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[GoblinCookie]

From what I have so far seen the races do not seem to live in strict isolation, which makes me wonder why we do not allow different races to marry and produce hybrid offspring.  I have seen a large number of dwarf fortresses in Adventure mode with apparantly quite well integrated goblin and human inhabitants, so the lack of hybrids is a question.

I used to think this would mechanically be a problem but since I have been working on creating new creatures I have realised it would not actually be a problem at all to implement.  The reason is that the physique of all creatures of the same are actually distinguished by a set of numbers. 

Creatures would be able to hybridise if they both have the exact same body type, are both intelligent and one partner is not hugely larger than the other (I would say 1/4 size should be the limit).  The hybridisation mechanics are not really very complicated , we simply scramble the values of both parents to produce the child.  Immortality would be treated as a either/or trait, either you inherit elf immortality or you don't. 

As for the question of the interance I think we should base this upon entities if the total amount of both ancestries is equal.  In a human society you are half-elf while in an elf society you are half-human.  We take the foreign race (or the one lowest down in the entity file) and we make them a half-something, so a dwarf breeding with a goblin produces a half-goblin that uses the goblin marker.  On closer examination of the creature we would be informed of the creature's exact parentage by %. 

So we have 50% dwarf, 50% goblin written down in the creatures ancestry.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Planned ^^

Race/interspecies relations come up in the story. There can be racial barriers to entity entry and segregation in certain locations, even to the point where there are purges and so on. Where there are physical or mental differences, torment and cruel treatment can be based on these. Whether or not creatures of different species can interbreed is completely open to question in the game -- as long as they have the same basic body type, it can do averaging or selection of stats. It can also do some randomization, such as a hybrid having a larger size than either of the parent species (this occurs in nature). It's also possible for a hybrid creature (or even a non-hybrid creature of a different species) to attempt to pass itself off as something it is not. This would have to be determined by skills, disguises, appearance variables and the overall similarity of the physical and behavioral variables of the creatures in question.

Interbreeding arose again. The children could take after parents in different ways, even between siblings -- colors in this story were selected that highlighted one race or the other. This would be an easy enough process through the color modifiers -- matching up body parts remains the significant hurdle, especially for creatures that look quite different but can still interbreed, but general purpose tags such as the existing "HEAD" tag and so on make this possible. More complete matching information can be established as necessary.

[Illogical_Blox]

Eh, I'd prefer human/gobbo civs, e.t.c., rather than hybrids. it just seems a bit weird that a goblin and an elf could breed.

[GoblinCookie]

Eh, I'd prefer human/gobbo civs, e.t.c., rather than hybrids. it just seems a bit weird that a goblin and an elf could breed.

It is actually less wierd than either breeding with a human.  Both elves and goblins are immortal, both are magical creatures to a rather high degree; elves due to the tree thing and goblins because they do not need to eat or drink. 

Biologically speaking they are likely closer kin to eachother than either to humans.  Humans are probably equally more closely related to dwarves. 

Human-Gobbo civs?  That is what we already have (a lot), we already have lots of civilizations with mixed race populations or rulers not of the main race and we also have settlements that we conquered in the past by one civilization and retain their original population.  Part of the reason for having hybrids is to make sense of this situation, if we have other races integrated so well into the population (the omnipresant goblin nobles in dwarf societies) over centuries or millenia then why do we never seen hybridisation happening? 

One serious issue however is immortality.  If we combine immortality with remarraige (which I hope they will implement before stuff like this) then we get a problem, let us call it the elf super-stud.  Our elf marries a human and produces children some of which are immortal.  When the spouse dies, it becomes possible to marry another spouse and produce even more children, some of which will be immortal.  Say hello to the snowball effect.

Just because one elf arrived 500 years ago our human settlement is now entirely populated by immortal half-elves.

[Chevaleresse]

Simple solution: immortal creatures marry for life.

[red_kangaroo]

Immortality would be treated as a either/or trait, either you inherit elf immortality or you don't.

Maybe even if e.g. the dwarf-goblin child didn't inherit immortality per se, it could have greatly prolonged lifespan, like having a max age 3-10x higher than normal dwarves.

[GavJ]

Different species can't breed. That's like, the definition of a species. Which is seemingly what a separate creature entry is in the RAWs from all the other examples there.
Races are referred to as "castes" in the RAWs (along with genders), not separate entries.

It is possible for some closely related species to breed, but they by definition can only produce infertile offspring. So sure maybe half elves, but they can't bear any children of their own. Which is biologically accurate to Earth rules AND solves your immortal snowball effect.

