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[Nidilap]

Before you say they can be modded in, I know that. But I wonder why Toady wouldn't add them as a canon species in DF. They're perfect for the game, warmongering, savage warlords destroying towns with such tenacity that they must be driven off to Outlands.

It'd be interesting to see how they interact with Goblins, as well.

[Migrant]

Because eventually we may have procedurally generated races so manually adding more seems like an unwise thing for Toady to work on. Especially because every player can very easily orcs to their own games.

[Wyrdean]

Because eventually we may have procedurally generated races so manually adding more seems like an unwise thing for Toady to work on. Especially because every player can very easily orcs to their own games.

Hopefully you don't mean like spore or even *Gasp* No Man's Sky!

[Bumber]

Because eventually we may have procedurally generated races so manually adding more seems like an unwise thing for Toady to work on. Especially because every player can very easily orcs to their own games.

Hopefully you don't mean like spore or even *Gasp* No Man's Sky!

When you get right down to it, the majority DF creatures are functionally the same thing. The diversity is all in our imagination.

Procedurally generated DF creatures will pretty much mean a randomized backstory and magic powers (if applicable.) The myths and history enhance the world in a way most procedural games neglect in favor of tangible graphics.

Until then, orcs and goblins are one and the same (much like in Tolkien's fiction.)

[Reelya]

Toady seems to want to stick to traditional folklore for the most part, and I support that as it helps to keep DF a little different. Orcs aren't traditional, they're modern. We should keep the Tolkien races (halfings and orcs) out of the game to keep it distinctive.

For the most part, all the critter in the game are hundreds of years old, or they're DF originals. "Gremlin" is the only exception I can think of: the "gremlin" is a mythological creature from 20th century aviator folklore, which was supposed to foul up the aircraft's machinery. It's kinda cool to have that be the only exception, since it's not a literary reference, it's a nod at one of the quirkier bits of common lore.

[Evans]

Toady seems to want to stick to traditional folklore for the most part, and I support that as it helps to keep DF a little different.
Orcs aren't traditional, they're modern. We should keep the Tolkien races (halfings and orcs) out of the game to keep it distinctive.

For the most part, all the critter in the game are hundreds of years old, or they're DF originals. "Gremlin" is the only exception I can think of: the "gremlin" is a mythological creature from 20th century aviator folklore, which was supposed to foul up the aircraft's machinery. It's kinda cool to have that be the only exception, since it's not a literary reference, it's a nod at one of the quirkier bits of common lore.

Excuse me?
Tolkien's lore is "traditional" fantasy in it's purest sense.
The idea of basing stuff on "folklore" is funny - which folklore you mean?
American based on limited european countries? Native American full of strange critters wherever you look?
East Asian with so many spirits, gods and demons? Nordic one with giants and dragons and serpents etc? Indian with their many gods and mythical weapons?
What about slavic folklore so popular now due to the Witcher game series?
And part of which folklore are the Necromancers and their towers? And btw, since necromancers are here, where are the djinn?

What about just forgetting about "folklore" altogether and put in canon fantasy that will FIT the DF world?

I think goblins were just a placeholder baddies for the things to come - procedural generated underwater elephant-spider-scorpion men wielding two handed halberds coming to steal your meat from the stockpiles etc.

In case of different races the more is actually better for vanilla DF.
I play masterwork DF since it's 6.1 version. Recently I had to launch vanilla to reproduce the issue.
Seeing it's poverty and lack of substance when compared to MDF reminded me why I do not play vanilla anymore.
Pandashi are simply awesome, even tho they are strictly WoW based.

So - any additions of canon races (halflings, orcs, kobolds, gnolls etc) are always welcome.
No need to limit the world due to some silly "folklore" and traditional views. This is fantasy world we are talking here.
Make it truly fantastic.

[pisskop]

you say canon, but i dont think you know what that means.

you are explicitly suggesting they become canon

[Evans]

you say canon, but i dont think you know what that means.

you are explicitly suggesting they become canon

I feel insulted and I refuse to delve deeper into this discussion.

I will however simplify my point for you:
- I am against limiting dwarf fortress content to "folklore" for a reasons stated above (either too strict or too many sources to relay upon) and to proceduraly generated races (No Man's Sky anyone?)
- I support adding races that become accepted part of mainstream modern fantasy. Just like the elves, orcs are part of it now.

There. That is all I have to say on this matter.

[pisskop]

youre welcome to mod up

WF: Karak Attack

should you so please

[FantasticDorf]

Mechanically if you're thinking about the combined stereotypical qualities of height, anger propensity, strength and high resistance and a warrior culture, orcs are the best of both worlds of humans and goblins as a race and are very strong without self imposed limitations such as old age, food and drink dependence etc or low site populations. That is unless they are intended to be a challenge should you raise the bar of difficulty (given that likely orcs will dominate and or stalemate with innumerable goblins)

Goblins are successful because they are small (on par with dwarves so level playing field), immortal, fast breeding (on a diet of nothing) and fill up the numerical slots for sieges en masse as the dwarf mode requires, being difficult to handle and also very well trained and ruthlessly attacking in a swarm with a powerful figurehead (each offshoot of goblin civilisation i know from personal experience contend politically for the tower in dark-pits as seen in my own file modification changes) killing the demon lord hurts them a lot as they lose stopping power and instead have to expend more numbers to fufill sieges.

