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[ChaosFollowing]

Been thinking about a simple yet elegant solution to the future implementation of magic and the outposts of other races. Rather than present it all at once, I'm going to divide it into sections, starting with Dwarven Magic as we already have Dwarf Fortress.

Caveat: This won't be popular with everybody, primarily because of its simplicity.

Dwarven Magic

As a quick introduction it's probably worth mentioning that dwarves, virtually regardless of setting, are rarely your typical magic-wielding, fireball-hurling sorcerers. Dwarven magic, in literature and gaming, is often concentrated on the forging of enchanted items, occasionally through rune-craft.

Solution : Dwarven magic = Strange Moods & Artifacts

I told you that wouldn't be popular. However, if we combine the above idea with TRULY legendary artifacts, then things start to get very interesting. Bear in mind that Strange Moods retain their randomness, preventing artifacts from being too game-breaking.

Artifact Weapons and Armor

At the moment, weapons and armor are the most useful artifacts, because they confer obvious game-world benefits. These I would leave virtually unchanged, and
attempt to make all the other artifacts as useful.

FURNITURE

Artifact Mechanisms

Artifact Mechanisms provide constant X units of power when rigged to a gear assembly. If placed in a trap, Artifact Mechanisms never jam.

Artifact Statues

An artifact statue is essentially a tame Golem, with various permutations possible: Rock Crystal Golem, Steel Golem, Marble Golem, etc. Either the Golem may be chained or assigned as a pet to help with defence, or perhaps it could act as a fearless hauler automaton.

Optional: Bone and Leather Golems would instead be tame Skeletal [bonetype] or tame Zombie [bonetype], allowing for necromancy and build-your-own Undead Dragons.

Artifact Chains

An animal held by an Artifact Chain is automatically tamed. A person held by an Artifact Chain is no longer berserk. This allows you to place normally-untameable creatures as guards for your fortress, such as unicorns, and capture/display slaves of other races. Removing an Artifact Chain from a creature/person makes it wild/berserk...even if it was tame/calm to begin with.

Artifact Barrels, Bin, Bags, Boxes, Backpacks, Quivers and Waterskins

Artifact Containers act essentially as Bags of Holding, with four times(for example) the space of a regular container. Food, etc. in an Artifact Container never spoils.

Alternative: Objects of a single type placed in an Artifact Container slowly gain in number, whether food, drink, bolts, stone blocks, etc....with at least two measures/units needed before it begins.

Artifact Beds

The designated owner of an Artifact Bed(room) requires no sleep. This does not automatically rejuvenate their wakefulness(which would allow you to transfer the bedroom around), but merely disables the dwarfs ability to sleep. Depending on the game mechanics, this may result in the dwarf entering an immediate coma if he owns the bedroom for a few years then changes to another.

Metal, etc. artifact beds will of course have the same ability.

CRAFTS

Caveat: Artifact Crafts should be buildable(essentially as displays) or wearable(crowns, etc), as well as tradeable.

Artifact Crown

The wearer of an Artifact Crown automatically becomes a King(or Queen), even if it triggers your seven-dwarf hamlet into a kingdom, with all the requirements.

If you already have a King/Queen, the two dwarves immediately seek each other out and fight to the death, leaving you with one(or less) rulers.

Artifact Idols

Artifact Idols should be crafted after either a random world Deity OR the Deity of the artifacts creator OR be a new target of worship themselves. Artifact Idols should be buildable as statues, and have a chance to convert dwarves(or optionally, other intelligent races) who admire the statue. Difficulty would be based on both the worth of the idol and the current belief strength of the admirer.

Artifact Instruments

Artifact Instruments are buildable, allowing specific placement. Artifact Instruments play themselves, generating happy thoughts and disrupting sleep in a wide radius.

Optional: All instruments are buildable and have a "Play Me" order attached to them. Dwarves with the necessary skill may play an instrument to the above effect((un)happy thoughts(based on skill)/sleep disruption). In this instance, Artifact Instruments are the only ones that play themselves.

Any thoughts? Or ideas for other artifacts?

[mutant mell]

Your dealing a bit too much in absolutes for my taste.  For instance, what if I wanted to make a chain that immediately made a creature mad with rage, and that killed anything close to it?

The idea is good, but once again I do not prefer absolutes, and a lot of people do not either.  Perhaps instead of making dwarfs only capable of this, perhaps give them a strong tendency towards preferring this kind of magic?  So that a player could make a spell-slinging dwarf if the mood struck them.

