Bay 12 Games Forum

When artifacts and semi-artifacts are expanded upon in the near future they should be redone in such a way that they can potentially hold souls in the same way creatures do. This allows for things like artifacts that regenerate their wearer after death, intelligent and perhaps malicious magical items, and artifacts that draw their power from imprisoned demons, djinn, ghosts, gods, etc. This actual application wouldn't necessarily need to be added now, but just making it something that artifacts can do opens a lot of lore possibilities for them and acts as framework for massive expansion.

Ideally this should be expanded to whatever non-artifact items seem reasonable and to body parts whenever those items get redone. I'd love to see a necromancy curse that requires a small dismemberment to activate and keeps the creature's soul in the finger, toe, whatever, so they can't be destroyed until someone uncovers a book describing that body part's location and then burns it. This would allow some magical villains to be persistent threats throughout a world's history, regenerating periodically until some sacred item is smashed. At the same time it opens up the possibility of trapping some terrible villain in an object (which should realistically then be an artifact) and dropping it into the ocean or wearing it to channel their power.

More possible ghosts!

It's fun with a capital F that there are ghosts that can rip your Dwarf's limbs off and scare them to death, but why not have some additional benefit to going all out in memorializing Dwarves? This could be expanded when funerals are in, but if a Dwarf is buried in an elaborate tomb or a very expensive/enjoyed coffin for their station they should be able to manifest in ways that aren't harmful to Dwarves from time to time.

Neutral effects could be things like artifact possessions, since that's why there's space for more active souls anyway, or maybe if a ghost has an descendant in the fort they show up and talk to them once and that Dwarf has a change of life goal, or attitude, just some kind of little thing. These shouldn't happen too often, even the artifact ones could overdo it since they don't give the Dwarf legendary skill when they're possessed. Maybe only one neutral ghost at a time, and they'll vanish if an angry ghost shows up and knocks them out or something. Just a neat little addition to religion and culture that famous historical figures have a chance to appear and instill wisdom.

Good ghosts on the other hand should be the result of Dwarven personality facets or a really fantastic burial, and when they appear they should do something beneficial for the fort. This still shouldn't be very often, or there should be a way to change the timer for ghost appearances in a world so some of them can be particularly ghostly. When a legendary craftsdwarf has a particularly moving funeral and is buried in her favorite material with pictures of her favorite animal on it in her favorite gem, she might periodically pop up rarely and inspire a Dwarf to a different kind of artifact mood, or maybe just go to a workshop that is in use and the next few things to be made are guaranteed masterpiece, or skill increase goes up. Still something kind of small so they aren't a whole new strange mood onto themselves. Ghostly animal trainers could slightly increase knowledge of a species (which I think used to be a bug along with ghost fishing, which might be a bit of a waste unless legendary ghost fisherdwarves result in bizarre otherwordly catches with a lot of value), ghostly miners could speed mining. Or any of them could appear and talk to their descendants, leading those Dwarves to have some kind of profound life realization and just doing those cool things on a story level, or learning more in a skill or something.

 Dead Dwarves that have been properly honored with good burials and religious rituals, or whatever they end up wanting when those arcs are done, should also help to defend the fort from sieges occasionally. Basically, building destroyers that destroy a coffin should face the wrath of the murderous ghost instead of your Dwarves, and invaders that defile a tomb should be targeted by the other forms of ghostly abuse your Dwarves normally get exclusively. We'll need improved sieges before this isn't just overkill, but it would be nice once we get some real threats if they decide to wreck a Dwarven crypt if maybe a ghost appears and defends the fort with some paralysis or a terrifying howl. Maybe they'll only go after the specific creature that destroyed their coffin, or maybe they'll cut down a bunch of gobs on the way to a troll, or maybe once they're out they stick around and wreck havoc for just some period of time, and when they come back again they'll just be generally murderous unless they've been reburied and something is done to un-defile a space. Cleaning it or doing a religious ritual to restore the ghost to its proper protector state. Dead military ghosts should deal with tomb invaders pretty intensely, but it'd be nice if after doing enough damage to a place particularly blasphemous vandals could rouse all the fort's dead citizens and they'd scare the whole army off.

Once laws are in, maybe civs will develop ethics based on survive bad experiences with ghosts. Goblins might not be respectful of tombs, but they'll be wary around them. Or they'll become superstitious about Dwarven tombs and maybe it impacts morale traveling through them. As long as there's a chance for Dwarves to defile tombs somehow I don't think it would be overpowering to rarely have ghosts appearing to attack a few members of a large siege force, or scaring a lot of them. Defiline which would need to be worked out but should be possible if they stab a goblin through into a coffin, or knock a coffin over once those kinds of things are in the game, or violate a religious principal maybe. Even as ghosts become more useful they should still have risks so coffins won't end up lining every fort entrance suddenly or have people melting all their best soldiers for eternal guardians.

