Bay 12 Games Forum

The more opinions a suggestion thread gets, the more I think Toady should just do it how he wants.

filler

Well there's two schools of thought it seems;
1) Undead are animated, perhaps intelligent (somebody didn't succesfully read my first post, despite quoting it) beings lacking a soul.
2) Undead are essentially no different to the living, but they are not living

And Idens idea, that they're the good guys.

I just think that the idea that undead have a soul comes from the novel thought "what would happen if they did?", like media where animals are humanised (ie, Duncton wood, Planet of the Apes, Tarzan etc), but hey if that's the modern way of looking at it, I won't complain, I'll just write a novel of a new genre: Horror! Wherein a Noble Vampire gets bitten by a propaganda wielding Priest and becomes evil...

I can't believe this thread, the very definition of undead is a living creature that doesn't have a soul. Writers in the past have thought to themselves, what would happen if a living creature didn't have a soul? Hence Dracula and Frankenstein, a main influence for modern day undead. Read 'em, if you did, you could tell me that although Dracula in his philosophical discourse was very intelligent and had passions, the implication throughout the whole was that he lacked a soul. Frankenstein was a golem, and though it was bent on killing it's master may seem to imply a soul, at best it implies the question of it having a soul, which was unnatural, hence the genre horror. A ghost isn't even undead, because it's not a living creature, it's a f*king soul.

I think soulless undead could be represented in game by making undead creatures re-enact the things they did in life, for no reason. Or by having unique motivations, vampires/zombies always want to bite living creatures.

Seriously, if undead have a soul, what's the point of 'em? It smacks of fluffery to me. Like some irreverent novels I've read where vampires are portrayed as having essentially good motives. It really takes away from the whole point.

A brief history, to the present day;
"What perchance, should a dead creature be animated, and thus be lacking in a soul, implications might therewith arise?"

"What if Dracula was really a good guy, you know like everyone maybe has good motivations?"

*a modern debate*

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One interesting thing that I did notice just now is that when I get stuck on a squad, the "+" and "-" keys seem to act as the letter "l", as they switch between "lock on this squad" and "don't lock on this squad".

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I can confirm this, without evidence.

Warning: If you're reading this thread for anything DF related, don't read this post. . Seriously.

An axiom is defined as a theory that doesn't need to be proven or disproven, so it's a matter of faith. So is atheism, no one can really prove the existence or otherwise of God(s), so it's a question of faith. Sure you could disprove individual arguments for the presence of a god, but that makes you no more rational then the person who supplied those proofs, maybe just more right.

No matter how many proofs you layer on top of an axiom, it's still going to be based on faith at the lowest level, and what scares me is the belief people will put in anything 'proven' by such scientific means. In the modern day world, religion is far more tolerant of criticism to itself than science - aka 'fact'.

Also, emperical science isn't useful in any way, in diluting itself of absolute truth it's saying "Ok, don't bother refuting this, it's just emperical observation, but hey look what it proves!". It's such an immature tactic to say that a theory is not open to argument before proposing it. And if it can't stand up to argument, it's worthless.

But these are my own biases, I once repeatedly questioned my friend, a mathematician, about how .999r = 1 , eventually he exclaimed, "Maths isn't 'truth'! It's just based on axioms/rules". Let's hope true scientists and mathematicians don't rely on axioms and suchlike.

Regarding your idea Servant, there is a lot of reason behind religion too. What is Theology for instance? And what about the works of Thomas Aquinus and Pascal? etc.

Sorry.

Well make a full suit (though there are 3 different types of the same apparal in some cases) and according to need are good ideas in themselves, but I don't see how the fort would fill up with ratty clothing without them. My suggestion just allows owned clothing to be dumped, quite different to clothing lying around everwhere.

And besides, when I say repeat build I mean filling up the whole joblist, with basically a full suit. If you had 1000 pairs of socks, you'd also have 1000 pairs of shoes, which would require 10,000 cloth (10 times 1000).