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[Granite26]

•   Morality

The basic point here is to figure out what's going on in the world in terms of religion and morality.  In order to figure out how things are supposed to work in the world in terms of religion and alignment, I had a few questions, theoretically targetted at Toady, about how mysticism and alignment should actually work in his world.  The two basic questions are does 'Nature or Nuture determine alignment' and 'How active of a part do you expect deities to play in the world.'

Is Alignment an intuitive quality?  Are dwarves inherently ‘good’?  Are goblins inherently ‘bad’.  Sure there are baby snatchers that raise people to have a different parent civ, and thus behaviors, but is that appropriate?  Should there be raws elements that handle the innate alignment of races?  Again, Is the alignment of a being a quality based on his being, or his upbringing?  Nature or Nurture?

Should beings feel innate loyalty to their own race?
•   Unhappy thought for being of a hated race… Self Loathing.  Elves suck, and I am an elf.  Why can’t I be as cool as the goblins around me?

•   Handle alignment differences between civs, leaders and individuals.
o   How does the game handle an evil leader in a basically good kingdom?
o   An evil citizen?
o   A good leader in an evil kingdom?  I keep thinking back to all the instances of an elf becoming leader of a goblin camp.  If elves are good by nature and being raised by goblins can't change that, the elf shouldn't be able to maintain control without a revolt for being unsuitable.
o   Will a good leader and an innately good populace start to pull the civ towards good?  I'm thinking about the dominated elf populace ruled by an elf situation.

What are the chances that an elf raised by goblins will be repulsed and think that those around him are vile?  Conversely, that he will convert entirely.  This is another form of the nature or nuture question.
o   Can a goblin ever be civilized?  Can he be made into a 'good' creature?
•   Basically, What’s your desired direction, nature or nurture?  (This is a different worldview than the real world.  It’s possible to have ‘all goblins are inherently evil’ in a way that it’s not possible (rather, not PC) to have in the real world)

Deities currently only quasi exist.  Do you envision religious entities (Clerics, Gods, Demigods) taking a D&D-esque role in DF?  

•   Deities are like Megabeasts, I imagine
o   After a worshipped megabeasts death, should it be reincarnated as a deity?
o   Converted to a deity when there are enough worshipers?

•   Do deities have real power
o   Can a deity tangibly reward his followers?

•   Do deities have real presence
o   Can a deity reveal himself to a potential follower?  AKA instaconvert the elf that was kidnapped young.  Think Moses in Egypt here, especially if revolts are possible.  After a hundred years of domination Panseyass Treehugger the Elven goddess of Namby, Pamby, and Woodcraft reveals herself to Limrist the Effeminate, who proceeds to reveal her glory to the rest of the subjegated populace.  With her aid (good way to support failing civs is to have their deities become more active), they overthrow their goblin overlords and escape into the woods.  (Hell, go balls to the wall, the great briar wall opens, taking the elves into the forest mother's womb)... Where they procede to sack a human city because Panseyass tells them it's theirs now. (sorry for the excessive biblical references there)

•   Is religion a sham?
o   Is it nothing more than a talking head and power hungry theocrats?  Even better, is this something that can change by the age you are in?  Early on the gods have a lot of power, but as things settle down, they get more and more locked out.

•   Conversion
o   Shouldn’t cultures attempt to convert others as part of the cultural conversion process?

o   Religious war, and entity/pantheon relationships
•   Deity power by follower prevalence?
o   Should a deity get stronger the more followers it has?

o   What is the (intangibles) effect of worship on a being
   Sun Kings and other God-People
•   Will worshipping a thing give it extra power?  Should people be eligible for this?
•   Ancestor Spirits, Ghosts and the Spirit world.
o   Ok, that’s enough, or rather, too much...

Sorry for the brain dump, but it's getting late for me and I wanted to get this up

[Demonic Gophers]

A related question...  In a dev log a while ago, there was the comment: "I've since stopped powers from worshipping gods, because it's out of character for what a power means in the stock universe, but it was kind of funny in any case."

What exactly does a power mean in the stock universe?

[Neonivek]

I am not feeling 100%... but Ill try to comment. I am a rather negative person so please don't take it personally... A lot of these seem like questions rather then suggestions, but I guess they are "Things to think about" questions.

Time to clarify some points for you.

Toady has been trying to eliminate Good and Evil from civilisation makeups and replace them with a moral outline instead. (I think the Army Arc eliminates it)

outside that Good and Evil are supposed to designate the nature of lands which while having the name of good and evil, they do not swing entirely in that direction.
-Evil is mostly undead lands that also host particularly dangerous monsters. They have names like Scary and haunted
-Good is a whimsicle land of Fairies and Unicorns... Good lands have nothing TOO interesting yet (Not as interesting as evil) but it has potential. Despite its name, Good lands are actually more dangerous then ordinary ones.

Thus a good or Evil creature would be a native to an evil or good land.

Alright... this eliminates A LOT of what you speak about... but Ill to trudge through it in my condition.

1) I do agree that perhaps a Elf that is raised by a society that hates elves could have feelings of spite towards being an elf depending on the society itself. (Goblins for example seem quite content)

"Deities currently only quasi exist. Do you envision religious entities (Clerics, Gods, Demigods) taking a D&D-esque role in DF?"

