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[LordBitter]

What if during World-Gen the different races are divided into further seperate (possibly generatated) races, like how Humans are divides into Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. Thoughts?

[Rubik]

I like every suggestion that involves adding more importance to genetics, as it's a very interesting thing for the game. Toady himself has talked about having half-castes into the game, formed by the species we already have, but has stated that everything involving genetics is a tough thing to implement
Apart from cultural and genetical variety, did you have any idea in mind about why did you want this implemented?

[Deboche]

I love this idea but can imagine it would be a nightmare to implement. Horse and dog breeds would be cool too and of course other pets and mounts.

[GhostDwemer]

But humans aren't divided into three races at all, genetically speaking. Just saying, race is a myth, scientifically there are no races, there's just humans. Or if you want to go by genetic differences, there's two races: the Khoisan and everyone else. Certainly, the 18th century imperialist categorizations of "Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid" are not only false categories, but very insulting to a lot of people. Just pointing that out so you don't go accidentally insulting someone.

"Ethnic groups" on the other hand, would be an interesting addition to the game, and I'm pretty sure that's what you meant. "Cultural groups" even more so, there's much more difference between, say, a dark skinned steppe horseman and a dark skinned  urbanite (of any era) than between two urban dwellers of any race.

[Rubik]

But humans aren't divided into three races at all, genetically speaking. Just saying, race is a myth, scientifically there are no races, there's just humans. Or if you want to go by genetic differences, there's two races: the Khoisan and everyone else. Certainly, the 18th century imperialist categorizations of "Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid" are not only false categories, but very insulting to a lot of people. Just pointing that out so you don't go accidentally insulting someone.

"Ethnic groups" on the other hand, would be an interesting addition to the game, and I'm pretty sure that's what you meant. "Cultural groups" even more so, there's much more difference between, say, a dark skinned steppe horseman and a dark skinned  urbanite (of any era) than between two urban dwellers of any race.

Eh, we understood him, even if his comment wasn't the most precise one. And nobody here would start giving racist slurs with no reason, this is a civilized forum
But yeah, you are right, clasifications like those are outdated, and we could better refer as to different etnicities instead of races
The game as it is kinda has this implemented on a small scale, seeing that you'll get very homogeneously looking people if you go to one civ, and very different ones if you go to another
But yeah, Everybody would want to have the tools in game to do satisfactory selective breeding to get the most powerful dogs, or the fastests horses, and so on
I wonder if we could achieve this merely with a 'stats' tab on the animal menu, or if a more complex menu should be created?
I think that a 'genetical experiments' tab would be really out of place in a game like this, at least until we get mages and more science/experiments

[LordBitter]

But humans aren't divided into three races at all, genetically speaking. Just saying, race is a myth, scientifically there are no races, there's just humans.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This can't be serious.

[FantasticDorf]

But humans aren't divided into three races at all, genetically speaking. Just saying, race is a myth, scientifically there are no races, there's just humans.

Sort of true, sort of not true (just hear me out). Historically there have been lots of alternative offshoots in the past (neanderthals, homo florensians etc) but such groups have been dead for thousands of years away from the snapshot of time we exist in. Everyone for example is a tiny bit neanderthal, and carries those genes with them to the present day. And even so, be it big or little changes, in every geographical place our genes share and differ similarities with overlapping heritages etc, you can actually trace and discriminate within our own genes to look for common ancestor groups without actually excavating bones because the proof lies within ourselves.

Modern humans are sort of a collage of our ancestry, further made distinct by where we live and who we mingle with for little or large impacts on our lives, south east asians for example have genetic based problems managing insulin, while native tibetans people have resistances to altitude sickness (which is theorised to be contributed from a seperate human group from modern humans *like neanderthals* living in the mountainous areas of Eurasia, to which without their contribution little to nobody would live in that area of the world now)

The game of DF even over the 1000 year span wouldn't be able to simulate 'evolution' or divergence of 1 species of dwarf slowly becoming another, but you can properly simulate the implications of diversity, in such scenarios as removing dwarves with a set number of traits (lets say brown hair and green eyes and cream skin, and a leaning consensus to be agile and kinesthetic but poor in focus and memory) and leaving them on a island in isolation to mind their own business, the mainland dwarves will end up looking mostly diverse or different but they are all dwarves all the same.

