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[Dirst]

I can't even imagine how wisdom would work. Would there be a set of life lessons that the character would learn throughout life if they survived them? Would you be able to learn it from books? Try to pass it on to young people who don't listen? And is wisdom something you can define or is it subjective? Would two very wise people agree on every choice to make?

And more importantly, how would it actually show up in the game? Would a very wise person not run towards the megabeast or what?

What passes for sage wisdom in DF: "There are plenty of socks over here in the stockpile, why run onto a battlefield to get one more?"

[Rubik]

I can't even imagine how wisdom would work. Would there be a set of life lessons that the character would learn throughout life if they survived them? Would you be able to learn it from books? Try to pass it on to young people who don't listen? And is wisdom something you can define or is it subjective? Would two very wise people agree on every choice to make?

And more importantly, how would it actually show up in the game? Would a very wise person not run towards the megabeast or what?

Well, I believely that eventually, 'wisdom' will be abstracted/reduced to certain levels of ability concerning different things, or explicit knowledge(secrets about people and things)
Some of those abilities(Imagine social abilities concerning, for example love) will have really low learning levels, effectively taking real in-game years to advance only slightly if being trained, and thus, accurately simulating those 'learning experiences' in life I talked in the previous post
I believe that a system like this would be quite precise, because, like in real life, we slowly train 'secondary' abilities , that take a lot of time for us to be fully understood, and we can try to teach them to the young people, like a lot of stories work.
Unfortunately, in real life, a lot of people have the student ability capped at dabbling

[Wyrdean]

Sorry for this being so long and the wasted space but I prefer to be organised....

When an intelligent being gets older it should in some way become wiser so how would we represent that?

Just make mental skills the last to go, unless they develop Alzheimers.

That would work however, I was (almost) thinking that they should be a good teacher (Age would give a bonus to teaching skill) to younger generations especially if they have had children ( teaching children what to do and how to better pass on wisdom to the next generation) Also maybe a new wisdom skill which intelligent beings gain from completing a task (would have to be slowly earned) the skill could be a slight bonus to most skills. (to offset aging and the loss of bodily strength)

You might be over-estimating what effects the wisdom stat has.

Am I?
I'm trying to remain unbiased however I personally would love to to proper aging in the game as well as some form of wisdom.

I can't even imagine how wisdom would work. Would there be a set of life lessons that the character would learn throughout life if they survived them? Would you be able to learn it from books? Try to pass it on to young people who don't listen? And is wisdom something you can define or is it subjective? Would two very wise people agree on every choice to make?

And more importantly, how would it actually show up in the game? Would a very wise person not run towards the megabeast or what?

Hopefully wisdom will be a character remembering past experiences, if a bad scary experience they would do what ever they could to prevent being hurt that way again, like a phobia. If a glad happy experience they will learn to make the best of them.
Something I would also like to see is babies once born will not have already decided that they don't like mole rats but lets say if they have a scary tragic experience with a molerat then they will learn to hate molerats.
Example: Urist Mckid hates Carp and has developed a phobia of fish because both his mother and father were killed by a carp before Ursit McToady, Master Hammer, could use the almighty Nerf Hammer to smite the carp.
Because wisdom would be influenced via past experiences it would vary on what the person had been through. 

I can't even imagine how wisdom would work. Would there be a set of life lessons that the character would learn throughout life if they survived them? Would you be able to learn it from books? Try to pass it on to young people who don't listen? And is wisdom something you can define or is it subjective? Would two very wise people agree on every choice to make?

And more importantly, how would it actually show up in the game? Would a very wise person not run towards the megabeast or what?

Well, I believely that eventually, 'wisdom' will be abstracted/reduced to certain levels of ability concerning different things, or explicit knowledge(secrets about people and things)
Some of those abilities(Imagine social abilities concerning, for example love) will have really low learning levels, effectively taking real in-game years to advance only slightly if being trained, and thus, accurately simulating those 'learning experiences' in life I talked in the previous post
I believe that a system like this would be quite precise, because, like in real life, we slowly train 'secondary' abilities , that take a lot of time for us to be fully understood, and we can try to teach them to the young people, like a lot of stories work.
Unfortunately, in real life, a lot of people have the student ability capped at dabbling

As for a "love" skill are you talking about a charisma skill? or something else entirely?
Wisdom as I explained above, should be something an intelligent being learns. What to do if something happens, how to respond appropriately, whether to run and hide or to face it head on.
In my opinion it would simulate real life learning as best as a game can.

