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[Scruiser]

We don't want another cheap fantasy universe, we want a cheap fantasy universe generator.  A lot of fiction sounds computer generated anyway.<p>[ August 12, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

Yeah, I wrote a wall of text, read if the idea interests you that much or if you have specific xyz objection (in case I already addressed it).  Otherwise feel free to skip and jump straight into bouncing your own related ideas around.

Context:
   Dwarf fortress has a lot of the mechanics of a generic fantasy universe.  Dwarfs, Elves, Goblins, Dragons, evil necromancers and vampires, uprisings, bandits, etc.  One of the mechanics of many fantasy universes that seems to be missing is the tropes surrounding fate, prophecy, and destiny.  I propose that each of these could be procedural generated in a manner similar to secrets.

How it would work:

• Generated destinies would be applied at birth to a historical figure in world gen.  The destiny would boost some stats according to what it is.  It would also grant the historical figure buffs (and debuffs) on all of its rolls that work in favor of reaching its destiny.  At the extreme end, once more magic interactions and secrets exist, it could grant the historical figure a starting magical ability.  The number of destinies would be set as an option in world generation configuration, similar to how advanced world gen allows the player to set the number of secret, the player could set destinies to zero, for a properly fair and random history, or they could saturate their world with special snowflakes.  Modding would allow the modder to set all of the characteristics of a given destiny.  Possible destinies: lead an uprising successfully, conquer an enemy empire, become a great evil, become a great explorer, discover a secret, die in a great battle, etc.
• A Fate would use most of the same tags as a Destiny, but would enforce itself much stricter ( i.e. fated historical figure literally cannot die until they fulfill what they are fated to do).  Fates should probably be curses or gifts from god, demons, and other OP world gen figures.  Again number should be configurable in advanced world gen and modding should allow exact setting.
• A prophecy/fortelling/soothsaying (name should vary by race/culture and from world to world) is basically when historical figures are told about a upcoming Destiny or Fate and their behavior changes accordingly.  Number configurable by world gen settings.  Interesting results should happen when the number of prophecies greatly outnumber destinies and fates because then you get a whole bunch of historical figures obsessing over a single individual. (Just wait till they come to your fortress and you have waves of diplomats, invasions, and devotees)

Features Required:

• More world-gen personality, desires and goals historical figure .  The game is almost their in terms of depth of historical figures, enough so
  that this idea could be implemented now in the process of implementing historical figure behaviors for personality traits.
• Further development of the roles of gods and magic.  This feature could be implemented in low or high fantasy, but it needs to have a clear interaction with such.

Related Sources Of FUN:

• Set advanced options to leave a destiny or fate still open.  Create a adventurer and give them a destiny/fate.  Enjoy the FUN interactions.  Watch your Fated ultimate hero die to a crossbow bolt to the brain in-spite of their luck and OP stats!
• If the world gen luck bonus doesn't apply in adventur mode when they are loaded in your map, just approach a Destined hero and watch as their destiny unravels!  If it does apply, have fun killing them inspite of the odds!
• By creating interconnected webs of destiny, prophecy and fate, Modders can rig up any scenario you can imagine.  Combine with  thematic mods to setup and recreate virtually any fantasy universe.  Fate a dark lord necromancer to create an artifact with some specific traits.  Fate a hobbit to find artifact and claim it.  Fate 9 historical figures to meet together to destroy artifact.  Dwarf kills the filthy elf and takes the artifact, fate be damned! (The misses would be more fun the hits when it comes to recreating your favorite fantasy universe this way  )

Possible Objections:

• Randomly destined events may pile on top of all already random history and just make things even more chaotic and pointless in a manner worthy of Camus and Kafka (no wait this is totally a good thing)
• Might lead Toady on another epically long side quest, delaying update (this is actually the main problem with any detailed suggestion)

So yeah wall of text, climb up it and die

[Appelgren]

I tend to loathe prophecies in games - usually you are forced into the unexciting role of the "chosen one". However I think your idea allows for some fairly interesting greek tragedy-type scenarios or absurd and nonsensical fates. So you won me over.

[Sergarr]

It would probably be very annoying to discover that the person you want to kill is fated to not die...

[Scruiser]

It would probably be very annoying to discover that the person you want to kill is fated to not die...

It would either be FUN or you would get even more bragging rights for the forums.  It also depends how it is implemented.  If you stab out someones eyes and cutoff their limbs only to discover the can't bleed out because some god is keeping them alive then that is pretty interesting in and of itself (and then you bash their head over and over again till the gods give up, Heh, that would be a fun way to get cursed in adventure mode).

I tend to loathe prophecies in games - usually you are forced into the unexciting role of the "chosen one". However I think your idea allows for some fairly interesting greek tragedy-type scenarios or absurd and nonsensical fates. So you won me over.

Thats what I was going for 

The RNG already spits out a decent number of cool characters (Tholtig CryptBrain, Cacame Awemedinade etc.) and you can find and interprets lots of fun events if you know how to look through legends.  But for every cool figure, epic tragedy, or Kafkaesque absurdity you have to wade through dozens and dozens of boring events and people.  Thus this would be a way of forcing interesting events and people to align in a interesting way (isn't that what the gods do in mythology anyway?).

[GavJ]

I like the concept of prophecies as for how they would interact with gameplay. That part's not very cliche at all (if you actually use a variety, not just "you're the chosen one" as mentioned earlier), because there are few examples of games that use various interesting prophecies. Especially not ones where several might interact over multiple characters or members of a fort or something like DF allows.

However, it seems dangerous in terms of making the dialogue in game 3x more painful than its already extremely painful state. A masterful author attempting to write a good prophecy is gonna have trouble these days not making it sound strained, considering how often these are used. A random generator stands no chance.

I'm not sure how to get the possibly pretty cool gameplay without the facepalm-ery of the actual writing of it. If it's a sizeable feature, then the facepalmery of writing it out is an acceptable cost maybe, but if it's more likely a minor feature, then the facepalmery is a more significant concern.