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[GoblinCookie]

In order to allow us to play as existing historical characters, we need to consider the potential for abuse by the player in which having brought himself to ruin in one game, he can just retire and take over the historical character that leads the force threatening them and deliberately lead them to ruin before returning to his original perspective. 

I propose as a solution a system by which all positions in the civilization are given a particular score according to their relative importance, written along the lines of 10/100/1000/10000.  If the player rises to that position, then their score is increased to that level provided it is lower than the player's existing score.  The score however is per site government or per civilization and allows you to assume the role of any historical character whose position is scored equal to or less than the players score WITH the relevant entity.

The score is refunded if the player retires the character alive, or the character dies in a manner unavoidable to the player like old age.  If the player's character manages to get killed in a violent manner then the player loses the equivilant score as that character is worth.  So a king is worth 10000 and the player's score with that civilization is 20000 and the player has the king throw himself off a cliff then the player can play as the next king of their civilization, since he would then have 10000 points.  If he kills off that king however then he is back to the bottom of the heap, playing as an adventurer along the lines we have at present.

Fortress mode converts into adventure mode terms because the highest ranking position in your fortress turns into a score with your own site government/civilization government once you retire.  That would mean that if you played all the way until you were the capital, the highest position would be able to play as the mayor *of* your site or you could play as the king of your civilization.  Equally you could play as any of the nobles in your civilization but not the mayors of any other site.

[KittyTac]

Good idea. But can we add a switch in the settings to disable this if someone wants to bring ruin to the world without repercussions? Like, in the advanced worldgen settings. That way, everyone is satisfied, both those who want to mess around and those who want to play fairly. If you want a points system, just disable that setting.

Either way, GoblinCookie, I am soon going on a train, and the response to your counterargument (if any) will be likely written tomorrow.

[Manveru Taurënér]

There's loads on the subject throughout the dftalks, quoting the major bits in case it's helpful to anyone ^^

Rainseeker:   So we've talked about, in the past, inserting ourselves into a current, live legend person that you'll see in legends mode. I think it'd be really fun if we could, when generating our adventurer, choose from some people that are interesting and have interesting lives, and they've suddenly decided to become an adventurer.
Toady:   I think the limiting factor there really, the only big limiting factor there, is that the most interesting people have the mechanics that are farther away. If you were like 'I want to be the lord of the castle' or whatever, then you become a much less interesting lord of the castle in a lot of ways than the lord of the castle was before you took them over because you can't really order people to do anything or give people quests or anything like that. But I think with the coming caravan stuff there's actually some good opportunities there because we'll have these merchants moving around and they're not going to be any more complicated than you'd be if you were doing the same thing. In addition they don't really have any bizarre skills or any kind of situation that couldn't be handled in the regular character generation so they're not really out of bounds in that way either. It's just like there's a normal guy who has some property and is moving things around, but if you found that you wanted to have that person's life there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do that, I think. It'd certainly be something that would be qualified by a world generation option I think, so you could be like 'you can do this in the world', or not, because people might be tempted to take over all the competition and jump in the river and then start playing. There's nothing wrong with that, but people have mentioned in the past that if you can set it up in advance that you don't have that temptation then as you play you know that you have to compete on fair terms. I think that's a reasonable thing and there's really no difficulty in setting that up. I think we might start getting someone that's interesting to pick ... As it is now you'd be able to pick a nameless soldier in a castle, which is more or less pointless because you kind of start as that to begin with, or you can pick a peasant in a cottage, which you could also do if you started with nothing; if you didn't assign your skill points then you could be that person. But the merchants are interesting because they have some assets, they have an interesting situation, they have a gig that they're running, but it's nothing that you couldn't already attain. So it'd be a sort of starting point if you wanted to do that. Of course I don't have a guarantee or a timetable on this because we have a lot to do, but this is the kind of time when we're starting to see some interesting things. We should start seeing that some more when we get, like, bandit leaders, like if you have a group of bandits that has a leader then the second you can order bandits to do things, or order your little hirelings to do things - which is not that far off - that would be another good starting situation. One other thing that goes with all of this is if you're starting as a pre-existing historical figure ... One of the main reasons you're doing that is because they have interesting things in their pasts, and also maybe even more importantly they have connections with people, because when you start as an adventurer that you just make out of the blue you have a connection, being a citizen of that site, but you don't actually have parents or anything like that. So being able to take over a pre-existing person has that kind of appeal to it, but one of the issues is that you'd want that to matter. It would introduce being able to talk to your own father, which you can't currently do, and once you have that ability you'd like to be able to respect that to some degree.
Rainseeker:   Right. 'Hey dad! Come with me and kill this dragon!' (implied paternal death) 'Dad! Nooooo! Dad! Oh no, dad! What have I done?' Anyway, that's going to happen.
Toady:   Yeah, then he could just tan your hide when you do something stupid. It's interesting and it opens up that whole thing about whether or not we're even going to be capable of reproducing that scenario without that. If you wanted to make an adventurer that isn't a pre-existing historical figure but give them a history and weave them into the world, that's a lot trickier than just finding a person that's good enough, and if we have a lot of interesting people in the world maybe it's good enough. It would be kind of like one of those JRPGs where you pick among the four different people starting out, 'I want to be this guy, the orphan boy with the wooden sword' or 'I want to be the magic girl' or whatever. You have choices, so I guess it would be like that, except they'd be different every time so you wouldn't burn out so much.
Rainseeker:   That would be kind of neat.
Toady:   I think it's an admirable way to have an adventurer start, as long as you can do the other stuff.