Exact definition of wisdom as defined by Google:
wis·dom
noun
noun: wisdom
the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.
synonyms:   sagacity, intelligence, sense, common sense, shrewdness, astuteness, smartness, judiciousness, judgment, prudence, circumspection;
antonyms:   folly, stupidity
the soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, and good judgment.
"some questioned the wisdom of building the dam so close to an active volcano"
synonyms:   sagacity, intelligence, sense, common sense, shrewdness, astuteness, smartness, judiciousness, judgment, prudence, circumspection;
antonyms:   folly, stupidity
the body of knowledge and principles that develops within a specified society or period.
plural noun: wisdoms
"the traditional farming wisdom of India"
synonyms:   knowledge, learning, erudition, sophistication, scholarship, philosophy; lore
"the wisdom of tradition"


Now wisdom related image dump!

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[Qyubey]

Hence why I say mental skills should just be the last to start degrading. It wouldn't require the introduction of an arbitrary 'Wisdom' stat, just use the ones we already have. Right now, all but one attribute does something, and most skills have at least some application.

Right now, the Attributes are:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1 Body Attributes
1.1 Strength
1.2 Agility
1.3 Toughness
1.4 Endurance
1.5 Recuperation
1.6 Disease Resistance
2 Soul Attributes
2.1 Analytical Ability
2.2 Focus
2.3 Willpower
2.4 Creativity
2.5 Intuition
2.6 Patience
2.7 Memory
2.8 Linguistic Ability
2.9 Spatial Sense
2.10 Musicality
2.11 Kinesthetic Sense
2.12 Empathy
2.13 Social Awareness

'Wisdom' as a concept is already covered by several existing stats like Analytical Ability, Intuition, Patience, and Memory - which affect tangible Fortress professions.

Regarding phobias and memories, that's a tricky concept because you need to build some kind of function that can take control of AI behaviour at virtually any time, so long as the pre-requisite conditions are met. Afraid of Creature, Fond of Building, Enraged by Item Type, etc.

What you're describing is an entirely new, overwriting behavioral system that would need creation and testing. Now, I'm not saying its a bad idea; learning your target is Afraid of Bees could be a vital method in helping your fight - similar to studying Uruk Captains in Shadow of Mordor. It'd give you a reason to talk to people and train social skills so you can learn the various traits of people you're interested in, giving more value to the conversation system. Traits kind of work like that now, but all they pretty much do is modify thoughts and certain skills when they are used - no assuming control of AI behaviour. Potentially Toady could re-use some of the code involving when dangerous creatures cause AI to interrupt tasks though, but relate it to Phobias/Fetishes.

My problem with that system is that, during Adventure Mode, the more of these memories you have, the less control you'd be given. If you accrued enough memories of common creatures, you could potentially get thrown into a loop of the memories taking control and running out their behaviour over and over. Would make characters useless after a certain period of time. And before you say "Oh, they wouldn't all be that severe" -what exactly would govern severity of a memory? Health loss? Time spent interacting or fighting? These would need defining.

Right now, I can see is "If [OtherCreature] reduces [MainCreature] to [<10% Life] or [Removes a Body Part], randomly decide if it gets trauma relating to it" working. The trigger would elicit fear around that thing in the future, and maybe trauma could fade over time or with some kind of relaxing/counselling - turning it into a regular memory that gives bad thoughts. I suppose a memory system could be useful in the opposite sense: encountering a new creature might make you fearful and sloppy in your combat checks, but if you knew about it beforehand or were told about it you'd be fine (unless you then get trauma from fighting it). Perhaps even the Memory Attribute could govern how many experiences you can recall in total? A double-edged sword.

This doesn't really apply to the thread topic of 'Aging' though. Old People would probably know more topics, rumours, secrets, and whatnot.

[Deboche]

Well, I believely that eventually, 'wisdom' will be abstracted/reduced to certain levels of ability concerning different things, or explicit knowledge(secrets about people and things)
Some of those abilities(Imagine social abilities concerning, for example love) will have really low learning levels, effectively taking real in-game years to advance only slightly if being trained, and thus, accurately simulating those 'learning experiences' in life I talked in the previous post
...
Unfortunately, in real life, a lot of people have the student ability capped at dabbling

The first thing I thought when I read this was that this would be a great way to have personalities be much more important in the game. Essentially you would become wiser the more attention you paid to whatever interests you. So for example, you could have an egghead librarian dwarf who makes terrible decisions when it comes to love and a family oriented dwarf lady who gets into trouble financially because she buys impulsivelly and so on. So wisdom wouldn't be a sliding scale.

Wisdom as I explained above, should be something an intelligent being learns. What to do if something happens, how to respond appropriately, whether to run and hide or to face it head on.
In my opinion it would simulate real life learning as best as a game can.

