIC, i.e. most stuff). The trick will be that if you go out of your civilization's comfort zone, your fort might end up like a Fatal Attractions episode.
Attempts to tame/train creatures will add to your site's training knowledge of that creature, which augments future training of all creatures of that type. Civilization/fortress knowledge will help somewhat even if you don't have a skilled trainer around. For rare happenings like dragon taming for which there is no general knowledge, you'll want to have somebody decent at the job, though I suppose you could practice with any spare dwarves you have to build your knowledge base a bit, he he he.
Maybe during the personality rewrite we might get crazier stuff than this?
I like the idea of the DM/Beastmaster type guy being an appointed noble similar to the CMD. Basically, all the dangerous/exotic animals your civ does not have access to need to by tamed by whoever you appoint DM- this ensures that your most exotic (and presumably most valuable/limited/dangerous) animals are being tamed by the most competent guy. And if you don't have any competent guys, you can just randomly assign dwarfs until one of them succeeds, presumably gaining enough experience in the attempt to justify his position.
That's basically how I roll with the CMD, and there's nothing preventing him from having a day job while you wait for the cage traps to fill. Heck, he'll probably be busier than the CMD in forts where I bother taming animals.
Well, perhaps the Dungeon Master could be a different sort of noble now.If you look back at 40d, this is almost exactly how the DM used to be - it arrived once you had 50 population and had discovered a map feature (generally, a river/brook would suffice, but a magma pool/pipe or chasm/pit would also trigger it), and it came with Adequate skill in Metal Crafter and Furnace Operator as well as Animal Trainer/Animal Caretaker.
Like, here's a thought: instead of being triggered by population, he comes after you first crack the underground caverns.
He also might be really good at a metalworking skill, a gemcutting skill, or the ol' animal training.
The design goal has been for some time is that all migrants have a history tracked in worldgen, this is a prerequisite for having a fortress live in a living world that interacts with it and evolves.
Spawning the DM complete with skills and made up life-history would be regressing and only cause him to be removed when, with the caravan and army arcs, the goal seems to be that every entity and resource will be tracked also during play.
Chief Taming Dwarf / DM sounds like a good idea to me.
Beyond being the go-to-dorf for handling the wildest animals, there are quite a few other things that dwarf could do:
- Organize classes for inexperienced dwarves. (like military demonstrations, but for animal training)
- Have meetings with the traders that arrive at your fort, to trade training tips. The meetings would be required to gain the benefit of your civ's knowledge level, and to boost the civ's knowledge in areas where you have experimented.
- Give you details on the tamed-ness when viewing the animal. "This is a dog. His hair is black. He is rambunctious. He bites when annoyed. He has a keen awareness of forbidden zones and dutifully avoids them."
- Organize a training reinforcement schedule at their assigned office chair. It could also allow you to request your trainers to maintain a certain level of training, much like the book keeper noble.
For rare happenings like dragon taming for which there is no general knowledge, you'll want to have somebody decent at the job, though I suppose you could practice with any spare dwarves you have to build your knowledge base a bit, he he he.
Chief Taming Dwarf / DM sounds like a good idea to me.
Beyond being the go-to-dorf for handling the wildest animals, there are quite a few other things that dwarf could do:
- Organize classes for inexperienced dwarves. (like military demonstrations, but for animal training)
- Have meetings with the traders that arrive at your fort, to trade training tips. The meetings would be required to gain the benefit of your civ's knowledge level, and to boost the civ's knowledge in areas where you have experimented.
- Give you details on the tamed-ness when viewing the animal. "This is a dog. His hair is black. He is rambunctious. He bites when annoyed. He has a keen awareness of forbidden zones and dutifully avoids them."
- Organize a training reinforcement schedule at their assigned office chair. It could also allow you to request your trainers to maintain a certain level of training, much like the book keeper noble.
the notion about trap kills gives me an idea... if that's his forte, the dungeon master could be like a guild master position for mechanics! Like how you guys have ideas for a 'beast master' position to lead your rangers.
Designating areas as 'dungeon zones' is a good idea... keep everyone except trap maintenance guys from wandering in there. helping with siege engines would be a good function too... 'cause right now their implementation is a little awkward and innefficient.
maybe when you get a dungeon master, he could also create schedules for manning of siege engines, designate stone for use as ammo, or assign animals to the siege engines to haul them around like wagons..
