Bay 12 Games Forum

One method might be to look at a variety of steels treated to maximize any given property, then compare this to instances where these properties are called for. That is, armor might call for stat X but weapons for stat Y. Find the greatest X and Y values in given steels and put them both into the steel raw, creating a hybrid metal where the smith is presumed to use the correct treatment for any given application.

Burrow them?

"Modern sensibility offended" defines your post, GoblinCookie. Every civilization you could name differentiated clothing between genders. It may be unfashionable to say so today, and seem post-modern and thoughtful to speculate on a world without gender-normative clothing, but this isn't a post-modern fantasy world being randomly generated. You know, as of a release ago we had a world without literature, dance, drunkenness or music. Are we going to dismiss all suggestions for new features on the premise that a world without that feature is hipster-chic?

At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I find it odd to have my grizzled old axelord oohing and awing over his newly-aquired cave spider silk dress. Could tags be introduced to specify cultural preferences for a gender's clothing choices? Two options present themselves; gender tags in the item's raw, or gender tags in the entity raw. To me it seems best to define in the entity raw, so that elven men can still wear their skirts. I wouldn't want to impose on their foreign ways...

[ARMOR:ITEM_ARMOR_DRESS:COMMON:FEMALE]
[ARMOR:ITEM_ARMOR_TUNIC:COMMON] (gender-neutral? No tag.)
[PANTS:ITEM_PANTS_PANTS:COMMON:MALE]

Easy to mod how you like.

The slavery mechanic is pretty wonky so far, I would like to see it fleshed out. Slavery in ancient times lacked the racial element thought of today, with rival cities enslaving their conquests commonly in the Greek states. Slavery wasn't necessarily as harsh as we think of it today. Rome may have had its gold mines for barbarian population control, but they also enslaved large numbers of Greeks to serve as teachers and scholars. So it might come down to an [ABUSE_CAPTIVES] entity tag. Slavery may also be a consequence of the legal system, ethics could have ENSLAVE or SERVITUDE punishments, one being permanent, the other a number of years.

And so far as it being unthinkable? I'm not so sure that should last. Remember it is very easy to mod our way to other species, and civilization ethics may become fluid as scholars exchange ideas. Expanding DF's framework outside of the current ethics set is a powerful thing for the long run.

Engineer some sort of automatic floor cleaning mechanism to flood the tavern from season to season, training swimming and doctors simultaneously.

I had a rather tragic incident of a dwarf being flung across the floor, splitting his lower body open, slamming into an obstacle and being found dead. Simultaneously a carpenter was flung past a number of dancers and slammed into the booze stockpile. I suspect a visitor got into a shoving match and, being some oversized humanoid animal (I've been getting dingo men), won. This occured with a rather crowded and small tavern, only 7x11 or so with 50 dwarves burrow-restricted into it.

Do you have a job? I recommend a job.