Of course, there's not really a reason for a religious temple not to specifically create eternal guardians of its best paladins, if that's the religion. So ghostliness sliders that impact how often things like that raise up in game might still be nice.

Condense Milker, Gelder, Sheerer, Animal Hauling, and the currently useless Animal Caretaker into a single skill and handle their particulars with knowledge checks.
 
While the diversity of skills makes sense, and no amount of milking will ever make gelding obvious, it's kind of unusual that a farming society wouldn't have more general knowledge of all of the animals they raised and used for industry. If a society has managed a domestic animal and industries resulting from its byproducts any Dwarf capable of working with that animal at all should have an understanding of how to milk, sheer, geld, collect its eggs, and care for it by the time they're adult farmers (potentially even butcher it, but needing to be familiar with an animal to do that could destroy the meat industry right now). A single Animal Husbandry skill could serve for the skill check, since none of the individual skills has quality modifiers anyway, and the particulars would be required in the same way knowledge of poems are. A society/Dwarf would need to know sheering in general, or have a way to learn it, but once they're familiar with the concept and the animal (this could go by how trained an animal is, or the civilization's familiarity with a species, or eventually an individual check if civs start springing up based on adventurers with a particular knowledge set) the whole interaction of moving it from a pasture, getting it into place to sheer, and sheering it should just be one skill. Unfamiliar animals should be harder to move or more likely to bolt instead of following, and should result in more failed milkings and sheerings until more familiarity is gained. This could translate to an increased rate of domestication if your Dwarves are raising a sustained population of something that you don't have a lot of opportunity to train.

Condensing the skills removes some clutter in the labor menu or its eventual successor, leads smoothly into more knowledge based checks for skills, and makes some Dwarves less worthless. With animal hauling attached to a skill, and having that shared with other essential farming skills, a whole group of peasants suddenly has a lot of new interactions available to them. Every time animals need to be led somewhere, whether they're pulled or herded it could require the Animal Husbandry skill, and subsequently lead to quicker milking, sheering, and gelding just from being more comfortable working with animals (or that particular species, in theory). Moving animals should already require skill checks, since it's not really obvious to someone that hasn't raised a particular animal how to get it to move when it's got several hundred pounds on them. This will make it more valuable to have a whole crowd trained in the skill, since you usually end up with a glut of these skills already, but could use numbers like that when you need to get your herd inside before a goblin raid.

Animal Husbandry could have negative quality results once those are implemented. Animals being guided could run loose, or ones being gelded or milked might attack. Once Dwarves attain a certain level of ability this should be more of a speed check, and assume a legendary Animal Handler or whatever is just going to know how to guide that sheep in any given instance, and at the animal's top speed perhaps.

All of the subsequent parts of the animal industries would remain on the same skills, because there can definitely be qualities to cheese and thread in ways that don't translate as well to gelding.

Night creatures are obviously on the backburner right now, but the existing framework for megabeast invasions should be used to let better taverns more likely to attract local Night Trolls. It would be kind of a Beowulf thing, a tavern becomes well known enough to bring the ire of cave monsters. For a typical fort with a prepared military this will just be a little extra fun until abductions during play work. It wouldn't be quite like having to slay a dragon but it'll still test small armies or ones that aren't in all iron or steel. Or depending on how low the reputation needs to be set, or how many night trolls are present it can be a regular threat to keep things interesting.

For people building exclusively tavern forts, before or after the starting scenarios are in, this will offer occasional supernatural challenges that encourage hiring mercenaries, without making you deal with serious forgotten beast monsters all the time.

This could get expanded when night creatures are the focus again, but in the mean time they'd offer a smoother difficulty curve for locations that wouldn't realistically be seeing armies even if they were successful by tavern standards.

Like the description says. There aught to be some way to designate chests or some kind of shelving item as a library room for nobles. Nobles might not necessarily need to be able to read, but books are essentially artifacts and people should be seeking them out for the status, or possibly magic they involve. Libraries should be designated from an item, and nobles should recognize a quality of their library. Unlike other rooms, library quality should be at least partially tied to book values, since they're the main component of a library and also probably the most expensive given how rare written materials are in DF. And you can assign books to a room with an appropriate container, sort of like hospitals, so different nobles can be given books on, let's say spheres they have preferences for.