Rainseeker:   Would you be able to choose like a hill dwarf, when you're in adventure mode, and you're generating, a hill dwarf or a regular dwarf or deep dwarf.
Toady:   Yeah, you get to choose, right now, it's as before you choose the civilization you're from, and then it'll kind of settle you with the hill dwarfdom or deep dwarfdom, or fortress dwarfdom at its whim. We'll have to change the ... when you have more generation options in general, you'll have that kind of decision, so yeah, people have been asking quite a bit lately ... when is it time to allow you to just take over a historical figure as an adventurer instead of generating one, for instance? And the main problems with that all still remain because we don't have any kind of administration for powerful figures and so on, so if you took over even a manager or bookkeeper you wouldn't have anything to do with being a manager or bookkeeper, so it makes it kind of strange. But that's almost a trivial concern in the grand scheme of things, I mean if you want to take over the queen, and then it's just like, it's time for the queen to become an adventurer or whatever, and she just walks out of the throne room and goes off and has an adventure, then I mean that was her decision.
Rainseeker:   Well she could probably command the armies, you know.
Toady:   That's the thing, we're not even there yet, right?
Rainseeker:   Right.
Toady:   We don't have army command, so if you choose to take over the control of the dwarves, then you're just kind of malinger and ...
Capntastic:   Single handedly go and start wars, on your own.
Toady:   That's about all you can do, you can cause trouble.
Capntastic:   But you role play! You say I'm going to inspire the troops.
Toady:   Exactly.
Capntastic:   I'm going into this cave and kill everything.
Toady:   So in that case there are other concerns but not large ones in terms of just taking people over. There is kind of the ... it's sort of interesting, it's like legends mode, right, if you make a gigantic world, let it run for a while then you're sometimes running ... I forgot what the cap is ... I think it's like fifteen thousand, twenty thousand historical figures, that's kind of just a sheer logistics problem in terms of starting your game. You're like 'I want to be ... an adventurer' and it's like 'Okay, do you want to start in one of these civilizations? Do you want to start as a pre-existing historical figure?' And you're like 'Oh, I'll start as a pre-existing historical figure' and then it's like 'Okay! You have twenty thousand choices' and I guess you'll whittle it down initially by civilization or race concerns and then you'd still be looking at a list of, you know, fifteen hundred people or something.
Capntastic:   They could look at professions, possibly.
Toady:   That's right, and interests, hobbies ...
Rainseeker:   Or it's sort of situation, like, if there's someone that's currently in prison, yeah, you could be this prisoner and then it would set up a chance for you to escape ... or not.
Toady:   Yeah, that may be the most common thing at first, because until we get to these larger scale civilization concerns, the people you'd want to look for are ordinary people with interesting lives, like I said before. You want to find people ... maybe somebody whose town is about to be invaded or like you were saying a criminal of some kind, we've got a shortage of criminals but you could be a bandit, I guess. The bandits are the criminals of the game right now, and we've got those people living in the sewers, so you could start as a sewer criminal if you want to be with one of those sewer criminals
Rainseeker:   Or possibly you could be someone who's had their spouse kidnapped by a night creature.
Toady:   Yeah, the child of someone who has been kidnapped by a night creature, and it's like, you have 15 days to finish your mission before your mom gets turned into a spouse of the night troll or whatever. Yeah, then you'd be on some kind of horrible matricide mission, so, you'd want to succeed. These are the wonderful little interesting things that will come out of that selection. So the main thing pushing back against that is, the people who ... there's going to be an awful lot of people who are just like 'I want to play the demon king of the goblins or whatever' and it's like 'Alright!' There you are, in your giant palace in the middle of this hell-hole, and you can't do anything. I guess you could talk to the goblins and they'd be like 'Hey, what's up' and you could ask them about their family or join you on your adventures, and they'd be like 'Oh, I'd rather not'. People don't have any appreciation of your importance, with regard to your civilization position because it assumes you don't hold a civilization position. But yeah, in the spirit of sandboxiness, you could just let it all ride or whatever. There is a concern that some other people have raised that you have a large temptation to just cheat when you're in that position. Like if you had a dwarf fortress that you just retired, temporarily retired, because you can unretire them, so you temporarily retire your dwarf fortress and your kind of in this desperate war with the goblins and then you start an adventurer, and you're like 'I want to play the demon" and then you just go jump off a bridge or something and then go back and unretire your fortress and you're like 'well, problem solved!' That would be a kind of thing, we were leaning toward a world generation setting on that, you're like 'In this world, I don't want to be able to do cheap crap like that'. So you'd only be able to play regular historical figures or something like that. Like unpositioned historical figures or people you had played before..
Capntastic:   Make it so that anytime you abandon something, a month passes, like a time limit like that or something so you can't just say 'Oh, guess I'm losing ... better morph into something else.'
Toady:   Yeah, it becomes complicated, of course, because there are times when you'd want to definitely not let time pass or whatever. Although now we've completely dodged that question, we need ... not dodged, we just haven't handled it because it still does that thing where it advances you to the next year when you unretire your fortress, but it doesn't repair the world's army situation, a lot of that stuff. So it's just not ... yeah we're not all the way there yet.