[Rubik]

But humans aren't divided into three races at all, genetically speaking. Just saying, race is a myth, scientifically there are no races, there's just humans.

Sort of true, sort of not true (just hear me out). Historically there have been lots of alternative offshoots in the past (neanderthals, homo florensians etc) but such groups have been dead for thousands of years away from the snapshot of time we exist in. Everyone for example is a tiny bit neanderthal, and carries those genes with them to the present day. And even so, be it big or little changes, in every geographical place our genes share and differ similarities with overlapping heritages etc, you can actually trace and discriminate within our own genes to look for common ancestor groups without actually excavating bones because the proof lies within ourselves.

Modern humans are sort of a collage of our ancestry, further made distinct by where we live and who we mingle with for little or large impacts on our lives, south east asians for example have genetic based problems managing insulin, while native tibetans people have resistances to altitude sickness (which is theorised to be contributed from a seperate human group from modern humans *like neanderthals* living in the mountainous areas of Eurasia, to which without their contribution little to nobody would live in that area of the world now)

The game of DF even over the 1000 year span wouldn't be able to simulate 'evolution' or divergence of 1 species of dwarf slowly becoming another, but you can properly simulate the implications of diversity, in such scenarios as removing dwarves with a set number of traits (lets say brown hair and green eyes and cream skin, and a leaning consensus to be agile and kinesthetic but poor in focus and memory) and leaving them on a island in isolation to mind their own business, the mainland dwarves will end up looking mostly diverse or different but they are all dwarves all the same.

Not gonna lie, the idea of allowing living things to have the chance of suffering mutations each generation excites me deeply
Even if it's not a mechanic that the player can experience that much, it's still incredible
Regarding more tangible weaknesses like the insulin thing , or the fact that half the world is lactose intolerant, for example, would be also really interesting to implement
Just Imagine two races colliding for the first time in history, they have no relationship or diplomacy at all, but first contacts include sending batches of alcoholic beverages as gifts. But ah, the race the drinks are being given to is basically alergic to alcohol. Races ensureuntil one group is devastated
I dont know, sounds plausible, right?

[FantasticDorf]

Just Imagine two races colliding for the first time in history, they have no relationship or diplomacy at all, but first contacts include sending batches of alcoholic beverages as gifts. But ah, the race the drinks are being given to is basically alergic to alcohol. Races ensureuntil one group is devastated
I dont know, sounds plausible, right?

Literal races in DF is quite a abstract thing to the real world and very-much exaggerated, the real world human approach to things like that WOULD be to give gifts (with the mindset of alcohol being a precious but not TOO precious a gift to give) would be culturally acceptable. People in DF like qualities of things, so if you meet a elf for the first time, you immediately have to do a fact-check of the actual creature itself then look at its cultural values to try and formulate some kind of middle ground response.

1. Im sure this person is not a dwarf, they are too tall and move fast
2. They have such pointy ears and unblemished skin, they've never worked a hard day in their lives covered in soot and rock-dust
3. Has weapons and clothes made entirely out of wood, totally deranged.
4. has a pouch full of fruit, perhaps a few barrels of cider in a proper stone pot might tide them over
5. Oh jeez oh no did they just pull out a hand from their food pouch and start eating it? Ew no, this thing and all of its kind should be put to the axe!

Two dwarf societies, or even abstract and isolated members of the same governmental society over progressive years of being apart will inevitably identify each other as dwarves even if (and in game logic terms also) even with mutations, aesthetic, minor or (not too big) but major.

Not gonna lie, the idea of allowing living things to have the chance of suffering mutations each generation excites me deeply
Even if it's not a mechanic that the player can experience that much, it's still incredible
Regarding more tangible weaknesses like the insulin thing , or the fact that half the world is lactose intolerant, for example, would be also really interesting to implement

Going that far isn't really nessecary for putting in 'random mutations' at birth, but if there were pre-determined groups in the world with traits both positive and negative that are somewhat inherited (such as lactose intolerance causing them to viciously vomit after eating cheese, even when forced to because of starvation/hard times) as well as a small chance for your nullspace generated void starting embark dwarves to introduce these traits later on it could be interesting.

Thats without going into interbreeding between people and dwarves for half dwarves and the problems that come with that such as inherited liver issues with a dwarf's body craving alcohol but a human's liver being unable to handle the demand shipping them off to early grave with high degrees of alcoholism.

