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[Yaddy1]

you all know that this probably won't work right?

[MetBoy]

-De-fantasy.  Fantasy elements are great and all, but it can be confusing for someone who doesn't have a decade of western RPG experience to grapple with.  Not just making it a little more generic, but toning things down and going for more kid-like fantasy elements.  No foul blendecs or nightwings, but dragons and trolls are great.  Obviously, this will spawn a lot of discussion.

-Along with that, making it Human oriented would be for the best.  Its already confusing enough managing a settlement, having to think about it in Tolkien-esque dwarf form is unnecessary.  This is more than just moving the CIV_CONTROLLABLE tag, optimization will be needed, like above-ground farming and such.

-Making the language kid-acceptable.  The RNG will bite us in the ass doing it any other way, so this will require stripping out big parts of the dictionary so there's no chance of words like 'rape' and 'whore' coming up.  Actually, just making it all English wouldn't be bad either, but leaving the languages in for flavor and experience would be good too.  Likewise, all references to alcohol will need to be removed.  Mostly this would involve changing the names of drinks, but the "needs alcohol to get through the day" line is hardcoded and will have to go.  I don't know this, but I've heard removing alcohol dependency means a creature can't drink anything but water, that'll need some experimenting.

-The big one, Censorship.  The problem here is, it's not really possible.  Creatures can be kept from bleeding, but that has a profound impact on gameplay.  Changing blood to something else is just delaying the issue, and the same goes for things like vomit.  On the other hand, kids can handle a lot more violence than we give them credit for - the problem there is we don't get to make that judgment, and the worry is the kids will yak about flying limbs and blood splatters (not to mention crippled dogs and such) in front of the wrong people.  The suggestion was to let a principle approve the game first, but that's for the other thread.

First off, I like the "Fantasy Light" idea... in fact, it might be removed completely, changing the other races into things like "Violent Natives" "French Traders" or other such could let you transform the game's plot and premise into "Oregon Trail 2: We Survived The Whole Trip! Now What?"

I don't think mentioning the existence of booze will make parents go up in arms, but... *shrugs* It'll be up to whomever is editing the language files.

"Censorship" is the wrong word for talking about that issue. Call it "Displays of Violence" or "Graphic Violence"

Now, to add something to the discussion... What will this "Teacher's Edition" be teaching? How will it be used to teach those things? It's something we should think about. So, to that end...

Industrial Theory: Where do the nifty things we use and want come from? Disabling traders might help make this point more strongly; If you can't simply go down to the store and buy something, how do you make it from scratch? Cut trees, dig for stone, dig for ore... Mining, Masonry, Carpentry, Metalworking

City Planning: Why are city streets so complicated downtown? Because those streets were designed by cows!

Food: Everybody's gotta eat! So, do you forage for native plants to eat? Til the soil and plant crops? Hunt wild animals? Tame and raise a heard for meat?

The Risk of Being a Pioneer: You're going out there, and there won't be any help. So that means you need to make EVERYTHING you need yourself. These people knew the risks, so why did they go?

[(name here)]

turn off all non-animal aggression, for one thing. if you're teaching at a level where military stuff is actually a useful teaching tool, you don't need this mod. you could set all animals to do bludgeoning damage to reduce limb hacking and bleeding. remove cave adaption, and vomit problems will mostly go away. if you really want to teach them about the importance of defense of a settlement, keep seiges but reduce the ability to obtain weaponry, since DF makes it really really easy to get weapons and a small military well trained and equipped by seige #1. ideally, stuff should be re-balanced so that some sort of walled defense is needed. also, remove picks from the options list if you really want to incentiveise staying above ground.

[webadict]

remove picks from the options list if you really want to incentiveise staying above ground.

You can't remove picks. Sure, settlers don't usually live in caves or underground, but what about digging for gold? Or iron? Where are these precious metals to work? Plus, using rocks to build a home isn't necessarily bad. Nor is making a channel.

[Idiom]

Sounds like some of this requires a little editing of the source code.
Toady? Would it be worth it?

[Eita]

Can't you just rename Alcohol into something harmless? Like Juice!

I vote for Frothy Mugs of Water.

[Aqizzar]

I highly doubt Toady would be up to rewriting lots of flavor text in-game just a little project like this.  If he was, that'd be awesome though.  Point being, any ideas that involve restructuring the game proper are pretty much out of the question unless someone knows how to screw with the memory, and that would still mean running other programs with DF, which is complicated.

Remember, Rathen (the OP) was talking about 3rd grade kids here.  All bad words have to be taken out of the dictionary.  Alcohol has to be out, because otherwise there'd be hell to pay, brewing will be replaced with non-alcoholic stuff.  Important thing to remember here is that it doesn't have to be historically accurate or relevant - what's being taught here is critical thinking and problem solving.