Recording exotic beast kills (and possibly trap kills) might be the easiest way to do it - you just have to "prove" to the game that you are going to be fighting your enemies with non-axedwarf means of combat.
Giving the player some sort of zone designation that lets you mark areas as "dungeons" that you can build to funnel invading goblins through death traps, or the cavern critters into your sorting bins, you could rack up "dungeon kills" that could lead to varying levels of "dungeoness" that gives you perks in the form of higher Dungeon Master abilities and ranks to appoint.
I would love having a noble that demanded that I build them a dungeon and that I fill it with exotic beasts and treasure.Same; One of the only reasons I mint coins is so that I can build a nice room to pit a dragon into.
Well, the way I was thinking about it, you weren't given a DM, and then he demands you make a dungeon, the idea is you make a dungeon, and that gives you the reward of having a DM, which in turn, gives you added functionality to your interface.
There's a big difference in that it gives players who don't want a dungeon, and want to have axelords as their main defense the ability to opt-out of adding something that is complicated and may take up more of their time that they don't want to spend on these things.
In fact, this same issue came up with that monstrous farming thread I was dealing with a while ago - giving players the ability to opt out of the most complex aspects of different portions of the game they don't want to play rather than forcing it on them should be a feature of all the more advanced aspects of DF.
I know it would be somewhat pointless, but I would love to know how many creatures were captured/caged/maimed by my traps....
Granted, I already build something like a dungeon for fun, but this would make it even more fun.
the hammerer is a dwarven justice enforcer, that does not deal with spys/theifs/etc of other races, those are simply thrown in the fortress dungeon, where the DM takes over interrogation/punishment.This would be a good split. Interrogating goblins could give you a hint of what sorts of troops the next siege would have, and kobolds, once the army arc is implemented, could reveal the location of their cave, so you could send your army out and exterminate them. Plus I just like the thought of a kobold, shivering on dirty straw, an iron chain chafing his leg looking up in fear as a dwarf, completely naked save for 10 cloaks walks into the cell and approaches, saying, "And now, you sneaky bastard, we will discuss the location of your hidden cave..."
I'd honestly prefer the Dungeon Master be an "evolved" member of your own fort than an appointed noble, however.
Of course, coming from off-map, you could say that's where they got the special training, but basically, I like the idea that you could have a sort of strange mood where an elite animal trainer goes off on a journey and comes back a couple months later as a Dungeon Master with new animal-training related powers and some extra pets.
wait.. isn't there a historical figure that does that? A leader that 'went off into the wild and tamed the rutherers' and then their civ will bring that animal whenever it besieges you?
it probably wouln't take much to rework that existing feature as an action performed by fortress dwarves.. as long as the world beyond your borders still has some abstraction to it...
wait.. isn't there a historical figure that does that? A leader that 'went off into the wild and tamed the rutherers' and then their civ will bring that animal whenever it besieges you?
it probably wouln't take much to rework that existing feature as an action performed by fortress dwarves.. as long as the world beyond your borders still has some abstraction to it...
Yeah, but that's something any historical figure can do.
The point of this would be something more like a Strange Mood that exists only when you hit the preconditions for a Dungeon Master to appear - which might be training enough arbitrarily exotic enough animals (or get enough tamed exotic animal kills or whatever). Then the mooder who goes off into the wild to further his/her training would be one of your top animal trainers.
When they come back, they're now a Dungeon Master and have some new knowledge from their secret training, and maybe some new pets. They then give you access to whatever interface feature they can give you access to, like that specialized selective breeding menu idea, or an animal training menu.
the dwarf reappears, possibly disguised, in a later migrant wavedo you think wearing nothing but a stack of capes and mittens might be a suitable disguise?
I'd honestly prefer the Dungeon Master be an "evolved" member of your own fort than an appointed noble, however.
Of course, coming from off-map, you could say that's where they got the special training, but basically, I like the idea that you could have a sort of strange mood where an elite animal trainer goes off on a journey and comes back a couple months later as a Dungeon Master with new animal-training related powers and some extra pets.
I'd honestly prefer the Dungeon Master be an "evolved" member of your own fort than an appointed noble, however.