[Rubik]

Yeah, I agree with everything you said
I was just making a reference to native americans, and how they basically dissapeared
As for the last part, I have wondered for some time how do the genetic info for all dwarves and the other races gets selected in worldgen.
Is it completely random? Will we ever be able to add certain genetical factors?

[Baffler]

There already are races, sort of, in that creatures of the same type from different civs have different weights on different descriptors, and those descriptors can be inherited. Dwarves from the Tool of Deification might be distinguished by large noses, taupe skin, and close set eyes, while dwarves from the Spear of Trade are marked by fused earlobes, chestnut skin, and blonde hair.

[Nopenope]

But humans aren't divided into three races at all, genetically speaking. Just saying, race is a myth, scientifically there are no races, there's just humans.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This can't be serious.

Just because 4chan is closing down doesn't mean you should take its rhetoric and memes here.

Races, economics, gender roles, and so on: it seems that every week or so someone starts a thread about how some of the game's aspects don't match their worldview and then people go on about whether this worldview is universal or natural or whatever and it goes on for pages because someone read on wikipedia that some tribe somewhere doesn't do things as expected from that worldview so clearly it means that worldview is wrong except that someone pulled a psych study from some journal that says the contrary and so on...

It's just a game, people. Yeah I get you want it to be realistic (i.e. to match best what you think is real life) but if a suggestion is likely to spark controversies about silly topics like the existence and scientific validity of human races or whether gender roles or economic systems are "hardwired into brains" (as tech-savvy people who know nothing about how brains work often like to say) and all these lovely discussions that a certain demographic of the internet who may overlap with the aforementioned, soon-to-close-down place delights to take part in, you can be sure as hell that Toady isn't going to touch it with a ten foot pole. So yeah, expecting him to implement 19th century style human classification in his fantasy game is nothing short of preposterous, and on par with the implementation of hardcoded sexism, or homophobia, or rape, or excrement (these are legitimate suggestion threads I read lately, which makes me wonder what these people are actually believing about Toady).

Once it's established that none of this is going to happen, any further discussion about the aforementioned topics (whether the points being made are valid or not; that's beside the point) is basically just debating for the sake of debating, and has little to do on a game suggestion forum.

As for genetics themselves, they're already in, sort of. Given how the effects are mostly cosmetic, I think a detailed system would be probably superfluous, except if you wanted freaky things like X-men style mutations to happen, but what would be the point when you already have perfectly serviceable magic to implement and take care of the freaky stuff?

[Deboche]

sexism, or homophobia, or rape, or excrement

Why would you group those 4 things together? The first 3 are clearly on a group of their own while the 4th is actually quite relevant if you're trying to create a simulation of a society. It would be a huge issue and interesting logistic challenge to tackle if you actually tried to dig a fortress into a mountain to live in.

And when it comes to race, why pretend it doesn't exist and keep it out of the game? As long as there's no racial discrimination, that is. If this game had more elaborate graphics than what they currently are, would you be adverse to having races?

[Nopenope]

Why would you group these 4 things together?

Because they are all not going to happen for a variety of reasons ranging from "adds little enjoyable gameplay" to "gross" to "gives a weird image about a game that mainly relies on donations to survive". It's really a cost benefit thing.

And when it comes to race, why pretend it doesn't exist and keep it out of the game?

That's beside the point. The question is why spend time and effort on something that's controversial with arguably little added gameplay value (especially when legitimate, biologically distinct fantasy races are already a thing) when that could be spent doing other things. Note that I'm not trying to influence Toady but merely trying to describe what could possibly be going on inside the head of a developer when prompted with the suggestion of adding "negroids" to their game. It could be that I'm completely wrong and Toady may very well release a "race realist" patch tomorrow, but somehow I doubt it.

[FantasticDorf]

Dwarves from the Tool of Deification might be distinguished by large noses, taupe skin, and close set eyes, while dwarves from the Spear of Trade are marked by fused earlobes, chestnut skin, and blonde hair.

Yeah i was trying to drive towards your own example that you gracefully describe, but the OP steers more towards making those differences actually meaninful (though aesthetic shouldn't be a major thing, there's species xenophobia/philia and then there's straight up discrimination which i feel would be a controversial mistake to add and a slippery slope personally to making the game obtuse in a way that doesn't benefit it.

Certain amount of trolling going on in this thread since the start with such controversy being thrown around.