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[Detoxicated]

Now don't get me wrong here, I do know that you can add [Strange_Moods] to any race, but I always felt as if the accepted canon of Dwarf Fortress was that dwarves should be the primary sources of artifacts due to their industrious nature. With the upcoming changes, we will eventually see magical artifacts. These artifacts will act as gamechangers I asume, just due to the fact that anything added to the game brought bigger changes than a slight +1 to anything. Due to the gamechanging nature it would be unfair to have a race of artifact spawning dwarves against races that cannot even create normal artifacts.

For balancing reasons we need ways to give other races the ability to forge artifacts without the [Strange_Moods] tag.
Just looking at some trance types we can already find some solutions to this problem.

Possessed Mood should be available to any sapient-race and mayhaps even to ogres and their wives...

Fey Mood, it seems to me that elves could be inhabitted by fey spirits...

Fell and Macabre Mood should be the ways for goblins to create artifacts...

In addition to the already existant moods there should be some additions.

Divine Mood: The unit in question is touched by a God/Force and creates an artifact. Available to all Races

Demonic Mood: Just as above only that the source of power is a demon. Available to Goblins, and Humans.

Research Mood: Scholars who have mastered more than one field might eventually invent a glorious artifact. Available to all scholars at one point...

[FantasticDorf]

I agree about perhaps offering more advanced artifacts upon the world but i disagree on this being a clear cut way to deliver them.

But from the way things are fleshing out, it seems like civs will be recieving world generation and 'lore specific' magical artifacts at start anyway to compensate, depending on the settings.

Over-diversifying strange dwarf moods to stretch thinly over other races wont achieve much i feel, and kind of ruin the uniqueness of dwarf culture, the world needs dwarves to create such ornate things or all that's left is mediocrity. Keeps dwarves in demand and relevance.

Though research i can get behind, since that is a field that is somewhat perfectly plausible since all civilisations churn out books and scholars and poets across the land travel to and fro. A book is a secret that is waiting to be learnt by a plucky adventurer is how i see it, as well as a chronicle of the person who wrote it's culture. Learn a little, perhaps how to make a orbitarium (or whatever that break-through object secret is that's triggered by astronomy research)

What amusement would be had to read a excavated and centuries old book, masterfully made and preserved by craftsmanship on the ornate manners to how to make steel, long forgotten by the remaining civilisations who since conquered and destroyed the dwarves and the material ends up in the hands of nobility only or slowly rusting away to worthlessness.

[Detoxicated]

I dont know, maybe I didn't specify enough.
I feel that dwarves should have access to all moods, due to their industrious nature...

[Putnam]

I am reasonably sure that possessed is already basically "divine".

[IndigoFenix]

I think the idea of certain races (dwarves) having the unique ability to produce magical artifacts, since that was their specific role in Norse mythology.  But there could be other ways of getting magical artifacts besides strange moods.

Instead of being "a magical item, made by the dwarves", you might have one "blessed by the gods" or "enchanted by the spirits of nature" or "filled with demonic power". 

Perhaps some items would descend from the heavens just as slabs do currently, or be generated in the possession of demons or angels.  Maybe a ghost could possess an item and give it magical properties, or a wizard might make one using a secret.

[LMeire]

There's also this one Shinto idea (That's in some other mysticism systems, but Shinto is the most popularly known for this so it's easier to look up.) of an ordinary object obtaining sentience/magical powers after well treated well for an arbitrary amount of time. Now that tools and equipment can wear down with use, combined with some way to repair or slow-down degradation, it might be a good idea to have some particularly old objects just sort of "wake up" every now and then. Not every hero has a divine heritage, there's no reason the hero's legendary weapon can't have similar humble origins.

[IndigoFenix]

There's also this one Shinto idea (That's in some other mysticism systems, but Shinto is the most popularly known for this so it's easier to look up.) of an ordinary object obtaining sentience/magical powers after well treated well for an arbitrary amount of time. Now that tools and equipment can wear down with use, combined with some way to repair or slow-down degradation, it might be a good idea to have some particularly old objects just sort of "wake up" every now and then. Not every hero has a divine heritage, there's no reason the hero's legendary weapon can't have similar humble origins.

That's a cool idea.  I think it would be more fitting with the rest of the game, though (both code-wise and thematically), if an item needed to be famous already (obtain a name) before it could spontaneously develop magic powers.  As the legends build up around an otherwise mundane weapon, people start ascribing mystical powers to it - and then it actually develops these powers.  This goes hand-in-hand with the suggestion that famous historical figures could obtain worship and then actually become gods.

[Neonivek]

Dwarves ability to get "Strange moods" allowing them to create artifacts being unique amongst the main races I believe should stay unique. It even fits into the real life mythology of the Dwarves as one of the only non-god races who frequently created things for the gods, often better than they themselves could make.

Not that other races shouldn't be able to get their hands on artifacts or create them as well. Just that their experiences with such should be drastically different. Only Dwarves should get the flash of insight, the divine inspiration, to suddenly know how to smash two stones together to get the door of the gods.

For everyone else it should be a lengthy, expensive, epic, or dangerous affair. Binding demons to blades, leaving armor in a magic river for 100 years, having the gods themselves bestow a gauntlet onto a hero. If there was a human fortress mode they should never get strange moods.

Yes it means that Dwarves have MANY times the number of artifacts of a single race and possibly more then all the rest combined. Yet that isn't a flaw.