Of course, coming from off-map, you could say that's where they got the special training, but basically, I like the idea that you could have a sort of strange mood where an elite animal trainer goes off on a journey and comes back a couple months later as a Dungeon Master with new animal-training related powers and some extra pets.
I agree with this in that the dungeon master should just be a highly trained animal trainer. They could specialize in various animal groups--aquatic, subterranean, megabeast, etc.. These dwarves could then exchange knowledge to apprentices/students or write books that could cut the normal skill grinding time in half. The books and apprentices could then be sent/copied and spread into the world allowing a knowledge base. This can lead to changes in how civs deal with meagabeasts, night creatures, and general pests diminishing their threat.
But again, is Dungeon Master the right name for such a noble?
But again, is Dungeon Master the right name for such a noble?
It is if we incorporate some element of "maintaining a dungeon" into the requirements for and duties of a Dungeon Master, which may be something as simple as getting exotic animal kills. (You could also have the "define a dungeon" as a series of rooms that are filled with traps and exotic monsters, but unless you have a really good idea of how to define a dungeon as being different from any other room filled with crazy exotic beasts, simply measuring beast kills should be sufficient.)
Indeed. You would need to have some link to dungeons if you're going to keep calling the noble a Dungeon Master; right now he's basically just a beastmaster. I've always thought of a dungeon in the literal sense i.e. somewhere where you would keep prisoners.
So no one is missing the metalworking skillz of the dungeon master ?
Why does everyone want to put the justice system into the Dungeon Master? We already have justice system and jail system jobs. "Dungeon" doesn't always mean "jail".
With the Secrets systems I'm surprised this hasn't been put forward yet... Let me explain.
The DM is something that added flavor and richness to the dwarves in the earlier versions. He was a crazy bugger with an obsession for cloaks and could mould beast's minds like so much gelatin.
He was funny, characterful, and usefull. He added life to the world. I want him back. With the secrets system he can.
We have secrets of necromancy and vampires. Why not a secret of Beasts?
Example: In world gen a creature becomes obsessed with the beasts that surround their city. A god of the Hunt or wilderness may grant a follower a carved beast skull containing the secrets of savagery. The creature embarks on a journey to taim a non mundane creature or claims a cave to begin their contemplation. Over the years they study the beasts/ secret and their minds change.
[ECCENTRICITY:CLOAKS], [SAVAGE_TONGUE] are added via the secret learned.
They obsess over the beasts and find that to truly understand the beasts he must become like them. Their skin covers his form, the cloaks of many hides function as both a form of defense, intimidation, and obscures his form and smell to put the beasts at ease.
He learns to communicate with them as if he could speak their very language. He can tame creatures with an ease and confidence that makes even the Beast Master of the fort blush with embarassment.
He has become a Dungeon Master, a master of beasts and their savage minds. Like a vampire he can immigrate to a fortress... Yet he offers his services for the good of the fort. The other dwarves are disturbed by his presence but he does not mind. The dragon and giant scorpions you have caught has reached him through words of awe by the caravan. He needs beasts to study, to continue to understand their ways. You have them and it is enough. The fortress grows and his collection grows with it. This is Dwarf Fortress!
He may make a few mandates, more chains, more cloaks, more beasts but the last siege has already been broken by Gnarlfange the bronze of chains... Your pet dragon. You are pleased and the Dungeon Master is proud of his new pet.
/ example. -- this is only one example how it could work in world gen with the secrets system.
With the secrets framework we can have both a master of beasts and our beloved cloaked bastard.
The beast master is the head of training in your fort. He manages beasts and their training. The dungeon master is simply one who has so dedicated his life to understanding their nature that even the gods have taken notice.
People become fascinated by nature and creatures all the time. masters of dragons/ fell creatures / and magical beings are just as rife in fantasy as wizards, necromancers and the undead. I think with something along these lines we can preserve the DM in spirit and form while still keeping the organic history generation. After all isn't the framework for special behavior and abilities, the Secrets system, exist for this very reason?
That sort of character would be amazing, and I support it wholeheartedly, but I'm going to keep saying it; how does it relate to dungeons or dungeon masters? You are looking at a different sort of name.
That sort of character would be amazing, and I support it wholeheartedly, but I'm going to keep saying it; how does it relate to dungeons or dungeon masters? You are looking at a different sort of name.
Where else would you keep your dragons but in a dungeon?