Although also, it wouldn't snowball for the same reason that elves themselves don't snowball:
1) Arbitrary magical population cap the game puts on a civilization (which should maybe be removed, but otherwise would be replaced with starvation limiting at some point)
2) Incessant wars and unfortunate accidents.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Different species can't breed. That's like, the definition of a species.
...

Sorry, just feel I have to be a bit pedantic. The definition is actually a lot more muddy (there are loads of different definitions of species used for different circumstances) and more along the lines of "different species generally can't or won't breed". Hybrid species are fairly common in the natural world, a lot of them also fertile ;P


As long as say elves and humans normally don't interbreed for whatever reason and there's enough morphological differences to warrant it it's perfectly fine to call them different species even if they technically can have fertile offspring.

[Loam]

I'm not sure we should struggle with biological realism in a world with dragons, hydras, etc. I support DF's true-to-fact approach on most things but it seems better to suspend our disbelief here.

Re: immortal offspring, perhaps the immortality of elves and goblins has to do with their magical nature rather than their biology. If you're not full-elven or full-goblin, you don't share in their nature and so aren't immortal.

Also, intermarriage/shenanigans (when we get those) could be partially based on ethics or values: most people wouldn't breed with goblins 'cause they don't like goblins. It'd depend on the individual's personality, how tolerant they were to other races. This would just serve to cut down on the number of hybrids you'd find - if it was a coin-toss you'd trip over the damn things walking down the street; they ought to be fairly rare.

[red_kangaroo]

Re: immortal offspring, perhaps the immortality of elves and goblins has to do with their magical nature rather than their biology. If you're not full-elven or full-goblin, you don't share in their nature and so aren't immortal.

Still, I'd like offsprings of mortal and immortal to be at least very long aged. It would make them different and special, only supported by the persumed rarity of mortal-immortal affairs.

It'd depend on the individual's personality, how tolerant they were to other races. This would just serve to cut down on the number of hybrids you'd find - if it was a coin-toss you'd trip over the damn things walking down the street; they ought to be fairly rare.

And denounced by society, most of the time. Or at least looked down upon.

"What have you done, my child? Why have you had to marry this puny human? They die as quickly as flies and then? You'll face just an eternity of sorrow."

[Findulidas]

We are talking about a fantasy setting here though. Most of these settings are full of half-elves, half-orcs and whatnot. Not to mention slimes, skeletons, flying heads and full of beings made out of things which arent organic at all. In addition most fantasy settings arent real and fall apart quite quickly when applying science or when thinking too much about how the magic works. Infact I would go so far as to say that whenever biology is involved in a fiction setting it usually isnt realistic in some sense. Unless its a point of the whole thing to make it realistic.

If we are going to make things realistic then I want poop/pee in df, because I see some potential there. Several new ways of getting bad thoughts. Logistics of transporting the waste. Security surrounding it. A feature that could stop people from walling themselves in.

[GoblinCookie]

Different species can't breed. That's like, the definition of a species. Which is seemingly what a separate creature entry is in the RAWs from all the other examples there.
Races are referred to as "castes" in the RAWs (along with genders), not separate entries.

Castes are not races.  Castes are genetic varieties possible WITHIN a species, so male and female are castes because they are genetic varieties within a species. 

Races are actually what are known in the files as Entities.  Each entity has it's own unique genetics so you can often determine what specific civilization an individual originally comes from by looking at what they look like. 

As things are at the moment, elf, dwarf, human, goblin etc are actually species because they cannot reproduce.  But the whole marraige/reproduction system is obviously incomplete and it is not in line with fantasy conventions for them to be different species.  (plus there is the Threetoes story)

Although also, it wouldn't snowball for the same reason that elves themselves don't snowball:
1) Arbitrary magical population cap the game puts on a civilization (which should maybe be removed, but otherwise would be replaced with starvation limiting at some point)
2) Incessant wars and unfortunate accidents.

I am talking about the snowballing of the immortality trait not the snowballing of elves per-se.  The caps on population actually facilitate the process because only when a person dies does a new person get to be born.  In the same manner that the historical population cap leads to goblin nobles rising to power even when they are negligable amount of the general population, the general population pap will lead to immortality snowballing. 

Part of me thinks so what?  Is it just not natural selection at work, eliminating the inferior genes and propogating the superior genes within a species?  As the immortal being is genetically superior so it's immortality trait is destined to propogate if it does not come with a trade-off. 

I'm not sure we should struggle with biological realism in a world with dragons, hydras, etc. I support DF's true-to-fact approach on most things but it seems better to suspend our disbelief here.