Posted these parts in the last thread, but might as well repost for those that didn't see it.

Rainseeker:   I have another question from DG that I liked: 'Do you have plans to allow the first seven dwarves to be chosen from a larger pool of dwarves which are actual world gen members, like your chosen civilization?'
Toady:   That was going to be an option at some point. Like we've been saying with this whole populations issue; the populations just aren't big enough, in a way, to make that ultra-satisfying. So there were going to be those fake population pools and then you could pull your dwarves out of the fake population pool and then maybe have some more customisation with them and so on. And it also depends on the fate of this whole Oregon Trail style mode where you're actually doing the trapping as well; [it] has a lot to do with that. Because if you were restricting yourself to specific world generation dwarves you'd also want them all to come from the same site or you'd have to write a back story for how one moved to a different site and came to leave from that one location, or are they all just meeting up at the destination and one of them brought the wagon and the others walked. So there's a lot of issues there but we'd like to at least tie it in more closely with the given civilization that you're starting from, or if you want to choose an option that's like 'play now' from adventure mode then you'd be not linked to a civilization and just coming in just as generated dwarves from the edge of the map. But in that case you'd have no ties which would be kind of weird for the caravans and stuff, so it's generally good to be from somewhere, but whether or not that's going to be world generation dwarves is going to depend on these fake populations; how well they work and then what restrictions there are on picking their dwarves. If you pick seven dwarves that happen to be important to a different city then that's going to be really weird. Like the mayor and half the guard of the town just decide to pick up [because] they were getting tired of this giant attacking the town all the time, so the mayor and all the guards left to go found a new fortress and then a week later the giant destroys the city. That would be the kind of thing ... Of course that'd kind of a funny story, so I think there's something to be said for allowing that, like allowing you to make the mayor go wanderlust crazy and decide to found a new fortress for fun. And the same thing goes for adventure mode, like starting as a guy - being able to assume control of any character in the universe - is something that's reasonable, especially if you've got the parameters set for it. It's one of those things where you'd want to set up parameters so you wouldn't be tempted. It's like 'allow control of any historical figure as an adventurer: yes', because if you put yes there if you're losing a war or something then you might be like 'well I want to play the enemy's general as my next adventurer' and then you could just go jump into a canyon or something. So to remove that kind of temptation ... There are a lot of people, more people than I expected so it kind of surprised me, on various aspects of the game have said 'Well I really want this to be an option that I have to set in advance so that I don't feel tempted to spoil things.' So having that as a world generation parameter works the best for that, but that'd be cool as well, just being able to play whoever you wanted. It goes in with those post version one arcs about being able to play a dragon, you know that kind of thing. So you could just assume control of a megabeast that already exists in the world and so on.

