Bay 12 Games Forum

The pool of artifacts has become a muddy swamp of keepsakes, trophies, heirlooms, relics, etc. How can you tell which ones are the magnum opus of master craftsdwarfs which ones have significant properties, which ones are powerful only to archeologists, and which ones were whimsically named by off-duty soldiers or mercenaries adventurers? How do you tell which ones have personal or factional meaning from the ones that were imbued with the blood, sweat and mania of a determined producer, or the ones imbued with arcane, spiritual or divine power?

A creature with sharp olfactory senses should be able to have a whiff around to determine what fauna resides in the biome. Is there prey worth hunting? What predators already hunt it? They all leave their trace scents. For best results, the creature would need to be on a natural tile, with improved clarity for each natural tile around. Domestic animals in a settled site would be much easier to identify, and tiles with construction or building on them wouldn't reduce ability by as much. If a site contains a predator's (inc werebeast's) natural prey, that predator would hunt or rampage there longer.

After grinding ~2 lbs of beans, I decided to fill the rest of the airtight container I keep it in with a finer grind of the cheap emergency coffee I've been drinking. I apparently underestimated the quantity, and kept trying to grind when the chamber was so full that the coffee was compressed in the chute. After I cleared the chamber and brushed out the chute as well as I could, the grinder wouldn't restart.

I've ground pre-ground coffee in this before, so that can't be a problem. This is only a little past warranty (18 months) but I've seen this model last up to 4 years in a friend's kitchen. How much of this should I clean, how much of it can I clean, to potentially get this working again?

If a creature tries to convince another of values they don't share, wouldn't that increase the speaker's Liar skill and the listener's Judge of Intent? This could also satisfy the need to "Cause trouble".

I mean prognosticating weather and divining the location of groundwater. They're more an art than magic or science, but valuable skills for prospectors and adventurers nonetheless.

A high respect for law and/or courtesy makes an enraged character less likely to attack a non-hostile without first challenging. By challenging, the initiator isn't attacking out of the blue like an unhinged person, but has the consenting participation of an opponent.

For brawls this doesn't need to be any more formal than one guy saying, "You want to fight?" and the other guy saying "Yeah! (Your mom!)"  The law would be less involved than the values of the participants and observers. Owners of public establishments, such as Tavern Keepers, may have varying house rules: no fighting at all, clean matches, organized sparring, etc.

Higher levels of engagement, up to and including fights to the death, would become more formal, though how these are formalized would vary by the civilization's values. At one extreme, goblin civs may consider all killings, including murders, to be fair duels. Others would require rules of engagement; the conditions required to initiate and conclude the duel; and referees to enforce them, either one agreed on by participants, or a public official required to be in attendance.

Do you pick up your microwave to put frozen burritos in it?

The leaves of a turnip should be cookable.