Dwarf Fortress > DF Suggestions

Occam's Razor: Dwarven Magic

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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.

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