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[draeath]

You know, you could use Legends mode to build a world to frame your plot inside

[Uristides]

You know, you could use Legends mode to build a world to frame your plot inside

Which I'm surprised doesn't seem to be a regular pasttime of this forum. Given the amount of writers/artists we have I'd think more than one person would think expanding upon Legends seems more interesting than merely describing it or writing a LP.

[Metalax]

Procedurally-generated Shakespearian plots.

How would that be any different from regular Shakespearian plots?

[Arbinire]

Personally I find it disturbing how much of fantasy fiction has stagnated to the point where you can easily guess what a race is like from nothing but stereotypes.

Dwarfs: Magicless miners who are masters of stubborness.
Elves: Nature loving, immortal race.
Humans: Either boring and average, or total mary sues, prone to being based off of nothing but medieval Europe.
Goblins/Orks: Always Chaotic Evil plunderers, sometimes being noble savages instead.
Kobolds: Numerous entire race of cannon fodder.

I agree, it's a horrible system....until you get the person who thinks they're going to "shake things up" by making their fantasy races "totally unique".  This usually translates into making elves into savages, dwarves into spiritualists, orcs into technologists, etc....it's either that or we get hackneyed real life equivalencies like Japanese cultured elves, Aztec Orcs....see what I'm getting at here?

Shadowrun had an interesting twist on it all. If you're not familiar, look into the reboot.

Perfect example, this is probably not how you would think of an orc:

I'm pretty familiar with Shadowrun honestly, seeing as I'm a Seattle/Washington native.  Been playing it since 2nd Ed.  Even in the Shadowrun universe the tropes/racial stereotypes exist, and a common theme is to point out that the civilized troll is just as silly a stereotype as the savage bone-eating one.  It's kind of funny you use Shadowrun to try and debate against what I'm saying, because it's a series(as is/was Earthdawn) that was fond of pointing out that trying to not feed the trope/stereotype is in and of itself a trope/stereotype.

[Col_Jessep]

You know, you could use Legends mode to build a world to frame your plot inside

I actually did that with my last big fort Woundtorment. The best way to start is to look at the statues and engravings from the area that describe events from the time before you embarked. Find your "local hero(es)" and read up on them, their families, the beast the killed and how they died. with 250-500 year of history there will be some interesting stories for sure.

My local heroine was a human hunter named Guleg Laborbunnies. Her husband was killed by a werelizard. She went on a journey and began hunting giant wild beast until she found the werelizard, Hustra, a female human. They fought but Hustra killed Guleg. Ancient history of my embark site.

After all this years Hustra was still alive and terrorizing the area though. She had started her own "family" if you can call it that, spreading her curse among humans in the area. In the first autumn the merchants killed Das, one of her brood. During the winter one of my miners was surprised by another werelizard but killed him with her pick. Bleeding and with a severed leg nerve she dragged herself into my hospital and we patched her back up - after some precautions obviously.

She recovered well, became a legendary crutchwalker, hunter and marksdwarf. She earned herself a name as slayer of beasts and cursed monsters and became one of the heroes of Woundtorment.

2 more werelizards appeared but my war dogs drove them into the river where they both drowned. We dug the bodies out of the ice during winter. I knew Hustra was still in the area and alive. We were waiting for her, building traps, training dogs and militia.

Finally, after many years Hustra attacked herself. We baited her to the fort and delayed her until she turned back into a human. The trap was sprung and we caught her. She spend years caged in my great hall before my marksdwarfs killed her as punishment for her crimes. I imagine my "Slayer" enjoyed her revenge for her now useless leg.

The stories are there. You just have to find them and integrate them into your fort. Werecreatures, vampires and necromancers can have long and often interesting histories... =3

[StagnantSoul]

Yeah, legends mode is always interesting. I got a human vampire who's wife was killed by a purgatory wolf (a modded creature, rhino sized wolf with iron bones, claws, and teeth), who hunted that wolf for five hundred years. Finally, he killed him. Guess what happened that same year? I killed him, and decided to continue his hunt of purgatory wolves.

[Col_Jessep]

I even tried to increase the number of vampires during world gen but I think hundred times as many vampires was overdoing it. I had worlds with no living, sentient being in them after 50 years. Ooops... xD