But there lies the rub. Intelligent beings tend to learn different lessons from the same events happening, sometimes even opposite truths. A schoolyard bully hits someone. Different people will learn the following lesson from that event:

- Make friends with the bully;
- Hide from the bully;
- Defend yourself if the bully ever attacks you;
- Tell on the bully;
- Defend whomever the bully attacks;
- Candy.

That last one is for the guy who just doesn't pay attention. And there are people like that.

[Rubik]

I agree that the system we'll have should be realistic, but there should be a rehaul on the whole relationship system to properly implement how and when should a dwarf get a phobia about something, which, as everything for this game, is gonna take time
Well, for 'love', I was possibly reffering to the ability to mantain a sane relationship, and all the little things you need for that to happen, comprension, communication, respect, etc. although most of them would be atributes or values to be trained, not specific social jobs
As deboche and qyubey say, We should need a whole new 'pain' and relationship system(not even between people, but ideas  too) to make all of this work, specially phobias and things like that

Weirdly enough, I've been asking myself about this, and I've written a quite long text about how relationships should work, but yeah, I'll probably post as another suggestion, so this thread doesn't get any more derailed

[Wyrdean]

I love how a short tiny inconsequential sentence sparked a page and half long discussion truly amazing....Back on topic. (barely)

Hence why I say mental skills should just be the last to start degrading. It wouldn't require the introduction of an arbitrary 'Wisdom' stat, just use the ones we already have. Right now, all but one attribute does something, and most skills have at least some application.

Right now, the Attributes are:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1 Body Attributes
1.1 Strength
1.2 Agility
1.3 Toughness
1.4 Endurance
1.5 Recuperation
1.6 Disease Resistance
2 Soul Attributes
2.1 Analytical Ability
2.2 Focus
2.3 Willpower
2.4 Creativity
2.5 Intuition
2.6 Patience
2.7 Memory
2.8 Linguistic Ability
2.9 Spatial Sense
2.10 Musicality
2.11 Kinesthetic Sense
2.12 Empathy
2.13 Social Awareness

'Wisdom' as a concept is already covered by several existing stats like Analytical Ability, Intuition, Patience, and Memory - which affect tangible Fortress professions.

Regarding phobias and memories, that's a tricky concept because you need to build some kind of function that can take control of AI behaviour at virtually any time, so long as the pre-requisite conditions are met. Afraid of Creature, Fond of Building, Enraged by Item Type, etc.

What you're describing is an entirely new, overwriting behavioral system that would need creation and testing. Now, I'm not saying its a bad idea; learning your target is Afraid of Bees could be a vital method in helping your fight - similar to studying Uruk Captains in Shadow of Mordor. It'd give you a reason to talk to people and train social skills so you can learn the various traits of people you're interested in, giving more value to the conversation system. Traits kind of work like that now, but all they pretty much do is modify thoughts and certain skills when they are used - no assuming control of AI behavior. Potentially Toady could re-use some of the code involving when dangerous creatures cause AI to interrupt tasks though, but relate it to Phobias/Fetishes.

My problem with that system is that, during Adventure Mode, the more of these memories you have, the less control you'd be given. If you accrued enough memories of common creatures, you could potentially get thrown into a loop of the memories taking control and running out their behavior over and over. Yes that would be a worse case scenario however who has a traumatic experience with squirrels? Would make characters useless after a certain period of time. And before you say "Oh, they wouldn't all be that severe" -what exactly would govern severity of a memory? Health loss? Time spent interacting or fighting? These would need defining.

Right now, I can see is "If [OtherCreature] reduces [MainCreature] to [<10% Life] or [Removes a Body Part], randomly decide if it gets trauma relating to it" working. The trigger would elicit fear around that thing in the future, and maybe trauma could fade over time or with some kind of relaxing/counselling - turning it into a regular memory that gives bad thoughts. I suppose a memory system could be useful in the opposite sense: encountering a new creature might make you fearful and sloppy in your combat checks, but if you knew about it beforehand or were told about it you'd be fine (unless you then get trauma from fighting it). Perhaps even the Memory Attribute could govern how many experiences you can recall in total? A double-edged sword.

This doesn't really apply to the thread topic of 'Aging' though. Old People would probably know more topics, rumours, secrets, and whatnot.

As for the phobias I truthfully had no idea how they would work however thanks to you we have a skeleton to work with.

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Man I wish I could write like you I could make a fortune!

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Sorry if something about this post is wrong or incomplete feeling a tad bit sick.threw up a few times this morning no biggie

[Qyubey]

I have a habit of trying to shoot down ideas, only to suggest legitimate ways they would work.