[Capntastic]

I do like the Idol suggestions, but only because I've been waiting for deity/Idol/worship interplay.

A lot of these, though, seem like special case type things, which don't really mesh well with the over-arching procedural nature of DF, in some cases.

I don't think DF's magic will be summed up on "this does this, it's magic, this let's you do this, it's magic."   In DF it will be a far more complex, and, I feel, flexible system that dovetails with current procedural features- not merely "Giving enemies spells and putting magic items in loot."    

Of course, this is just speculation on what I've seen Toady do so far; all I can be sure of is that there will be many facets at play.

[ChaosFollowing]

quote:Originally posted by mutant mell:
<STRONG>Your dealing a bit too much in absolutes for my taste.  For instance, what if I wanted to make a chain that immediately made a creature mad with rage, and that killed anything close to it?

The idea is good, but once again I do not prefer absolutes, and a lot of people do not either.  Perhaps instead of making dwarfs only capable of this, perhaps give them a strong tendency towards preferring this kind of magic?  So that a player could make a spell-slinging dwarf if the mood struck them.</STRONG>

I pity the poor dwarf that gets the order to attach a creature to that chain.  

But yes, the crux of my argument here is: Dwarves are not spell-slingers, and dwarven magic is random and wholly artifact-based. Possibly something could be done to encourage artifact types(if you wanted lots of Golems, for example).

[Draco18s]

Why not try reading the dev notes on magic and how Toady wants the player to be able to formulate their own spells.  Your suggestion doesn't account for that.

[ChaosFollowing]

quote:Originally posted in DevNotes:
<STRONG>ARTIFACT ARC: Special items made by the dwarves aren't very interesting right now, and there's not much for an adventurer to do with them. These objects should have magical powers and they should have a huge influence on the actions of entities that come into contact with them.</STRONG>

Ahem.   I see no conflict with the above idea and adventurer created spells...this is merely a subset(Dwarven Magic) of the whole magical concept. It makes sense to me that dwarves would not be the most powerful of magic users(outside of artifact creation), and their magic could easily be incorporated into the existing Strange Mood phenomenon(improved by the Artifact Arc as mentioned above).

[Capntastic]

quote:Originally posted by Draco18s:
<STRONG>Why not try reading the dev notes on magic and how Toady wants the player to be able to formulate their own spells.  Your suggestion doesn't account for that.</STRONG>

To be fair, the dev notes are fairly sparse concerning magic; and the power goals are so intense it may be hard to get a general idea of how things will end up being.

The bottom line, as I see it, is thus:

Magic will be magical- i.e., powerful, versatile, and mysterious.

Trying to break it down into a simplified 'system' takes the magic out of it.

Feel free to skip this part; it's just aimless rambling.   To me, the appeal of DF lies a lot in that it's not all numbers, as your D&D or Final Fantasy goes.  A dragon is a terrifying creature not because it has four hundred hit points and level 4 armor- it is terrifying because it's a dragon.  Likewise, due to a semi-low power ceiling, a dwarf can be puny or powerful, depending on many factors- it isn't like, say, D&D, where a level one fighter is always absolutely worthless to the point of physically not being able to land a hit on a level 10 fighter.  The balance between skills, stats, equipment, and luck all blends into something more wholesomely satisfying and adventurous than "Level 87 guy with 2,021 HP hits four times per round dealing 9d10+5 damage".   Instead, you have a dwarf fighting a goblin- we don't care about the statistics of it, we just care about how gruesome the outcome is, win or lose.

[zagibu]

I come from a Warhammer background, so for me, dwarves have a natural resistance against arcane magic, and their own magic is exclusively based on runes. So, they don't have wizards who can cast, but instead have runesmiths, who can imbue items with powerful runes.
Something like this could easily be done in DF, I think. There would be the single runes, and recipes the player has to discover. The single runes would also have some power, but the real magic would come from the recipes...

[Exponent]

quote:Originally posted by zagibu:
<STRONG>I come from a Warhammer background, so for me, dwarves have a natural resistance against arcane magic, and their own magic is exclusively based on runes. So, they don't have wizards who can cast, but instead have runesmiths, who can imbue items with powerful runes.
Something like this could easily be done in DF, I think. There would be the single runes, and recipes the player has to discover. The single runes would also have some power, but the real magic would come from the recipes...</STRONG>

Would the rune recipes by any chance be randomly generated, such that they're different for each generated world, for example?  That would help to encourage a person to play the same world even after losing a fortress.  And would help maintain the exploratory nature of DF even after playing through many games.  Start a new world, and you have to go through the whole process of figuring out magic again.  (If it's done right, you want it to be fun/interesting the first time, rather than a nuisance that is simply in the way to doing magic early on.  And if it's fun the first time, it might as well be fun every time.)

