Not sure if this is worth necroing over, but as I enjoyed the idea of a Dwarven philosopher and I had something to say here...
you know, we're talking about a dwarfish philosopher here. As we all know, dwarves much prefer good solid earth to open airy (ugh) sky. A dwarven philosopher therefore must spend a lot of time staring at boulders in order to seek philosophical wisdom and to read peoples' astrolithiology
I can't help but think that the philosopher's philosophical movement should be codified as a set of ETHICS tags.
As for dwarven divination, I imagine that, aside from stuff like entrails and palms, they could just sit in the deepest, darkest place they can find beneath the fortress and listen.
Odd. When it came to divination, I thought it would make more sense for the philosopher to look deep into the
chasms, or the glow of the
magma, to find his wisdom. However, I like all of the above. Perhaps it's a matter of personal or cultural preference, and a given philosopher could pick just one, or alternate among possible divination methods. Perhaps others like to do their thinking in the solitude of the forest. Or among the tower-caps in the caverns, now that caverns exist.
But that's all behavior to expect from a position that still requires a reason to exist in the game. I must admit I like the idea mentioned earlier about using the philosopher to switch between economic models, but that's a
lot of coding to do. The given economy is already broken, and coding others in would be that much greater a feat. The same could be said of a philosopher proposing alternative
governments, which also comes with a big can of worms.
Also, we must consider that our fortress is not an island. It is part of a nation. Any change made to your fortress's economic or political model probably constitutes rebellion, which could be all kinds of fun, actually, but the lasting implications should be considered.
The philosopher acting as a historian or story-teller, and holding discussions that high-minded Dwarves enjoy participating in (while less deep-thinking Dwarves despise having to listen to, if they happen to be in the same meeting hall), could be interesting. But what in-game effects might these discussions have, other than granting happy or unhappy thoughts? How often do we really want our haulers, masons, engineers, and doctors running off to do something that will only improve their otherwise-unused social skills? We already have enough parties!
If we're looking at the philosopher as an additional noble, we have to look at what it brings to the game. Not just from an immersion standpoint, but a mechanical one. Of the existing nobles, the ones that only behave differently and require specific rooms are the Mayor, Baron, and King. They mostly just make problems for the player to solve: satisfying requirements and mandates. The rest of the time they're just sitting around being Nobles. I don't think that's exactly what we want out of the philosopher.
The other nobles all handle specific fortress functions; they handle trading, dispense dwarven justice, enable workshop profiles and queues, or make certain screens (Justice, Stocks, Health) available or more useful. If we want the philosopher to
solve problems instead of
create them (though it should almost certainly do both), we need a genuine use for it in the game, not a set of behaviors we would see in philosophers living or dead.
That is: The question here is not what the philosopher can do for the fortress, but what it can do for
the player. To this end, I can think of the following:
* Improving a culture's ability to deal with death & trauma through enlightenment - This is almost more the duty of religion, and on an individual level it's more of a psychiatrist.
* Allowing access to a "History" screen within Fortress Mode that entails stories that have been carved/lectured about within the fortress. Usefulness is extremely limited, but maybe interesting. The line between this and "Legends Mode" would have to be drawn somewhere, though. Alternatively, someone made the suggestion that the only carvings available are those that the philosopher has educated the fortress about. A great idea, but again it has minimal use or impact for the code required.
* Allowing or facilitating a change in local ETHICS tags. I'm not sure how much the game should be able to affect its own raws, but having the opportunity to change them so that you can start/stop butchering goblins and elves might be... fun. Perhaps being able to view what your culture believes - a look at their pantheon and current ETHICS tags, for example - would be interesting. Not much more useful than the History screen, though. Any capability in this regard would probably have consequences ranging outside the fortress and its lifetime. Alternatively, one might have the difficulty of trying to
stop their philosopher from introducing bad ideas. Maybe he would occasionally pop up a dialogue wherein a random change is proposed and you can accept or refuse it...
I would love to see the philosopher return, but I can see how it might have to wait until more is done with foreign relations, guilds, and religions. :/
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Topic: Various philosopher suggestions (Read 19604 times)