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Author Topic: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets  (Read 3818 times)

FantasticDorf

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Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« on: December 14, 2018, 04:58:05 am »

Throughout real world human history people have determined to have inferred the otherworldly order of nature as a series of commands or set scripture of events, and with the new development log your dwarves with their beliefs may end up sharing these epiphanies too.

Location Occupation

While in world-generation temples of religious organisations can be built, any number of temples can be established in Fortress mode in order to cater to a large and varied population of dwarves, wherin finding dwarves with particularly strong religious beliefs, particular facets and skills allows you to staff the temple location with Prophets.

  • It seems methodical to simply assign your own prophets rather than let dwarves assert their own divine contact, but for a means of how the player themselves are interpreted as a force/driving force or irregular action, it seems appropriate to determine such a large dwarven life-choice
When fortress prophets are not doing any of the below subsections of activities, they are usually meditating to speaking to dwarves about their rhetoric inside the temple itself, much like a performer within a certain scope.

Missions

Prophets can be sent out into the world to convert others and form the basis of establishing your fortress as a holy city with enough support attracting pilgrim visitors, in which they will spend a amount of time there working spreading beliefs.

Set by mission 'details' this can become anything from a month, a year or even them leaving indefinitely to work for the rest of their lives, if you wanted to convert a goblin dark fortress by force this way to a sphere you think would be appropriate for them, like war and fortresses, displaced goblin outcasts and prisoners with relevant beliefs from this action would be more likely to integrate to your civilization than if they were atheist.

Conversion

Assigned prophets will seek out individuals with non dwarven religious values and make case arguements and preaching, if they aren't a skilled and persuasive speaker they will typically fail resulting in a disgruntled annoyed response, like a bad joke and the prophet cannot attempt to convert them or anybody they share a grudge with/opposing sphere belief for a long period of time on a cooldown.

Firebrand prophets particularly with aggressive or overbearing personalities will draw more heavily upon the intimidation tactic, a particularly fearsome prophet for instance can more quickly mass convert, while dispensing temporary bad thoughts about the action.

  • Animal people too can be converted, and prophets can be assigned to preach to them in cages placed within temple zones as they haven't yet found any principles for themselves as wild entities and over time they may be able to convince them to join your fortress anew, this is also good for general practice for even if you're wildly unsuccessful.
Hostile animal people such as underground tribals and all sorts of other entities like invaders would be significantly more difficult to convert from inside a cage, though doable with a lot of time, patience and highly skilled and socially tuned prophet workers.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2018, 07:26:00 pm by FantasticDorf »
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Batgirl1

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2018, 05:50:30 pm »

An intriguing idea, although I would propose that the way prophets are appointed should be more in line with strange moods. The idea behind prophecy is that an other-worldly force has chosen a mortal to speak through, so unless the dwarf is specifically a prophet unto the player hirself (a fine idea itself), it makes more sense to let the gods/spirits themselves be in charge of that decision. My $0.02.
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Starver

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2018, 06:43:33 pm »

Perhaps a ranked scale across various roles such as Prophets>Gurus>Prosthelytisers>Missionaries>Preachers>Leafleteers, actual members of the list (and order?) being open to discussion. Who or what their calling arises from, also.

As Spirit Of The Fortress, the player might go most of the way up that list, even if it takes a Mood to bring about the most hardcore version(s), perhaps a player-selected equivalent to the military structures, except for being preparation for the spiritual battles to come instead of the temporal ones.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2018, 07:18:01 pm »

Perhaps a ranked scale across various roles such as Prophets>Gurus>Prosthelytisers>Missionaries>Preachers>Leafleteers, actual members of the list (and order?) being open to discussion. Who or what their calling arises from, also.

You can already rename any Scholar/Performer/Mercenary profession manually using creature tags's profession name's even on occupation titles, if you wanted to make all dwarf scholars sages, or give a particular name to goblin rockstars jumping around with a big custom string instrument.

DWARF: [PROFESSION_NAME:PROPHET:missionary:missionaries]

ELF: [PROFESSION_NAME:PROPHET:druid:druids]

Actual ranks of don't seem to be suggested but a special tier of [RESPONSIBILITY:RELIGION] for positions will be using druids in the devlog so if your organisation grows large enough (contrary to how w.g networks will), may prompt the creation of a high priest. What benefits these would bring i dont know, but assumedly they'd have knowledge in all ecumenical matters.

An intriguing idea, although I would propose that the way prophets are appointed should be more in line with strange moods.

The one you assign can always be a fake, or just reciting religious rhetoric spun in a particular way through power of arguement to convince others.