So in Fortress mode nobles should sometimes demand books be acquired. Requests can be made of traders to bring books and the noble will have a longer period of waiting they'll find acceptable than for production orders since it's like acquiring an artifact and they should recognize an increased difficulty. But higher level nobles might make more demanding requests for more or more expensive books (and they should end up doing this for other artifacts once there are a lot in the world and dwarves can be sent out in raiding armies) which need to be traded for or stolen from necromancer towers or enemy civs if the ruler favors a sphere no one else in your civ is writing for. Adventurers would also get requests for books as fetch quests, so sometimes you're told to go to the necromancer's tower but not necessarily to rid the world of the necromancer. Or a necromancer might send you to steal a book from a ruler that took it from them in world gen if you're a night creature that they'd talk to. And thieves will be coming for your books in fortress mode, so it's just a big expansion to things going on in the world.

Further down the line when magic is implemented and/or into the economy when there are ranges of housing with different levels of wealth, other people should be pursuing books for magical reasons. Or depending on what gets developed first people should seek to have books because they reveal information about sites, treasure locations, maybe night creatures true names, something that would be valuable and lead to people seeking out specific texts. And those people's houses/keeps/towers/lairs can have recognizable library rooms in the same way inns will be recognizable as inns outside of fortress mode with their set ups. Necromancer towers can even have this so their books aren't strewn everywhere and adventurers need to make a serious assault up to near the top even if they aren't going for a slab, or so apprentice necromancers can build towers without slabs, because they all learned from books, but still have a clear target for a siege. 

So this is a framework suggestion potentially for a lot of things, and it can tie together early with inns since there'll be new building recognition stuff, and world gen artifacts, and especially if law ends up being written on slabs or in books which could lead to more book proliferation once customs are established.

While laws and customs and property are getting worked out, I just want to throw in a suggestion for multiple possible systems of legal ownership. It makes sense that a race should potentially be communal, or communal within individual large entities, and similarly that some should be really reluctant to trade ever. Maybe not the existing races right now, but there could be some option in the raws for an economic emphasis.

Example: Elves in one world may value autonomy really strongly so they won't engage in trading, but offer something akin to tribute to other Elves when they have a surplus so their whole civilization is just existing on what it produces itself.

Or Goblins might be the exact opposite, with property being really contentious. So Goblins go out stealing from other people all the time, but if theft isn't frowned upon in the entity maybe the more cunning Goblins are eating out of other goblin's food stores, or warehouses in another goblin town kind of thing, and as long as they aren't caught in the act it's respected as their having earned that food.

Dwarves live kind of communal lives right now since the economy is out, but obviously still make exchanges with the mountainhomes. Autonomy you can kind of simulate if you live somewhere caravans will never be able to reach, but if you start to run out of food and you're some kind of frontier or religious settlement your homeland will never think "those Dwarves are doing something important, let's give them some free food when it gets hard" if they have a lot of extra production elsewhere. So you can't make the civilization value anything like that right now.

Sort of the logical extension is humans living in towns having to pay other humans for food even though they share an entity because of whatever. There ought to be different civilizations that have different values, guarantee food for their peasant class and all of the merchandise produced is just sold by the civilization instead of individuals and the numbers they get back in trade kind of get spread out evenly. Which is kind of how Dwarves basically live now without their being any kind of codified reason why these are distinct.

This would also let people play a race that is kind of opted out of the major economic overhauls, so when people love taverns and want to heavily tax hill Dwarves they can, but they could also make it so those people are considered to be guests of the civilization and so they owe them some amount of free rooms, or the hill Dwarves are thought of like family so they get free trade goods on occasion and the game reciprocates that when your main fortress runs low on stuff the hill Dwarves have.

You should be able to specifically request a companion in Adventure Mode to use a weapon in their inventory other than the one they'd otherwise prefer. For example getting a swordsdwarf with a steel longsword to use a silver dagger to kill a werewolf, or back you up with archery as you fight creatures in the water instead of trying to path in. When companions have training weapons in hand their combat approach should be training, allowing you to hit them with training weapons and both of you to begin skill training. These could require various levels of trust, as convincing someone to attack an elephant with a carps corpse when they have a warhammer shouldn't be something everyone can do.

Additionally, there needs to be a 'C' combat setting option for the level of combat you want to engage in when move-attacking a creature. You should be able to set non-lethal and your adventurer will try to stick to punching limbs or bashing extremities. Setting it to training should make all attacks the light touches from Arena Mode, but should still be seen as escalating after the first few hits if the creature you're attacking isn't a companion. Wild animals would have no reason to respond to your pokes with gentle taps, and random civilians should be annoyed by getting slapped in the side by a sword, even if it's soft.