Bay 12 Games Forum

I believe some form of gladiator combat would really add to dwarf fortress adventure mode becoming a gladiator could serve a number of functions for the player including training combat skills, gaining fame and renown, and making some sweet cash.

the fights would take place in Arenas, arenas are a structure built by civilizations who value both martial prowess and competition. The staff of the arena is like its own entity and when you join them you become a gladiator allowed to participate in events. Im thinking that events happen a few times per month with larger events occuring yearly. how lethal gladiators are would depend on civ ethics, humans for instance might prefer that fallen gladiators live if they fought valiently while goblins probably want to see blood. killing gladiators that the crowd did not ask to see killed will probably get you a bad reputation and they will be more likely to vote for your death.

Artificial life, while many see it as a modern aspiration the interest in such things dates back throughout human history and is not uncommon in fantasy settings and I believe it would be an appropriate addition to dwarf fortress. Here are three different forms of construct that dwarven (or human or whoever) engineers may be able to construct with sufficient skill.

Golem: Golems are the most 'magical' of constructs, in order to construct a golem one must first create the body, the body may be constructed of a variety of materials but unless the body is masterwork the golem creation will fail, a golem may be made in a variety of different forms like a statue, larger creatures require more material to construct. the golems body plan will be based on the creature constructed although it lacks organs. bringing life to a golem requires a secret much like necromancy. While sentient most Golems cannot speak or gain or lose attributes.

Automaton: Automatons are more complicated to build but dont require 'supernatural' secrets, automatons are created at a special workshop 3 steps are involved in the construction of an automaton, the first is the design phase, in order to design automatons a dwarf must have high enough engineering skill. the game will then generate a new kind of creature (though not spawn one) many different classes of automatons are possible. In general automatons are only capable of doing a single type of job. types of automaton may include haulers, miners, and even crafters. crafters always produce goods of the same quality. most automaton cannot gain or lose skill and can never raise attributes. after completing the design you must build all of the parts and put them together and voila you have an automaton

an automaton can sometimes acquire a soul but that requires philosophical knowledge and a well crafted soul gem (or something) these automatons have personalities, can speak, and can gain skill (but not attributes) a soulless automaton may also be possessed by a ghost for !!FUN!! automatons with souls can also perform a wider variety of jobs and are essentially living creatures.

I was wondering how difficult and wanted it would be to have individual civs of the same race have slightly different ethics (and other stuff too, but for now im focusing on ethics) rather than stuff like "ACCEPTABLE" "UNTHINKABLE" etc, I think we should have it be more variable like personality traits for dwarves, so it could go something like this.

[ETHIC:JAYWALKING:0:500:1000:3000] or something like that, higher numbers representing it being more acceptable (or the other way around I dunno)

I was wondering if it was possible to have a civilization modded to live underground, one that builds towns and cities or fortresses, how would I go about this

So, for a number of reasons Id like to mod in energy weapons, and was wondering how I would best do it, is there a way to have items that let you perform interactions? like say, firebreath.

I was wondering how I might possibly be able to do this, generally it would create interesting alien species (mostly made for sentient ones with civilizations and such). right now Im just rolling dice to create them, but I wanted to have something more like http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=alienrace this, I was going for a more nonhumanoid hard-sci fi feel to this.
Idealy the generator would give
-a basic description of the aliens appearance
- a few modifiers to the aliens appearance, such as, "Has an exoskeleton" "Has tentacles" "Has a lovecraftian feel" and stuff like that
-a general overview of the aliens psychology, do they have a hivelike structure? do they not understand humor?
-based on their psychology, what is their society like and what technological level have they reached.


Anyone have any suggestions for how I should proceed.

I havent thought much yet, however, what I know is that I want it to have fairly complex damage systems and in general, be hard sci-fi

However, I do not know where to start, how would I best quantify damage?

im working on creating the rules, any suggestions?

the roleplay will take place in the far future, humanities once great federation has fallen and the wormholes have closed leaving the colonies isolated. players can choose a starting planet and a few technological improvements they remember along with limited infrastructure.