Re: immortal offspring, perhaps the immortality of elves and goblins has to do with their magical nature rather than their biology. If you're not full-elven or full-goblin, you don't share in their nature and so aren't immortal.

Also, intermarriage/shenanigans (when we get those) could be partially based on ethics or values: most people wouldn't breed with goblins 'cause they don't like goblins. It'd depend on the individual's personality, how tolerant they were to other races. This would just serve to cut down on the number of hybrids you'd find - if it was a coin-toss you'd trip over the damn things walking down the street; they ought to be fairly rare.

Is the magical nature genetic?  Obviously it is or else someone other than elves and goblins would have achieved immortality due to cultural factors. 

People like (individual) goblins in the game.  They like them a lot, so much that they keep electing them to positions of power over and over again.  We have a world devoid of racial/species prejudice despite ample opportunity for it in biological terms. 

Maybe even if e.g. the dwarf-goblin child didn't inherit immortality per se, it could have greatly prolonged lifespan, like having a max age 3-10x higher than normal dwarves.

That was the solution that occured to me initially may or not make sense depending upon we envison immortality to work.  If we percieve it as working magically it will be an either/or thing for certain.  If it works biologically true immortality is also likely to be an either/or thing as well. 

Immortality (rather than extremely long life) would theoretically be possible because it already exists at the species levels.  Species do not grow old and die, meaning that individuals that are old do have the ability to produce youth in a new being but for some reason not in themselves. 

If you kept cloning additional offspring and using their STEM cells to replace your own organs indefinately, including the reproductive tissues used to create the cloned offspring then your organism could perhaps actually never grow old.  The whole thing is kind of strange because as I understand this the body already clones it's own cells to replace tissues.

It could then be that STEM cells in their original embryonic forms are actually immortal and the 'problem' is that we replace our tissues with replicas of adult cells rather than with STEM cells replicated from an unbroken line of such cells.  Elves and goblins could simply be mantaining an internal line of embryonic STEM cells and then formating them to create brand new tissues forever.

[Manveru Taurënér]

You got Loam's quote mixed up with me there somehow btw :>

[GavJ]

Castes are not races.  Castes are genetic varieties possible WITHIN a species

Race is definitely partially genetics.

Race also mixes in culture and language, etc.

In DF, I think these are pretty clearly split between castes and entities, with the genetic component being in the castes, and the cultural component being in the entity. So the castes are half of what race is, fine. But it's the half that completely matters for purposes of this thread, whereas the cultural side doesn't (except perhaps as a factor in sexual preference).

I've never seen a mod that actually mods in different genetic races, like black dwarves and white dwarves, etc. But if you did want to for some reason, castes is where you would do it.

I am talking about the snowballing of the immortality trait not the snowballing of elves per-se.  The caps on population actually facilitate the process because only when a person dies does a new person get to be born.  In the same manner that the historical population cap leads to goblin nobles rising to power even when they are negligable amount of the general population, the general population pap will lead to immortality snowballing. 

Part of me thinks so what?  Is it just not natural selection at work, eliminating the inferior genes and propogating the superior genes within a species?  As the immortal being is genetically superior so it's immortality trait is destined to propogate if it does not come with a trade-off. 

Okay I see what you mean, but that is also just as effectively squashed as a long term issue (if we care) by just making hybrids infertile. They may still rise to noble positions or whatever, but they won't pass on those traits. It would only lead to temporary spikes while the "stud" is in the population, and then once they die (from combat or something), it goes away again back to normal.

If the races are CONSTANTLY interbreeding freely, then yes, they would pretty much take over, but not if it's just an odd freed prisoner here and there.

Sorry, just feel I have to be a bit pedantic. The definition is actually a lot more muddy (there are loads of different definitions of species used for different circumstances) and more along the lines of "different species generally can't or won't breed". Hybrid species are fairly common in the natural world, a lot of them also fertile ;P

The most common definition is the breeding-based one. Yes, there's a lot of disagreement, but that is most common/popular. And if you do adopt that definition, then no there aren't any hybrid species, fertile or infertile, because they are defined out of existence. If coyotes and wolves or something are discovered to have fertile offspring, then they simply aren't coyotes and wolves anymore, they're now both subspecies of wolvotes or whatever.

Anyway, the point is not just pedantic, since it matters for mechanical game design reasons here insofar as curbing the spread of immortal genes if they are infertile, which seems like something that might be very convenient for gameplay.

[Insanegame27]

the snaga caste in orc fortress is actually part goblin-part orc