I mean, "dungeon" as a term for "jail" is more unusual and outmoded than using it for "place you go on adventures and beat up random exotic critters for treasure".
That sort of character would be amazing, and I support it wholeheartedly, but I'm going to keep saying it; how does it relate to dungeons or dungeon masters? You are looking at a different sort of name.
Where else would you keep your dragons but in a dungeon?
I mean, "dungeon" as a term for "jail" is more unusual and outmoded than using it for "place you go on adventures and beat up random exotic critters for treasure".
It's an unusual and outmoded usage among RPG gamers, yes. It's very unusual outside of our culture though. Perhaps it would seem outmoded in America but in Europe, we've had "dungeons" for a very long time and only stopped using them in quite recent memory. I remember clearly as a little boy being taken around the dungeons every time we would visit a castle (if it had them); we'd see thumb screws, shackles, the branks etc.
Still, I can't argue with dragons being kept in dungeons. Well, maybe. Again, I don't know if a dungeon is the right word for a holding place for a dragon; you'd keep a dragon in some kind of a cell or a chamber but a dungeon has connotations of torture and so on. The name just doesn't seem right.
The name Dungeon master does seem incongruous with its actual function but there history and meaning behind the name for DF fans. And thats the kicker, what the name means to Fans. I'm okay for a name change I just want the spirit/ quirkiness of the Dungeon Master (10+ cloaks and a pair of mittens and not much else plus the ability to instantly tame beasts) to live on. Preferably as a secret like necromancy. I love the way the new mechanics are coming along though. I just want to see the secrets expanded to give the DM new life. Of course its all up to Toady and I'll play it either way.
this is actually the primary issue, older fans are stuck on what a broken, half working, missing for years NPC was back then. he has been gone for some time and a great deal of people know nothing of him more than they saw on youtube videos and forum threads from 2008.
so keeping something around for nostalgic purposes is great and all, but it would create 1001 posts about 'why is it called a dungeon master' a year or two down the road.
we no longer need a specific noble to train special animals, so im not sure why we would want another noble whos hard to replace and serves no purpose.
if he allows access to a breeding screen that has nothing to do with him having intimate knowledge of animals ways, thats something an animal trainer is supposed to know.
if he takes care of a 'dungeon'(RPG style) that poses massive problems with how these areas are defined/work.
if he allows any real special function, that could otherwise be learned via training animals, than there is no reason we need a 'special' noble for it.
wanting to keep something for pure flavor, or simply because it used to be awesome, is not particularly conducive to forward progress.
him being appointable makes sense for giving special breeding/animal management screens.
him being 'special' in being a world-gen secret or some crazy guy who ran off into the woods makes sense for him having some special control over animals, beyond those of a trainer.
mainly im seeing the current issues with 'special' nobles, in that if they die your fort is crippled for many years, often unreasonably as the void they left could be filled by someone else who has been training in the job during that time.
sorry to be so negative, im just trying to explain why people are opposed to keeping him in the game more or less.
so umm, for clarification what would be the responsibilities of the Dungeon Master compared to an animal trainer in your system?
Another idea:
DM could be the commander of a team/squad of 'wranglers',
equipped with whips, ropes, cloaks and maybe other weapons,
they could be ordered to capture specific creatures and then chain them in a dungeon
I was thinking guard animals are trained to guard an area (and make noise, sure), while war animals are fully aggressive and go all out when directed at a target (the way they do now).
I was thinking guard animals are trained to guard an area (and make noise, sure), while war animals are fully aggressive and go all out when directed at a target (the way they do now).
You mean, like teach them a patrol? Or just that you pasture them in one spot :P
You mean, like teach them a patrol? Or just that you pasture them in one spot :P
Yeah i've always seen using meeting areas and now pastures as a bit exploity when used to herd animals around. Fair enough pasturing your animals and leaving them there semi permenantly, but it's just wrong to assign them all to a different safer pasture when a siege arrives and have them all swarm there efficiently and without any handler taking them there. Didn't past versions require a dorf to actually lead animals bodily to pits they were assigned to? Pastures need to be like this, i'm sure it's allready on the bug tracker or something.
I swear i've seen them wander over by themself, my testing isn't showing that however, BUT i can't seem to turn off Pen/pasture/ large animal. It's not Animal hauling or Animal Care as this is disabled on everydorf but they're still being lead.