I could write for hours about light-fantasying everything, but some things that would need tweaking is human pop/civ numbers.  Though I like the idea of there being no traders, it'd be easy enough to switch trade on and off with a simple raw tag.  The notion comes up that this could be Oregon Trail 2: Now What?, which is cool, but I think that's kind of out of DF's scope.  Besides, fantasy is fun, and let's kids take more an interest.  Some things like the Pits are right out though.

To make farming harder, growing seasons need to be tweak (to not year round), and growth time needs to be a lot longer.  For instance, if something like wheat could grow in spring, summer, and autumn, but had a growth time of 250 days, you'd have to plant whole loads of the stuff real early in the year to have enough food next year.

Making wildlife more of an issue is hampered by the limit on animal group spawns.  Uping savagery in world-gen helps but not much.  Making most animals do bludgeoning damage is great, but dangerous animals should have a secondary goring attack to keep them really mean.  I remember drawing a very graphic book about dinosaurs in the first grade that didn't get any undue attention (went over well with my fellow students even), so on consideration I don't think blood is really a problem.  Ditto for vomit and such.

I'm going to start writing up a design document tonight.  Too many ideas, need to put them in order.

Can't you just rename Alcohol into something harmless? Like Juice!

I vote for Frothy Mugs of Water.

Win.  Probably not possible though.

[Warlord255]

If we're nerfing violence for the kiddos, what about butchery and the like? Bonecrafting might be a bit out of sync, especially bone armor.

Cleaning (I keep harping on this) would need to be fully realized so that you don't have your guys walking around covered in blood.

Stronger cave-in/architecture system.

And as much as we all hate it, if the game's being restructured into a civic engineering learning tool, wouldn't plumbing be a necessary addition?

For now, though, I'm fine with all the horrible, alcoholic debauchery of keeping goblins in cages and melting them for fun.

[i2amroy]

If you give creatures the [NOBONES] tag then they will not drop bones. This will turn bonecrafting into one of those useless skills that exist, like cheesemaking. Also if you remove the shaped tag from all armor that has it it will remove some of the bone things that show up in the workshop menu.

[HungryHobo]

I dunno, nothing too bad about bone crafting.
You could get them to go through the steps for making a bone flute (can bone instuments be made right now? I forget).They have to get a dwarf to hunt a buffalo, bring it down with arrows, carry it back, butcher it and craft the bones into a flute and then show them pictures and examples of crafts and items that native indians made from bone.

If the kids were playing it in a school computer room you start them all up with the same pre-genned world, gen one which is a little like the american plains or something, no magma etc since magma forges aren't exactly realistic. Perhaps you start up a fort with a group of mixed skill units so they just have to "continue" to all start on the same fort.
They all start their fort and after much explaining how to do things they all get a little walled fort going.

You could explain a little about how charcoal is made and how iron has to be smelted and forged etc
Then you might offer a gold star or something to the first student who works out the steps needed to make an iron axe, cut down trees,build a wood furnace, make charcoal, build a forge, mine iron, smelt the iron into bars, make axe.

You could leave them build a nice big tower and occasionally tell them to do something "who can show me a bridge across to the other side of their river?"
Who's got more than 100 rations prepared for winter? who's build a road to yada yada.

[RavingManiac]

I think the problems will start when the little kiddies start having the cripples and useless peasants die in 'unfortunate accidents'.
 

[vanarbulax]

If we're nerfing violence for the kiddos, what about butchery and the like? Bonecrafting might be a bit out of sync, especially bone armor.

If they're eating meat then they deserve to learn where it comes from, that may just be my opinion though. It does amaze me how few people stop to think about, or even know where their meat comes from. I'm not a vegetarian by any means and I don't think it's "bad" to eat meat but the fact that an animal dies for it is a simple truth and people need to accept that. Maybe that's supposedly to harsh for a child but my personal opinion is the world needs less white lies and more understanding.

[Erom]

I def. think that blood splatters, butchery, and even wounds are NOT to extreme for kids. You just want to tone down the ability to get lopped off limbs.

But seriously, in oregon trail you can get mauled by wildlife, can't you? I don't see why this is a problem.

[Dogman]

I def. think that blood splatters, butchery, and even wounds are NOT to extreme for kids. You just want to tone down the ability to get lopped off limbs.

But seriously, in oregon trail you can get mauled by wildlife, can't you? I don't see why this is a problem.

The most  common cause of death was dysentery, which is literally shitting yourself to death. Compared to that no death in DF is disgustingly gruesome.

[Aqizzar]

I def. think that blood splatters, butchery, and even wounds are NOT to extreme for kids. You just want to tone down the ability to get lopped off limbs.

But seriously, in oregon trail you can get mauled by wildlife, can't you? I don't see why this is a problem.

The most  common cause of death was dysentery, which is literally shitting yourself to death. Compared to that no death in DF is disgustingly gruesome.

Yes, but Oregon Trail never actually told you what dysentery or cholera are, just told you it existed.  You had to look it up yourself, and even then most dictionaries don't describe it that graphically.