2) We do not know the exact role of gods... I shall answer your questions/comments in order. Lucky for us we just had the most god intense story yet.
-Deities are not like Megabeasts
-I actually would agree that would be cool. Or come back to life or something
-Skip
-Deities have real power from what we know. What limits such is unknown
-Deities can reward their followers
-Deities can show themselves
-Skip
-Religion is not a sham as a whole... Even the Worship of Demons comes at the benefit of the fact that greater demons are amazing.
-No Idea

At this point I am on Conversion (consider Conversaion a skip)
-So far religion and the civilisation remain seperate entities and can act independently from each other. They have yet to be combined or work together in a more significant way.
-There are Religious wars SORTA so far in the sense that in Adventure mode, missions from religions often ask you to take down the leader of another religion. (as mentioned religions are very religion centered so far)

- Answered next line
- We had a discussion about what exactly should power deities (and by power we mean give them the ability to interact with the world) and followers is a good one, as well as the act of worship itself, or followers developing the gods domain.

-Right now gods do NOTHING but will later. However I doubt a god bestows blessings on people unless it intends to convert them or something
-Id love Demi-gods, Mythical Servants, or other things
-No idea really
-From what I understand so far, the underworld is a rather pernament place. When Toady mentioned a Demon comming back to life... he gave the figure of 500 years.
-Well I don't know what is suggestion, what is question, or what is "Things to think about"

Alright... time for your next post...

[Toady One]

As a first point, I think it's important not to place too much stock in the stock universe, since I'm not very attached to it and really would like to use it as a springboard for more varied, generated civilizations and so on over time.  That said, some of the mechanics that persist will likely take sides one way or another in nature vs. nurture arguments and various historical determinism paradigms and all that.

Right now, and it's likely to continue more or less in this way for a long while, the creature definition says what part is nature, and the entity definition says what part is nurture.  For instance, at this point, a kidnapped elf will still use the elven personality definition to determine their personality profiles, and in this way, an elven leader for a goblin civilization will behave differently from a goblin leader, even though the elf still has the goblin culture.  At this time, the post-kidnap process is entirely unspecified -- whether or not that should have impact on an elf's personality or self-image and so on is all up in the air.  I don't think it's a given that an elf would feel bad about being an elf in a goblin civ, since kidnapping is such an important part of goblins society, and in that way elves are valued in goblin society -- they could very well feel at home among the other elves there, and made to feel as if they belong, but nothing is decided here.  Certainly the stock creatures will have pliable minds when it comes to goblin indoctrination -- there'd be no point for the kidnapping mechanic otherwise, though it would certainly be interesting to have their individual personalities affect the outcome, leading to conflict with the more obstinate ones, etc.

"Alignment" is something I'd like to avoid.  I'd rather deal with specific universe metaphysics, which I'd hope to have generated.  It would be a fair mechanic to have some sort of "evil" associated to creatures like demons that is inherent to their nature, and as it stands, the stock demon in the raws would receive any such concept that arises, but the custom world map fields and creature variables that come up don't have to be alignment-driven.  As it stands in the raws at this time, there's a basically unused [EVIL] tag for demons and goblins (which is sort of a placeholder for their underworld status), and the evil of goblins is cultural -- aside from their negative personalities, which are inherent traits.  The demon in particular has a very nasty personality, and it's always set to extreme values on certain traits -- this is a natural property in that all demons generated will be this way, though we have no idea what the underworld was like...  perhaps it affects demons in horrible, horrible ways.

I think racial loyalty/xenophobia could work as both a creature (natural) and an entity (cultural) parameter.  Ideally, for modding purposes, every parameter would be handled that way, so that you could set a xenophobia value wherever you think it should be for humans, and then have some of their societies modify that value.  Wherever I'd stick that on the DF humans, I think the system should probably be set up to allow that sort of wiggling.

As for leaders and good vs. evil ones etc., there really isn't a lot of interaction at this point between the leader's personality and their overall culture.  Of course, that sort of thing is a drama/conflict goldmine and should be exploited, but we aren't there yet.  In general though, instead of good vs. evil, it would have to handle the creatures personality and ethical framework vs. the personality and ethical framework of the host culture -- that would just have to be handled a step at a time.  An elf enslaved from its formerly tree-loving society and placed in the role of a woodcutter currently feels no conflict -- I basically have to go through all of the professions and teach it more about each one so that critters can better judge their situation.

I'm sorry this is all sort of vague/rambling/dodging, but like I said, the core response here is that I'd like to have the game designed to answer most of the questions in more than one way.  I don't really have a desired direction so much as I'd like a robust system.  Of course, this is a lot of work, so many of the issues will fall squarely on one side of the fence or the other and choices will be made, but it's not something I can really anticipate for a given DF civilization, since I don't have strong feelings about it.

The same holds for all the metaphysical/deity stuff -- I'll put in as much as I can put in, and for magic and religion in particular, I'm not planning to do much with stock DF at all -- it really should be world dependent (though the already-defined religion spheres such as "fire" and so on will certainly constrain the outcome in stock DF a bit).  Some of the religions should be fake (they are all fake now), and some of them should be real (probably has to wait for magic, though some elements can be put in early).  Right now, religious groups can build temples and convert people within sites, but there aren't any attempts to convert outside of that, and there's no general notion of cultural diffusion or anything like that.  This will start to come up more with the caravan arc when civilizations start to have non-violent dealings with one another.

...  I have to get back to work.  I apologize in advance for the lack of proofreading.

[Idles]

I think the direction you're heading is great, Toady.  The balance between nature and nurture that exists within the game, that will hopefully become more prevalent, is definitely one of its strong points--it most certainly assists in the creation of interesting situations and emergent gameplay.

[Neonivek]

Interesting read.

I don't think I am in the condition right now to understand it... but I am sure that in 5 or 6 hours Ill be all excited

[Granite26]

Toady,

Thanks, that was exactly what I was looking for...  Just picking your brain for what you wanted to have reflected in the code so I could start wrapping my brain around what would eventually be possible.

[ June 11, 2008: Message edited by: Granite26 ]