[mutant mell]

An except from a lecture on runic magic:

"There is magic in words, shapes, symbols, and forms.  These symbols can trap magic, and make the object display supernatural phenomena, such as combustion without fuel or heat, can spontaneously make water, make the hardest steel soft as silk, can prolong life in those near death, and suck the life out of someone, leaving them a mere shell of their former self.

Dwarfs are good at this.  They can feel the power behind shapes and forms, and can feel their way through the creation of such items.  We humans have no such luck.  We have to reference books, and we have to get down the symbols perfectly, for even a small change in the symbol can leave it powerless, or worse, give it an unintended effect.  The best runemasters amongst us studied with the dwarfs, and even they make constant mistakes.  The dwarfs have us beaten in that aspect, for sure.

But while they may be good with symbols, we are not entirely behind them, for we are good with casting.  It makes sense, as we a flighty beings, wanting to have flash and fame while we live; the dwarfs want to make things that last ages.  However, that is not true of all dwarfs.  There are a few dwarf wizards, some sitting in on this very lecture.  Like how we send them humans, they send us dwarfs to learn our craft.  And the best dwarf wizard has enough power to rival any one of us, I'll tell you this."

tl;dr: I believe that it runes would make a very good magic system for dwarfs, but don't make it their only choice.  Make it hard, perhaps, but not the only choice.

[Bricktop]

I think rune-magic would be good as the most common way for dwarves to use magic.

I think that it would be good, with rune-magic, for there to be a set of runes that are generated with the world. Not all possible runes in the game would be generated in each world, and the number of runes generated could depend on world size (so a pocket world might only have 5 runes available, whereas a medium world might have 20).

For example, in your world there is a fire rune, and your dwarves have knowledge of it. Getting a rune-smith to apply this rune to some armour could make that armour block all fire attacks that hit it (so a fire-helmet would make your head immune to fire).

These runes would also be able to be combined to get different effects, but these effects would be unknown until you tried them and they would not all be desirable. Some of the combinations could be particularly powerful (Rune of Fire and Rune of Spiders on a sword covers enemies with burning webbing) whereas other combinations could be a complete disaster (Rune of Light and Rune of Dark on an helmet makes the wearer go instantly insane). This would mean that when combining runes there would be an element of experimentation about it, and trying new combinations would be risky, but with the possibility of great rewards if it goes well.

Another idea: When applying runes to something, they would need to be physically added to the object. The runesmith could make the runes on an item out of whatever material you request, and the value of material coudl affect how powerful the rune is. A rune made out of gold will be more powerful than a rune made out of pig-tail cloth. Various runes could also have there optimum material, so a Darkness rune might be most powerful when made out of black diamond. These optimum materials should mostly be valuable, but would be generated in the world generation along with the runes so it wouldn't be the same every time.

[Zironic]

Magic industry - with many dangers and rewards - a legendary runecrafter never fails to make a usable rune. But a dabbling one could create cursed weapons on accident. The rune system would need many negatives to balance positives - a flaming sword should cause the dwarf discomfort thus making him a little unhappier. A sword of soul ripping should slowly rip out it's owner's soul and become addicting for those around it.

[Keiseth]

quote:Capntastic: Feel free to skip this part; it's just aimless rambling. To me, the appeal of DF lies a lot in that it's not all numbers, as your D&D or Final Fantasy goes. A dragon is a terrifying creature not because it has four hundred hit points and level 4 armor- it is terrifying because it's a dragon.

Yes! Yes, thank you. That's what I love about DF! When I careen idiotically down a  five-square drop and the game panics with "Bleeding!" "Mortal Wound!!" and shows me my character's body in all red, I can't say with certainty if he'll survive. I don't know that I have 3HP left and two hits from a squirrel or one from anything else will kill me, and that's what's so fun. You could bleed to death in three turns or miraculously survive and walk away.

Not knowing, in this case, is much, much more fun than knowing. That's also why I like "Strong" "Very Agile" "Super-dwarvenly Tough" and so on. Edit: This is also what makes weaponry and armor so interesting. I hope it carrys on into magic as well.

