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[Ihtomyt]

I am trying to figure out from the wiki and searching what impacts changes to personality traits, and if it's possible to influence this. The page here https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Personality_trait lists them out, but it doesn't seem to explain how they work. I am concerned for my current fortress because while most of the dorfs are getting varied messages about "He/She is currently more..." they are all seeming to repeatedly get "He/She is currently more rude." Will this eventually spiral into dwarfs doing some bad behaviors if they all become completely vile and rude? Why might they all be turning more rude? They are all currently at at least somewhat focused with needs met, have never seen combat or bodies, all have bedrooms, a tavern, a temple, plenty of food, etc. but they are all becoming more rude by the season. Is this something to worry about, and is there any information about this kind of thing?

[Fleeting Frames]

Rudeness is from alcohol - I think that's the only syndrome that has direct personality effect in vanilla.

[mightymushroom]

Fleeting Frames got in first. To elaborate:

I'm pretty sure all of the "currently more X" messages stem from alcohol consumption. Booze lowers inhibitions, makes people more rude, more likely to start arguments, and so on. The good news is that it's temporary – it will wear off as the alcohol is processed out of their bodies. Of course, no dwarf likes being completely sober so it will probably get re-applied; but it shouldn't get too bad unless your dwarves start reaching poisonous levels. Though you may see more fights breaking out in taverns than anywhere else.

In general this message appears any time a "syndrome" induces a personality change distinct from something permanent in the dwarf's character. As best as I can recall only alcohol does this in vanilla DF. If you have any mods, check with the mod package and/or creator.

[Ihtomyt]

Thank you for explaining! I didn't realize the "currently" was temporary, even though "currently" might imply that, I didn't know it wasn't cumulative. Well, that's good to hear, but also disappointing because they were also more fearless .

Now that I understand that better, I guess the other half of my question was if personality traits can permanently change, and if anything affects this over time. I seem to remember reading something about discipline in military dorfs, making them more brave and able to handle dead bodies better? Do personality traits modify over time, and if so, are the mechanics for that known?

[PatrikLundell]

There are at least two mechanisms for personality trait changes:
- Military Training (and combat) improves discipline, which can make them better at coping with stress (such as military combat, assuming they don't break in the process). Eventually they can become very resistant to death and the like (but I wouldn't be surprised if rain remained as dangerous as ever).
- "Traumatic" experiences, ranging from being rained on and retching on miasma, to wading through the remains of most of the inhabitants of the fortress after narrowly beating back a siege. These changes are sort of random and go in both positive, neutral, and negative directions, but quite frequently result in dorfs that become mental wrecks.

[Ihtomyt]

Aha, so basically the way they handle stress changes, but something like confidence in their own skills or how private they are or things like that don't change? And the only way to handle stress better is to... be stressed. Makes sense. That which does not kill a dorf makes them a berserked lunatic stronger. Is that right, or when you said that the other changes are random, that stress can also affect other personality traits besides stress handling? Just curious, there's probably no good way to micromanage any of this anyway

[PatrikLundell]

Personality changes are not targeted specifically at stress related factors, but can affect most (all?) factors. As far as I understand there's no control over the results.
The Discipline training effects aren't tied to the stress system personality changes, but is an older system (which is fairly predictable: as far as I know a high discipline is always good, even though "don't really care about anything anymore" ought to be bad for a number of tasks).

[Fleeting Frames]

Clarification: the tragedy-hardening ("don't really care about anything anymore") is applied when seeing a sentient die, but that's different thing from Discipline and trauma.

Trauma is, well, what doesn't kill dwarf may make them into an utter rage-filled lunatic about to snap or impervious to stress. Random is random.