In Tolkien lore, orcs are merely corrupted elves and later a race of their own from those precursors leading to man-orc hybrids via the work of Sauron to insert innocuous spies. Also in the recent roguelike twitch talk which zach and tarn were a part of talking about more or less the influences on dwarf fortress from the genre they revealed a screenshot of the myth generator.

Of interest to you may be that a exerpt that a diety "curses one third of all dwarves to be goblins" implying that in a tokienesque manner if you really desired orcs so much providing you had the creature ready for use, you could split them off a curse applied on goblins/another race to bring them into the world justifiably if not a independent civilisation or by special means. (Here on the "direct link to our talk" - http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html)

Right now its best left in player hands to determine the balance, as a placeholder yes goblins are pretty standard, but so are elves humans and dwarves if you think of it since that's what the fortress and adventure modes are catered and leaning towards as a model. Dwarves are the protagonists and priority for central gameplay features, but put the shoe on the other foot like masterwork does with different mechanics and it essentially becomes a separate game but plays out similarly on a tangent of setting and occasionally features.

[Deboche]

Toady seems to want to stick to traditional folklore for the most part, and I support that as it helps to keep DF a little different. Orcs aren't traditional, they're modern. We should keep the Tolkien races (halfings and orcs) out of the game to keep it distinctive.

For the most part, all the critter in the game are hundreds of years old, or they're DF originals. "Gremlin" is the only exception I can think of: the "gremlin" is a mythological creature from 20th century aviator folklore, which was supposed to foul up the aircraft's machinery. It's kinda cool to have that be the only exception, since it's not a literary reference, it's a nod at one of the quirkier bits of common lore.

Yes but the LOTR legacy can't be denied. Elves, dwarves and goblins(same as orcs in LOTR) were never - to the best of my knowledge - depicted as civilized races who lived alongside and interacted with human civilizations.

As for the suggestion, I don't see much of a difference between existing goblins and the orcs that are suggested.

[Evans]

Is there a transcript of the talk?   

Right now its best left in player hands to determine the balance, as a placeholder yes goblins are pretty standard, but so are elves humans and dwarves if you think of it since that's what the fortress and adventure modes are catered and leaning towards as a model. Dwarves are the protagonists and priority for central gameplay features, but put the shoe on the other foot like masterwork does with different mechanics and it essentially becomes a separate game but plays out similarly on a tangent of setting and occasionally features.

You made a lot of strong points here.
I think that part of MDF success is that it takes verified and excellent formula (Vanilla DF) and adds to it all the missing/enriching elements, but does it so in such a way that leaves player in control of what they are playing (highly modular).

That should not however be an excuse for a vanilla lack of content - MDF is really not that popular among the players and I doubt most even tried it.
I know, bethesda successfully utilizes modders to finish their games, but they seem to have mastered that model of development.


Still, the way you suggested - take 4 basic races and curse/mutate them during a world gen does seem like a very solid and a very DF way to increase content


Also I am not an OP, please keep that in mind

On a side note, the first time I played DF was in adventure mode back in 2008.
There was hardly anything to do but to die fighting with boogeymen and to "regale" NPCs with tales of my adventures.
DF came a really long way since then.... still, a good question to ask is what it needs more - 50 new types of plants/rocks/fruit/wood every month or a single new race once in a decade?

[GoblinCookie]

Been there, done that. 

[Reelya]

you say canon, but i dont think you know what that means

Evans said "canon" but means "generic". Evans is arguing that if anything is generic enough, it needs to go in. "Canon" only makes sense in terms of a single franchise. If it's not in the franchise, it is by definition not canon, no matter how many other franchises use it. Evans also argues that because MDF has more stuff than DF, then that validates throwing literally everything we can think of plus the kitchen sink into DF. But "needs more stuff" => "add all the generic stuff" doesn't logically follow.

And when I said "folklore" it was clear. Tolkien concocted the notion of "orc" for his novels. Therefore it's a literary reference. "Folklore" is, very simply, "lore" of "folks": myths that spread word of mouth, rather than something one author wrote in a book. This distinction actually strengthens the inclusion of one of the very few modern creatures that DF has: the Gremlin. Gremlins come from modern folklore (lore made up by regular folks) rather than any specific literary source, like orcs and halflings.

While we're adding in literary references how about we add Superman and Batman? Why not? They'd add more variety and make the game distinct from other fantasy games. And they're just as traditional as orcs and halflings But I guess the counter-argument to superheroes is that they're "not canon". But "non canon" to what exactly? Not-canon to someone else's limited idea of what DF is "supposed" to be.

[Starver]

Direct DFTalk transcript quote about orcs, i.e. WoG:

I don't know if any of you have played Armok I, because we had a number of stock creatures, and I don't remember if orcs were one of them or if we called them goblins; I really don't remember. To me those terms are basically interchangeable; one is more Tolkien and one is much older.
[Interviewer] More general? [/Interviewer]
Yeah. Goblin is an old old word, and orc I think is an invention of Tolkien. So we just went with goblin for that reason, and because we didn't want to cleave ... even though the game obviously is related to Tolkien heavily we didn't want to cleave ourselves too closely with it in terms of terminology because we're always going to moving away from that stuff just because we're adding more and more things. I don't think of orcs as something that needs to be added with goblins; goblins can be thought of as orcs to the extent that that comparison makes sense.

(...I just happened to listen to this again, recently, so fresh in my mind to search for.)