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[PhoenixEggz]

If you don't want to be able to breed magical creatures like griffons and chimeras and such naturally, simply make slightly-edited raws that create magical/blessed/something variations of said animals that are untamable. These creatures could even be modded to not appear at all in normal games but still exist, but that's not as interesting.

[GreatWyrmGold]

If you don't want to be able to breed magical creatures like griffons and chimeras and such naturally, simply make slightly-edited raws that create magical/blessed/something variations of said animals that are untamable. These creatures could even be modded to not appear at all in normal games but still exist, but that's not as interesting.

I'd rather there be tighter controls. Maybe magical hybrids can only be created from a few choice creatures in the raws, barring some rare worldgen events* or something.

*About as rare as divine curses, say.

[PhoenixEggz]

Making spawning dependent on events would make lots of coding and be useless. The extreme ratios would be better suited for the task.

[SirHoneyBadger]

The occasional basilisk, cockatrice, chimera, etc. popping up here and there would be interesting, and in real-world myth, the presence of such creatures often functioned as, or were a sign of, "divine curses", so GreatWyrmGold's idea could incorporate quite well.

Having such a rare mule as a zoo specimen or guardian-beast would also help a bit with Fortress individuality, which is always nice. Having them be sterile, and thus not allowing a potential breeding program to occur, would also give us room to make these creatures fairly powerful, without breaking the game.

Ofcourse, according to legend the first two critters I've listed could, technically, be manufactured--albeit at great difficulty and cost--by alchemical processes (there's even exact formulae for them), but the components are just as rare, as in: Start with the egg of a rooster, get a toad to hatch it on a dung-hill, and proceed from there. And, as dung is currently a sensitive issue in the game and doesn't really exist, I'd add a stipulation that the dung in question be something exotic, like the fewmets of dragons, or some such.

Some mix-and-match creatures, such as griffons, cabbits, or owlbears, wouldn't occur naturally, but might be bred magically, and it might even be possible to get them to spawn, with atleast a very small chance of success--if only because of their potential usefulness, Rule-of-Fun, and the necessity to breed the griffon itself with a horse, in order to produce a hippogriff. Other, more bizarre/less desireable "chimeric" creatures, such as hippogriffs, hippocampi, hippalectryons, skvaders, ophiotauri, and perytons, might be magically bred, specifically as exotica for zoos and menageries, and with great difficulty, but would be very unlikely to themselves breed true, or at all. And some might be "born" from an alchemist's lab, or a thaumaturge's cauldron, for use as a living tool or weapon (golems, homonculi, the aforementioned basilisk and cockatrice, chimeras themselves and the like)

Still others, such as centaurs, wolpertingers, and enfields, might need to be brought wholely into the world by magic, and could be produced only by powerful creative magic. There's just a ton of degrees and options and paths to choose from. I think it's important to be mindful of game balance, though, when considering interspecies breeding, because it could pretty easily break the game, if it got too out of hand (as such creatures so often do!).

By the by, as a semi-related but admittedly off-topic aside: science (paleontology mainly) has thus far proven the existence of what are very reasonable, and very real, potential sources for the following mythological beings: dragons (Pissarrachampsa sera, a long-legged crocodile), sea-dragons (Predator X/pliosaurus), "sea serpents" (oarfish), humanoid giants and ogres (gigantopithecus blacki, and it's first cousins, G. bilaspurensis, and G. giganteus), humanoid dwarfs (homo floresiensis), cyclopes (there's a rare genetic deformity referred to as "cyclopia"), rocs (Haast's eagle), krakens (colossal squid, which live in areas Vikings ventured into, and which could arguably have quite easily made hash of a small, primitive, boat, and which is still alive and well, by the way), zombies (by way of tetrodotoxin), and unicorns (Rhinoceros tichorhinus).  Hydras, although rare, still very arguably exist today, in the form of two-headed snakes (and tortoises, for that matter), and even a two-headed crocodile, a taxidermied example of which resides in the Georgia state capitol, and there's even a extant fossil example from 122 million years ago, of hyphalosaurus, a specifically long-necked freshwater reptile with this condition. Werewolves and vampires ofcourse exist today, as clinical therianthropes and victims of porphyria, and whoever designed and built the Antikythera mechanism must have been scarily close to a wizard--the best guess is Archimedes, the Nicola Tesla of antiquity (they were both engaged in developing computer programs, long before physical computers as we think of them ever existed, both were utterly fascinated with spheres, and both are claimed to have created a death-ray, for example), and indeed even today he's still viewed as something of a traditional sorceror/boogeyman figure in Rhodes.

[Ωmega]

Best make hybrids sterile.

or make the chances of getting a hybrid very low that only decreases with each generation. that way we can still get some more interesting breads but without getting out of hand.

[Draco18s]

Best make hybrids sterile.

or make the chances of getting a hybrid very low that only decreases with each generation. that way we can still get some more interesting breads but without getting out of hand.

Two things:
1) quoted post is 4+ years old
2) not all hybrids are sterile (I believe I posted several examples).  Your solution is a complete WTF?

[rhavviepoodle]

Necroing this thread because I wanted to throw in my two cents, and from what I understand it's better not to create redundant threads here in the suggestions subforum.

First off, I really dig the idea of half-breeds and lineages in general. I find them to be one of the iconic things about fantasy games and even mythologies as a whole. For example, many of the characters in Greek literature are descended from a god or a monster of some type--Agrius and Oreius, for instance. The same often happened in Norse mythology, with Loki giving birth to Sleipnir, as well as half-giants occurring here and there.

