Bay 12 Games Forum

For the Myth and Magic Update, let's say there is a world where humans are created by a precursor race, and worship them. If another race, say the dwarves, are descendants of these precursor gods, will the humans revere dwarves, or generally be more prone to viewing them as religious figures? If humans are unaware of this mythic connection, but then they become aware of it, will their attitude concerning dwarves change?

Quote from: Renarin21 on October 27, 2018, 09:42:44 am

1. Will plotting/intrigue mechanics ever be generalized and used by non-villains, for non-villainous ends?

Yes. From this month's FotF:

Quote

Quote

iceball3
Another question: concerning "villainous plots", are the long term plans for these specifically to develop antagonists that can make clearly defined epics that the player can easily role play into? Or will the moralities and intentions of ambitious individuals start to become more ambiguous and diverse as ongoing development gives such actors more reasons to perform at odds with larger authorities?

Yeah, "villainous plots" is the current framing, and a handy enough way to think about it, and the starting plots are going to be more on the corrupt/etc. side of things, but even now, some of it can be viewed more as "spy vs. spy" or as a tale of vengeance (which has whatever moral shade) or paranoia.  The mechanics will apply to everybody operating in this sphere over time, as things become more interesting.  It's just easier to start with the straightforward stuff, and easier to make it player-facing.

I was referring more to things like merchants trying to build a larger social network, or someone recruiting the relative of a sweetheart to get married, and other things not explicitly intrigue-y.

1. Will villains and their subordinates try to manipulate other faction's/peoples motives, to play people against one another or get them to do dirty work without realizing it?
2. Will villains have more occult motives (i.e. subverting/changing a religion, finding knowledge/enlightenment, etc.) or will it be more focused in material, concrete stuff for now?
3. Can NPCs be in a romantic relationship without it being sexual?
4. Will bi-, a-, and homosexual orientations make it as a minority of the population?
5. In the previous Future of the Fortress reply, you mentioned that permanent "death" for souls that have an afterlife is unlikely. However, will there be situations where a soul could be temporarily/indefinably contained or consumed without being obliterated?
5b. Could there be situations where a living creatures soul is altered or corrupted so as to affect it's natural fate, like lichdom, Nirvana-style enlightenment, demonic/angelic pacts, etc.?
6. Are night creatures planned that will psychically drain a life-force or soul to feed, as opposed to physical feeding or immediately killing their prey?
7. Will vampire cults be adopted to fit with new night creatures, or will some new system likely come into play? (if it comes into play at all?)
7b. If there will be night creature cults in the future, will there be any cults based around creatures that cannot transform followers like vampires can? What would motivate these cults?
8. In the magic update, could there be two magic systems that draw upon one type of mana, allowing one to power the other? (Like an innate wizard "charging" a magic item that would normally requires exposure to the same power the wizard uses, but through different means.)
9. Will certain symbols become recurring and socially relevant? (ex: in various ancient real-life cultures, horns are considered a sign of power, and some speculate that crowns symbolically replicate them)
10. Will people try to perform symbolically relevant actions? (such as the ancient Egyptians destroying the name of certain criminals post-execution, because they thought the name was a part of the soul)
11. You've stated that the initial method of restricting mythological knowledge will be to have races know about stuff that directly relate to them. Will we see "folk-tales" develop to fill in these gaps? Like humans blaming weeds on fairies because they don't know anything about them except they're nature-y and they exist?)
11b. Would these folk-tales (if they exist) be local (but spreadable), or on a broader scale, like a whole nation or race?