Rainseeker:   So we're still not at a place yet where we can take over historical figures, right?
Toady:   Yeah, that's correct. We're not at a place where we can do that. I mean, there's nothing stopping it, right? Because when you unretire an adventurer you're just taking control of a historical figure. So there's nothing technical about stopping it. There are just conceptual problems about, what happens when you take over the king of this or the king of that. It's just silly, I guess, 'cause they don't recognize your authority or anything. So it's kind of goofy that you can do that. But, yeah. It's one of those things where - I mean, I'm sure we've talked about this in the past, where it's like there's paying somewhat service to that. There's doing some kind of worldgen parameter where you can set it that it can't be done, so you don't feel tempted to sort of spoil your game by making all the bad things in the world jump off cliffs and then go hit play, or whatever. So there's some small concerns and missing swathes of content, but there aren't huge barriers to doing that.
Rainseeker:   I suppose an easy way out would be to suddenly, if you're the king, have your advisors declare that you're possessed and that you're no longer acting like the king and you are now dethroned, so you could leave and people would recognize you as the former king of such-and-such.
Toady:   I guess it would be one of those things where there's also, even if you choose to take control of a peasant there'd also have to be a thing where it's like, 'And your family doesn't recognize you and they think of you as a stranger now,' or something because you'd be possessed, because you would talk to them like strangers or whatever. Or not strangers, 'cause the people in your starting town, at least, know your name and know who you are and they greet you a little differently already, but they wouldn't recognize you as a family member, because the traditional adventurers don't have family members so I didn't have a reason to put that in. So, it stacks up, and it becomes a non-priority item until we add something, you know? Something that makes it matter, 'cause what is the point of taking over a historical figure, if all of the historical things about it don't matter yet?

Threetoe:   The next question is from Baffle Jack and he asked "If the two main modes are heading in a similar direction, will they be combined so that you have the option to skip to where you're the leader of the fort or will a line be drawn between the modes or what?"
Toady:   So it's one of those things, again, that we've been thinking about for years... lots of suggestions... The original game has this idea of being able to have your reclaim party be formed during adventure mode and that kind of thing. And that's all still on the table. The tricky parts are kind of, we don't have any real framework for adventure mode administration yet. You can take over sites in adventure mode now, at least the human ones you can form your own little entity and become the leader of a site. But it doesn't really mean anything. And when you're in fort mode, we didn't want to allow kind of cheap stuff that would allow you to take a dwarf and jump him off a cliff if they're being annoying, by controlling them directly. We want to kind of respect their autonomy.
And we've continued to think of ways that we could merge them together. We were talking the other day about having... when you abandon your fortress, being able to control some of the dwarves that leave by being one of them as an adventurer with the other ones following you. That kind of thing. But we haven't really decided which ways we're going to go with. We do hope to have these different merges and connections with the modes, though.

[KittyTac]

I guess that ends the argument before it started. It's planned, just pretty far away. There is no need to think that it shouldn't exist. A per-world setting, just what I wanted.

[Manveru Taurënér]

I guess that ends the argument before it started. It's planned, just pretty far away. There is no need to think that it shouldn't exist. A per-world setting, just what I wanted.

The suggestion was more along the line of how to do it rather than just for it to be done I believe. So while Toady and Threetoe obviously have some plans on the matter already there's surely still details to iron out. That is, there are a lot more options to handle it other than just on/off.

[KittyTac]

Maybe there could be multiple settings for the points system?

[GoblinCookie]

Good idea. But can we add a switch in the settings to disable this if someone wants to bring ruin to the world without repercussions? Like, in the advanced worldgen settings. That way, everyone is satisfied, both those who want to mess around and those who want to play fairly. If you want a points system, just disable that setting.

Either way, GoblinCookie, I am soon going on a train, and the response to your counterargument (if any) will be likely written tomorrow.

We don't need the switch.  The fact it is all raws based, means you can just mod all entities positions point requirements to be 0.  That has the advantage that you cannot modify entity raws for actual entities, so you only get to cheat if that is what you deliberately set up to start with.

I guess that ends the argument before it started. It's planned, just pretty far away. There is no need to think that it shouldn't exist. A per-world setting, just what I wanted.

Let's see if any of you can spot the major flaw with my idea, before I edit it in a solution for it in tomorrow.   

There's loads on the subject throughout the dftalks, quoting the major bits in case it's helpful to anyone ^^

  You are being very helpful Manveru. 

[GoblinCookie]

The major flaw is this: I did not consider the pricing of heirs to positions.

As my OP stands, at the moment a prince that stands to inherit the throne will likely cost nothing to play.  However if he arranges for his dad to have an 'accident' then the throne will be his, not only will the player now be able to cause problems for the civ they don't like but they also get 10000 extra points they did not have before since they rose to a higher position.  They can cause a ton of trouble for the civilization they rule and the play can simply retire as soon as their civilization takes revenge on them, meaning he can store those points indefinitely to create mayhem in future. 

