Bay 12 Games Forum

I would also point out that comment by Richards is dated 2009, so responding as if the poster was still active in the thread may be off-base.

Beyond that, however, if you do have expertise in the area, and want to see the game become a culture simulator, then could you supply us with the sorts of guidelines for which different naming conventions actually arise?

In that way, we might be able to make this something more than just a hard weighted chance of one or the other, and we could actually have that simulation of culture changing with time in the game, and make them procedural changes that emerge through gameplay.

Ahh, when I normally do that kind of response I pay attention to the date of the other person's post (and at least make mention if it is fairly old). To emphasize why I responded well . . . here's an xkcd comic to explain: http://xkcd.com/386/ (and I am poking fun at myself). Also, I'd like to apologize if my response sounded at all harsh.

As for my expertise: it is extremely limited. I am familiar with the fact that there exist other naming systems that reckon from mother side, father side, and mother and father side along with all kinds of other weird and different stuff. For instance, in one system an individual doesn't actually carry a name. Instead they acquire names by their relation to other individuals. IE I might be known as Joe by one person or one group of people, but by George by someone else (kind of like nicknames, but not quite). At least, that's how I understand it. Caused havoc with the census that they tried to do in Papua New Guinea. People actually had to invent personal names JUST for the census. Which, admittedly this system might be fun in DF (imagine the description and relationship pages).

Really, when we get into the nitty gritty of this it probably would be worth discussing kinship terminology and systems, property, labor, and marriage (monogamy, polyandry, polygyny, different rules of marriage, etc). These are all interconnected to an extent so while we might not take a stab at what causes what (correlation does not equal causation) we can say what correlates with what. So Toady might still want to go by hard rules, just have generated cultures to have systems that make 'sense.' The hard rules will just a be bit more educated and we can sort it all out later with diffusion and maybe some other system. Ultimately, though, we're dealing with dwarves, not humans, so we can say they follow whatever rules might make sense to dwarves. They might name based off of beard length of parents (which right now would favor a patrilineal system) or something that makes a little bit more sense, but still wouldn't fly with most humans. It is hard to think of an example, because humans do all kinds of weird and awesome things when you get down to it.

I don't know how in depth I'll discuss this. I can probably write a book just off what I've mentioned so far (if not a whole series) so what I might do is pick out some exceptional groups that seem to 'represent' a way of looking at naming and list cultural 'traits' (ie kind of kinship system) even though I dislike going about it that way. I can always expand on the traits if it seems like a good idea. For examples of patrilineal and matrilineal systems I can look at America and the Iroqouis (or the Hopi). I'll probably look at the group from Papua New Guinea along with Tibet, Turkey, and India to see if we find anything interesting that might fit in DF or just seems cool.

Edit: I'm listing Tibet, Turkey, and India because I suspect they might have some weird awesome naming systems. Spain differs from the rest of Europe in its naming, so I suspect they may have picked that up from the Ottoman empire (which had a hand in Spain for a very long time). Turkey is what is the left of the Ottoman empire which is why I'm looking at them. Meanwhile, Tibet actually practices polyandry last I heard so I'm interested in how they reckon lineage. Meanwhile, I've always been interested in India. They seem to practice a different naming convention, but I've never really found out what they do specifically.

Let me know if you guys think of anywhere else you want me to take a look at while I'm at it!

So I remember reading somewhere that there should be limits on the number of immigrants. It occurred to me that it would be awesome if we could limit immigration numbers and make it so we can instead 'invite' animal people and other species to join our fort. Of course, this should lead to 'fun' in that maybe not all Dwarves are tolerant of other species, that perhaps it'll upset the Mountainhome, or other negative factors.

I think making a decision between immediate labor and long term negative effects (especially if that labor is needed) would be awesome.

To address those with the idea of the wife's name being carried on, I'm not sure why you'd want that. The sons inherit their father's name anywhere in civilized history (unless I'm unaware of a few instances), and his sons continue on the family heritage.

For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. As it's written in scripture.

I added this to Eternal voting

As someone who has studied cultural anthropology I find this . . . comment infuriating. First off, what do you define as 'civilized'? Is it only Western 'civilization?' If so, then we exclude ancient China and Japan along with many other 'civilizations.' Do we only include places that developed cities? If so, where do we draw the line? Is it any place that developed a permanent settlement or do these places have to reach a certain size to be considered 'civilized?'

Ultimately, I choose to abandon the term 'civilized' since it is both outdated and insulting. Instead I favor the term society and there is more than one way societies reckon lineage (probably quite a few actually). Just because a group never developed 'civilization' according to someone else's standards does not demean them. If it kept their group going for a 1000+ years who are we to look down on that? I mean, ultimately the nation-state has only been in existance for the past 150 years or so and I certainly don't see it being much better than any other system out there. In many ways I think it is actually worse!

There are plenty of examples of societies that use other systems of reckoning family lineage. During the early years of European colonization the Iroqouis reckoned their lineage matrilineally rather the patrilineally. IE traced it through the mother's line. In fact, we see a corollation between women working the land and matrilineal-ism.

Thus, in the world of Dwarf Fortress it actually makes more sense to me to track lineage by skill since both sexes work equally and property is owned by both parties (for now). I wouldn't mind seeing random generation though and having different civilizations reckon property and the like in all sorts of weird and twisted ways.

*calms down from nerd rage* So, what you can get from this is that I support the idea of Dwarf civs actually pulling how to reckon lineage based on randomness. As an anthro nerd I'd love to see Dwarf Fortress become a culture simulator so that sometimes we have societies (or civs) that can't possibly survive as they are at the start and see how they change over time to accomodate different cultural 'features' to actually form a lasting society.