I understand that genetics as well as cults are planned in the future, and presumably interspecies breeding would be policed by a (sub)civilization's ethics (Polyphonte copulating with a bear? Not likely!). A cult might bend those ethics, leading to strange and vile crossbreeds, the end result being a creepy hamlet or hillock not unlike Lovecraft's Innsmouth. Now, I realize Lovecraftian content can be overdone, but I would -adore- being able to explore some freaky town in adventure mode.

The downside to an Innsmouth-esque site would be it would require more interactions in order to be meaningful. Weird fish-people would structurally be that town's regular citizens, and murdering an entire town would amount to just that--murder. But asking around too much might result in thugs confronting the adventurer in question. An ambitious cult (with the necessary magic) might deign to open a portal of some kind, which would of course need stopping. Depending on the notoriety of the cult in question, regular citizens might not even believe rumors about the adventurer's escapades. However, a divine blessing in some shape might be appropriate, which (again) I think is slated to be added at some point.

With animal men being playable and able to join civilizations, what if the inverse were to occur? The current idea is that civilizations assimilate savages and nomads, but it could be cool to see that subverted. Imagine if a tribe of wolverine men confronted a goblin kidnapper, saving a dwarven child. They tend to his wounds and adopt him into their tribe, imparting their own ethics and values onto him. At some point it may or may not lead to a subset of dwarves (not unlike with Agrius and Oreius, who were half-bear barbarians). I understand that demigods in adventure mode may eventually be descended from deities themselves, but being able to play a hero with a less robust (albeit still notable) lineage would be fairly neat as well. And like with Agrius and Oreius, there could always be half-breeds (and perhaps diluted lineages) resulting from a divine curse or the like--it could be a bit more meaningful than the "Wham! You're a night creature now" curses we currently have.

The last instance of interspecies breeding that comes to mind for me would be with single-gendered races. Where do blizzard men, who are exclusively male come from? What about satyrs? Or even harpies? Maybe, for example, a female satyr exists but doesn't reveal itself to civilization. Maybe satyrs copulate with dryads or nymphs. But say for instance satyrs could inspire revelry in unmarried women, effectively turning them into maenads. In a good-aligned forest, maenads would simply prance and frolick with satyrs and other woodland creatures, dancing and singing or whatever. Maenads in an evil forest would be cunning, bloodthirsty hunters led by a foul blendec. Thus, seeing maenad footprints could be a mere curiosity or hair-raising, depending on the context. After a few years, the maenads might return to their civilizations with skill in hunting, tracking, and dancing. They may also have given birth to a satyr or two (perhaps with an incredibly small chance her child favors her own race, or is born a female). Non-satyr children would likely be brought back to civilization with the mother, and might possibly be the start of new heroic lineages or what have you. The same might happen with harpies and blizzard men, although these might more be instances of kidnapping than anything else (this is already sort of possible, but turning harpies and blizzard men into night creatures with the spouse converter token is a bit overkill). On the other hand, perhaps it's possible a blizzard man became the leader of a bandit group and took one of his underlings as a wife. Likewise, a harpy might join a performance troupe (this probably requires harpies be tweaked where they're more like Grecian sirens) and eventually take a husband from her compatriots.

Yeah, I realize that this is -Dwarf- Fortress, and that making Dwarf Fortress about non-dwarves is somewhat counter-intuitive. But I would argue I don't often play dwarves in adventure mode and rarely visit dwarven sites, yet my escapades always feel unequivocally Dwarf Fortress-y. Strange instances of interspecies breeding like these ought to be fairly rare--they would be made interesting by the fact that they would be the exception, rather than the norm, after all. At the same time, that means something like this would inevitably be low-priority (a fair amount of work for something that wouldn't necessarily show up commonly in-game). That being said, I -adore- generating interesting worlds and thumbing through legends (and legends viewer, of course) and would likewise adore seeing a few of these things added to the game.

[Calidovi]

Personally, I'm glad you necro'd this.

I'd like it if the tags are there to doodle around with, but I don't see much of a role of it except for making mules, bears, etc.
Also, accounting for a near-infinite amount of animal people hybrids seems like a burden on Toady's time.

[rhavviepoodle]

Yeah, if the tags were available then modders could fiddle with some of the stuff themselves. And yes, writing in dozens of specific hybrids would be a bit much--and like I said, something like this would probably be low priority. I have heard talk of the (future versions of the) game simply averaging stats or whatever, in which case the individual hybrids wouldn't need to be manually written but would presumably be drawn up during worldgen. Heck, even if a character was mechanically a regular dwarf, it would be cool to be able to brag about lineages or whatever. Again, I'm guessing this would be a ways off because as of right now heroes kind of spontaneously appear out of thin air.

[Asin]

I think if interspecies breeding for sentients is included, I think goblins and kobolds wouldn't be able to mate with the other races. Their DNA is too different.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I think if interspecies breeding for sentients is included, I think goblins and kobolds wouldn't be able to mate with the other races. Their DNA is too different.

One of Threetoe's stories includes a romance between an Elf and a goblin.

[☼Another☼]

Goblins aren't too different from anything else, and kobolds have some major differences, but that should be fine.

Threetoe's Story:
http://bay12games.com/dwarves/story/tt_snatcher.html

[Asin]

Hmmm... Fair point.

[pkrums]

With the introduction of magic, magical beings that transform into/appear as other species and possibly breed as such.

[Jairl]

Oh, I like this idea... even if toady restricts it to making cabbits




You cannot say no to the Cabbitexplosion!

Rabbits + Cats = uncontrollable breeding!

Then modders could create more interesting hybrids... Dwarfbits... because SOME DWARF WENT THERE!