[ March 22, 2008: Message edited by: Keiseth ]

[Sagabal]

I think that artifacts and magic should be two separate game mechanics.  And just because in most fantasy games, dwarves aren't naturally inclined to magic, doesn't mean that they should be in this game.  Runes are an interesting concept, and an Eternal Darkness-like system would be interesting, but again is somthing different than magic.  Same thing with alchemy.  I don't know how DF will solve the problem of magic, but hopefully it will be something unique, or at least different.

[mutant mell]

quote:Originally posted by Keiseth:
<STRONG>

Yes! Yes, thank you. That's what I love about DF! When I careen idiotically down a  five-square drop and the game panics with "Bleeding!" "Mortal Wound!!" and shows me my character's body in all red, I can't say with certainty if he'll survive. I don't know that I have 3HP left and two hits from a squirrel or one from anything else will kill me, and that's what's so fun. You could bleed to death in three turns or miraculously survive and walk away.

Not knowing, in this case, is much, much more fun than knowing. That's also why I like "Strong" "Very Agile" "Super-dwarvenly Tough" and so on. Edit: This is also what makes weaponry and armor so interesting. I hope it carrys on into magic as well.

[ March 22, 2008: Message edited by: Keiseth ]</STRONG>

A lot of those game elements we dislike so much are artifacts from PnP games, which do need those to simplify things so that people can keep track of them, and to show measurable progress.  They're also easier to do and people accept them for some reason.  I'm glad DF doesn't use them at all, its much more exciting and interesting.

EDIT: some more stuff I wrote about my take on runes.

Okay, so while the OP may have oversimplified things a bit, I think that the effects for the objects he presented are quite interesting.  However, judging from a lot of people's reactions, they like the idea of runes a lot better.  They are a little difficult to balance though, so I'll take a shot at that.

Again, an excerpt from the lecture (it helps me get in the mood better doing this):

"While the runes themselves draw magic to them, that does little good if the rune cannot hold onto the magic for any period of time.  For instance, if one merely carves a rune into a tree, for instance, the tree will be slightly magical, but the magic will not do anything.  However, if I took a small amount of gold leaf, and put it inside the carvings, the magic would be able to gather and stay in the rune, and magically enhance the tree.

Gold is a common material to use in runes; magic seems to be magnetically attracted to it.  However, that is a topic for another day.  Other materials work, but some only have limited uses, or are also expensive.  For instance, the mythical Adamantine is said to not only draw upon magic, but also seems to create it.  Among the more mundane materials include gypsum, which is used in fireproofing, liquefied plant material, and even blood.  While the material may seem like it would rub off or disappear, the magic inherent in the material and the shape will cause it to, shall we say, stick around.  Iron is a material that does not seem to work well at attracting magic, but iron weapons and other things will still accept magic from a rune inscribed on them.

There are mainly two different kinds of runes: inscribed and attached.  Inscribed runes are ones that are etched directly onto the object; these runes tend to be more powerful, but cannot be easily removed, as we will get to in a minute.  Attacked runes are generally etched on a plate of some sort, which is then attached to an object in a manner that is called a "conduit."  Like water flowing through a canal, magic flows out of the plate and into the object.  While this may seem superior, the magic is not as inherent in the attached object, and the magic tends to be weaker and shorter-lived.  So, while both have their advantages, you need to think carefully.

As I mentioned earlier, there are limits to runic magic.  For one, inscribed runes can not be easily removed.  Removing magic from a source so suddenly spells (pardon the pun) disaster.  It requires more magic to remove it, but again thats a subject for later.  Also, while an object could theoretically have as many runes as there is surface area for it, there is indeed an upper limit.  Objects can only take so much magical abuse before they disintegrate into nothingness.  While some objects may take magic readily, it is still foreign to them, and like a body with leprosy, will die off.  One exception to this rule is dwarf artifacts.  While taken by a "mood," a dwarf can force a seemingly infinite amount of runes onto an object.  There is no explanation as to why this is by the dwarfs, and they don't even seem to understand it.

So, in the little time we have left, I have a task for you.  On the table behind me in sheep leather and powdered gypsum, as well as inked copies of the rune of "fireproofing."  For this task, you will take one of the provided knives, and will very shallowly cut out the rune onto the leather.  Then, you will take the powdered gypsum and lightly dust the inside of the cuts.  If you did it right, then the leather will not burn when exposed to a flame.  Small variations in the pattern will result in nothing happening, but I must warn against experimenting with your own designs.  People have been known to destroy entire villages by experimenting like that."

[ March 22, 2008: Message edited by: mutant mell ]