Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Uthimienure on April 18, 2020, 10:05:59 pm

IMHO, if the OP had used different terminology than "racial communities", this wouldn't have triggered anyone.

In Dwarf Fortress, there really are not "races" such as we think in our modern world, which calls humans of different types "races".
In Dwarf Fortress, all dwarfs are the same race, all elves are the same race, all goblins are the same race, etc... get my drift?

What we should be talking about here are "species", not races!

It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with modern "racism"... sheesh!

Yes the difference between peoples in dwarf fortress is even more pronounced than it is in our world. That doesn't change the fact that all the sapient races in dwarf fortress are just that: sapient. That makes them all equal in exactly the same way as "all men are created equal", and any special social treatment of members of different species as other exactly as bad as racism is in our world. The detail that they are different "species" does not make it ok, since all that technically means is they cannot reproduce with each other. Racism is at it's core treating people as other because of their physical traits, and that would apply in DF too.

I'd also like to point out one of the desires the OP expressed is "minority communities could make demands". Minority communities are how races are treated in our world, and replicating that would indeed replicate the racial issues of today. I'm sure it's out of a desire for realism that the OP making this suggestion, and I don't deny that it would do that. It would make dwarves more human, in a bad way.

On the contrary, I don't see how that would be bad. Do you really think players will be conditioned to accept racism, due to racism being implemented into the game? Surely we're not young children and can tell fiction (especially a damn ASCII game) from reality.

I actually like this idea quite a lot; having less homogeneous populations and an element of having to potentially manage several different factions with a diverse fort sounds really appealing.

The concerns brought up by King Mir seem absurd to me when you realize that this game already features slavery, general violence/crime, and even cannibalism. Does the game's world possessing such things (and having the default ethics for human nations be to accept torture and slavery) imply that such is okay or somehow inevitable in the real world? And these rebuttals of mine are taking for granted your assertion that this suggestion would be akin to simply adding and enforcing racism in the game, and even that much is debatable.

There's just no point in trying to make a fictional video game universe conform to modern ethics or sensibilities to the detriment of internal consistency and the potential for mechanics that could be fun.

Yeah. The game world needs more violence and strife IMHO, and this is a good way to add that.

Quote from: MaxTheFox on April 16, 2020, 11:18:43 pm

They treat animals as above humans in many respects is the root of their problems.

How the hell is that the root of their problems, or even a problem at all? That's kind of the idea - given the treatment of non-human animals by society at large, preferential treatment from certain groups hardly even begins to balance things out.
The problem is that they apparently treat said animals pretty much as terribly as everyone else does.   

Also, their animal rights work as a whole tends to be rather more, uh, positive than their shelter business. Protests and demonstrations and such.
Of course, then you have irredeemably dumb examples like a bunch of people getting naked and lying around on giant-sized plates in the middle of the footpath, but I'm not sure if that was PETA or someone else. Regardless, some of their activity is much more productive.   

I believe in the superiority of humans (and other hypothetical sapient species) over non-sapient species. There is no need to "balance things out".

However I support "normal" animal rights reforms like trying to improve conditions in factory farms. But that doesn't seem to be going far enough according to PETA...

PETA does a lot of great work in other areas, and I'm pretty sure there are good folks in other parts of the organisation, but for some reason their shelters are fucking evil.
Kinda taints the whole organisation at this point.

They treat animals as above humans in many respects is the root of their problems. They would likely kill millions of humans to save a single rabbit if they could (then euthanize the rabbit). I'm not aware of any good sides to PETA.

If you want, you can very easily mod in the ability to play as a Kobold in adventure mode:

Just add [ALL_MAIN_POPS_CONTROLLABLE] underneath [ENTITY:SKULKING] in entity_default.txt in the raws. You may need to make a new world; I'm not sure if you can apply this to an existing world's raws (a more experienced modder probably knows).

That way, you will be able to start as a Kobold in one of the Kobold caves, allowing you to explore it and find the cave entrance and their treasure stash! Plus playing as a Kobold can be a lot of fun, although very difficult as you are tiny, carnivorous and can't speak/perform.

I modded kobolds to be able to speak. Also you can't mod civs in an existing world, you'll have to make a new one.

Quote from: Mathel on April 12, 2020, 10:56:38 am

I just tested this after reading it. It works. One adventurer gave in to starvation, the next one found his corpse.

Huh. Good to know. That will make things much easier the next time I pull this kind of nonsense.

Quote from: MaxTheFox on April 13, 2020, 10:34:35 am

Will scars heal/become less severe eventually (after retiring maybe)? or will I have to retire this character (or use bites/kicks to fight )?

Scars alone shouldn't prevent limbs from functioning. You may want to consult the health screen. If there are muscles or tendons that are still torn, then those will heal before long. If you suffered damage to motor nerves, then that will never heal without some shenanigans.

Certain divination dice may grant healing, which could fix you right up. Some of them can curse you to spend a week (ostensibly) in the form of an animal, which I know firsthand can at least heal function loss in the lower spine when you change back. Not sure about motor nerves though.

That's assuming, of course, that you can even use divination dice without functional hands. You might actually be able to, I don't remember. If not, then the only other healing option would be to become a werebeast. Or you could become a zombie. It wouldn't heal you, but they can retain usage of their limbs no matter how cut up they get.

Well, I don't know what happened but now I can actually use my hands. Maybe they didn't fully heal after fast-travel somehow? It's weird.

Made a new character, and took a quest from my lord to kill a night troll spouse living a "short walk" away from the mead hall. In my experience they often live alone and their family members (converted or not) make new lairs.

But not in this case. The lair contained a small family of them: the troll himself, his spouse, and a child. The troll and the child rushed me while the spouse stayed inside. I got downed by the child (either the AI got smarter or he lucked out to take me down via wrestling), he smashed my tail and broke one of my legs and arms, however I beheaded him soon after with the axe in my remaining arm. The troll, meanwhile, broke my *other* leg, while I chopped off one arm and one leg from him, he tore apart the muscle on my other arm. Having no biting skill, I thought I was screwed. However he bled to death from his injuries. I picked up the body parts as trophies and fast-traveled away, with my quest technically unfulfilled (in no way was I in shape to kill the spouse). However, even after I healed due to fast-travel, my arms were so scarred that I couldn't hold weapons. I was still able to stand up. I RPed it as my character making makeshift splints to still be able to sort-of walk. Will scars heal/become less severe eventually (after retiring maybe)? or will I have to retire this character (or use bites/kicks to fight )?