[KittyTac]

The major flaw is this: I did not consider the pricing of heirs to positions.

As my OP stands, at the moment a prince that stands to inherit the throne will likely cost nothing to play.  However if he arranges for his dad to have an 'accident' then the throne will be his, not only will the player now be able to cause problems for the civ they don't like but they also get 10000 extra points they did not have before since they rose to a higher position.  They can cause a ton of trouble for the civilization they rule and the play can simply retire as soon as their civilization takes revenge on them, meaning he can store those points indefinitely to create mayhem in future.

What about placing a cost on any member of the royal family? Maybe half of the cost of playing the king.

[IndigoFenix]

I was thinking something similar, but instead of being tied to noble positions it is tied to how loyal another character is to you (where "loyalty" works in the sense of both subjects of a ruler and close friends or partners).  The system could use the currently unused "worship" variable when relating to mortal relationships.

In practice this would be similar to your suggestion, while also solving the issue of "pricing": it's not the rank that's important, but how the historical figure in question sees that rank.  If you're playing a newly ascended king, you can't switch to a member of a group who opposes your rule (depending on how strict you wany to be, maybe only those who actively support your rule would be playable) .  You need to put in some investment before you can take command of any random civ member.

Also, even without playing as a noble, this would allow you to switch to any of your long time adventuring partners, or anyone who respects you enough to follow your commands or fight for your cause.

[Egan_BW]

I don't see why there's any need to add some sort of metagame that can prevent you from playing as whoever you like. "The player" is not an in-universe entity, and doesn't owe allegiance to any of the people or nations in-game. If you want to go roleplay as the demon in charge of the goblin tower that's been raiding your fortress, well, go ahead?

[KittyTac]

I don't see why there's any need to add some sort of metagame that can prevent you from playing as whoever you like. "The player" is not an in-universe entity, and doesn't owe allegiance to any of the people or nations in-game. If you want to go roleplay as the demon in charge of the goblin tower that's been raiding your fortress, well, go ahead?

GC's counterargument is that it would make you able to make said demon jump off a cliff. We agreed to make it moddable so people who want to do stuff like that can do whatever. That way everyone's satisfied.

[GoblinCookie]

What about placing a cost on any member of the royal family? Maybe half of the cost of playing the king.

Here is where the idea gets complicated.  Not only can you set up positions that are hereditary, you can also set up positions that are succeeded by other positions, potentially one's that exist at a site-level rather than at a government level. 

I don't see why there's any need to add some sort of metagame that can prevent you from playing as whoever you like. "The player" is not an in-universe entity, and doesn't owe allegiance to any of the people or nations in-game. If you want to go roleplay as the demon in charge of the goblin tower that's been raiding your fortress, well, go ahead?

The whole point of this idea is indeed that the player is not a major in-game entity.  Having the player's ability to play as whoever they like directly violates this, the determining factor of the plot is now simply whoever the player decides to take over today, not only is the player *in themselves* part of the plot, but they are the main determinant of it.  In any case, you can easily mod all positions to cost nothing at all, so effectively switching this off. 

I was thinking something similar, but instead of being tied to noble positions it is tied to how loyal another character is to you (where "loyalty" works in the sense of both subjects of a ruler and close friends or partners).  The system could use the currently unused "worship" variable when relating to mortal relationships.

In practice this would be similar to your suggestion, while also solving the issue of "pricing": it's not the rank that's important, but how the historical figure in question sees that rank.  If you're playing a newly ascended king, you can't switch to a member of a group who opposes your rule (depending on how strict you wany to be, maybe only those who actively support your rule would be playable) .  You need to put in some investment before you can take command of any random civ member.

Also, even without playing as a noble, this would allow you to switch to any of your long time adventuring partners, or anyone who respects you enough to follow your commands or fight for your cause.

Your idea and mine are quite complimentary.  But if your aim is simply to create chaos, then you hardly care if your character comes to a sticky end as a result, because you were only temporarily assuming their perspective anyway in order to likely get you out of the consequences of your main characters foolish decisions.

[MrWiggles]

I dont see the concern for this. If someone wants to cheat as they play solitaire then who cares. Conversly, if someone wants to cut up their cards as they play solitaire, then who cares.  They can get nother pack of cards.

[GoblinCookie]

I dont see the concern for this. If someone wants to cheat as they play solitaire then who cares. Conversly, if someone wants to cut up their cards as they play solitaire, then who cares.  They can get nother pack of cards.

The problem is temptation.