If dwarves are suddenly actually struck by divine contact through the strange mood/instance esque while praying, they'd be useful tools, still just considerably more powerful because obviously in the context of the god, their prophecies are true and they would be able to sway people easily with not as much input, a true prophet would be required to crack the hardest and most aggressive conversion targets by likelyhood.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2018, 07:30:26 pm by FantasticDorf »
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Starver

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2018, 08:40:10 pm »

You can already rename any(...)
You made a suggestion for something that wasn't just arbitrary renaming, and to forestall some fairly obvious arguments I suggested something that was definitely not arbitrary renaming that I thought you might like and would meld well to satisfy your OP, and yet might satisfy the "yeah, but, I'd instead like something more like..." crowd, including the point suggested in first response. I almost said we could even reuse/piggy-back upon the military code, too (consider it as equivalent to a 'raid' or another military purpose such as patrolling on the look-out for adversaries to cow, except with 'clerical' units and (mostly!) argument instead of combat skills?) but seem to have stopped just short of that.

Obviously you misconstrued it, from your reply. Do instead ignore what I said, if you see no obvious use in it for you.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2018, 04:48:00 am »

Obviously you misconstrued it, from your reply. Do instead ignore what I said, if you see no obvious use in it for you.

Well ok then  ::) , I wasn't smitten with your counter suggestion phrased within the subject topic that much so i did deflate it to be polite, but not in a malignant way like the hostile and directed derail response suggests. Id still be willing to listen to any more feedback or additions from other people in the thread though, if they can play with other posters nicely. :)
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2018, 08:32:51 am »

This is pretty much a given eventually, however player prophets raises the question of given the player is themselves a god/spirit, perhaps we could use this function to add ourselves into the game as a god. 
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Batgirl1

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2018, 03:14:31 pm »

It would also be an interesting mechanic if (True) prophets could foretell major game events: Invasions, forgotten beasts, that sort of thing. Maybe it would be all cryptic-like, or maybe the skill of the prophet (or some other modifier) would affect how vague or explicit the prophecy is.

Ursist McAltarDwarf: "I sense bad things in the near future!"

Urist McInitiate: "Yea, when the trees turn to gold, the hour of wrath and fury shall befall us!"

Urist McPope: "Goblins will invade in the autumn."
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voliol

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #8 on: December 15, 2018, 05:47:54 pm »

It would also be an interesting mechanic if (True) prophets could foretell major game events: Invasions, forgotten beasts, that sort of thing. Maybe it would be all cryptic-like, or maybe the skill of the prophet (or some other modifier) would affect how vague or explicit the prophecy is.

Ursist McAltarDwarf: "I sense bad things in the near future!"

Urist McInitiate: "Yea, when the trees turn to gold, the hour of wrath and fury shall befall us!"

Urist McPope: "Goblins will invade in the autumn."

The problem would be goblin generals being forced to attack in the autumn then, just to comply with destiny. Becomes even trickier when your dwarves can set up death-cannons and magi-nuke the goblins from the surface of the realm, before the arrival of autumn. Or before that, if you send waves of war-trained cave dragons to the goblin capital.

Starver

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #9 on: December 15, 2018, 08:57:52 pm »

"If you build that lever that floods the surface with magma, then a great empire will fall."
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Batgirl1

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #10 on: December 15, 2018, 10:37:36 pm »


The problem would be goblin generals being forced to attack in the autumn then, just to comply with destiny.

I always thought the goblins attacked whenever the random-number-generator said they would.  Is that not correct?  Even so, it could still work for things that *are* rng-based, like possession and forgotten beasts, or even current events like "I sense a vampire among us".

Quote
Becomes even trickier when your dwarves can set up death-cannons and magi-nuke the goblins from the surface of the realm, before the arrival of autumn. Or before that, if you send waves of war-trained cave dragons to the goblin capital.

Now *that* might not necessarily be a problem, depending on which philosophy DF adopts regarding whether the future is fixed.  Does one meet their doom on the path they take to avoid it (e.g. Ragnarok, Appointment in Samarra, Every Greek Myth Ever) , or can prophecy specifically serve the purpose of helping to avoid or change a future outcome? (e.g., Jonah forewarning Nineveh of God's coming wrath). 
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KittyTac

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Re: Fortress temple location workers: Prophets
« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2018, 07:58:29 am »

Now *that* might not necessarily be a problem, depending on which philosophy DF adopts regarding whether the future is fixed.  Does one meet their doom on the path they take to avoid it (e.g. Ragnarok, Appointment in Samarra, Every Greek Myth Ever) , or can prophecy specifically serve the purpose of helping to avoid or change a future outcome? (e.g., Jonah forewarning Nineveh of God's coming wrath).
Yeah, this being RNG is confirmed in one of Toady's videos with the mythgen prototype. Could be interesting how Toady resolves fixed prophecies in some worlds and predetermined fates of the creatures. Maybe something will always go wrong, preventing you from killing the goblins before the arrival of their army? Say, the magic cannons suddenly jam, the cave dragons refuse to obey orders, et cetera.
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