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Regarding that topic, ones that would be relatively simple to implement would be:
(Note: I use 'at the sense' since some things might be beyond sight, such as creepy singing or roaring.

• Trauma: Had a critically bad experience involving [thing]. Creature will interrupt task to flee at the sense of it. Fades to Fear after a while.
• Fear: Had a bad experience involving [thing]. Performs poorly in all tasks at the sense of it. Fades to Distaste.
• Rage: Boiling fury regarding [thing]. Creature will interrupt tasks to attack and destroy it. Fades to Anger.
• Anger: Mad at [thing]. All checks not relating to combat (or raw skill like hammering metal) are lowered whilst the others are bolstered. Fades to Distaste.
• Distaste: Thinks badly of [thing]. Gives a mad mood at the sense of it. Identical to current trait system.
• Joy: Filled with jubilation by [thing]. Improves skill checks and will perform happy actions (singing, dancing) when free around it. Fades to Happy.
• Happy: Entertained by [thing]. Gives minor improvements to skill checks around thing.
• Confidence: [thing] gives creature boosted confidence, aiding them in all checks.
• Ego: Takes [thing] very lightly. Gives passive buffs to skills. Dulls all checks in combat with [thing]. Fades if enough damage is taken.

Those are a few off the top of my head with very visible effects. Again, anything that takes control away or interrupts a task has to be considered carefully, since you're relinquishing control from the player. A dwarf might get better checks around their favorite statue, but you don't want them to interrupt tasks to celebrate it - unless over-joy is a concept Toady wants to play with. Too much happiness is a bad thing because noone works?

Confidence and Ego are the ones I'm most interested in: there are many stories - both in fiction and real life - of people carrying 'good luck charms' into battle that really do nothing, but give the person that piece of mind they need to have a better focus and perform better, so Confidence is a good idea. Ego is one I like because it technically would make your soldiers slightly worse against a common foe, but would improve their performance elsewhere so long as their ego is never challenged or broken. It flies in the face of common RPG tropes by making someone get a bit worse in combat the more they fight - because it begins to be routine. This is more realistic (although PTSD is the most realistic mental product of combat). You could balance this by making the ego hard to build up (like requiring you to take no hits whilst slaying a monster). Naturally, military discipline like a regimented militia would drill ego out of its soldiers, so it'd really only be for things like rulers and heroes.

[GoblinCookie]

Mkay (what was this thread about again?), age effects. It should be pretty easy to set in some [when] functions that randomly determine if a creature develops an age-related complication on disease, based on the number of ticks 'remaining', in a sense. I suppose the question now is- should old creatures degrade in skill and competency? I mean, there's plenty of old men in fiction who are hyper-competent and powerful.

What we should do is set a malus to all physical attributes based upon how close the creature is towards the dying of old age point.  The rate of degeneration has a default but can be adjusted in the creature raws for a given attribute.  The attributes however degenerate at a constant rate, not in % proportion to the starting point; so the weaker you were to start off with the worse you are when you get old.  Most of the effects should be dealt with at the entity level, the key thing is that there would be an elder status defined in the raws that for instance would exempt persons defined as old from working at certain heavy tasks and certainly military service.  That age would have to be defined at a creature level however to confuse everything, it could default to the starting point of possible death from old age. 

The other more benevolent things are best dealt with by general character development over time, which already exists in regard to skills.  We can add in more skills for various things and over a lifetime a creature gets more skilled at those things in addition to all the things that already exists.  Hence elders are weaker in every physical sense but also have a great deal of skills accumulated over a lifetime, including possibly more abstract skills. 

[Dirst]

A number of milestones can be set in the creature raws, and then stats adjusted when those are reached.  For example,

[PHYS_ATT_AGING:STRENGTH:10:70:100:98:95:90:85:75:50]
[PHYS_ATT_AGING:AGILITY:50:100:100:98:95:90:85:75:50]
[PHYS_ATT_AGING:TOUGHNESS:100:100:100:99:98:95:90:85:80]
[MENT_ATT_AGING:FOCUS:5:60:100:100:100:98:95:92:90]
[MENT_ATT_AGING:PATIENCE:1:10:100:105:110:120:130:150:200]
[MENT_ATT_AGING:MEMORY:100:100:100:95:90:80:70:60:50]

Here I'm envisioning the milestones as birth, achieve CHILD status, achieve ADULT status, and then several spaced out at or near the MAX_AGE range.  Linear interpolation between milestones (like body size) should be sufficient.  Each milestone might have its own age range to keep overseers on their toes.

Occupying a particular age category can be used as a qualifier for entity-level stuff.