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[Robsoie]

A big interest i see in the possiblity of manually creating characters and related (or unrelated) NPC, their relations, status, stats, equipment, jobs, etc... all according to your ideas would be the ability to create your own "starting scenario" .

Basically it would allow an "adventure creator" within the DF Adventure mode, setting up factions, kingdoms, monsters, allies, opposition, etc... as if you were an active RPG DM instead of being a passive subject of the random procedural stuff like currently.

[NW_Kohaku]

I suppose this would work if you pulled from the entity populations that the creature killed and turned them into hist figs. But what if it didn't kill any entity populations in that town that it could take from? Then it didn't actually kill anyone in the simulation and then you have to retcon that, that creates an inconsistency and these inconsistencies would then keep building up over time. until eventually after like 20 adventurers your legends mode is filled to the brim with inconsistencies.

I mean if you backfill/retcon thoroughly enough or just have systems in place to prevent these kind of weird things from happening then you wouldnt run into these issues.. but Its still rather strange.

If it didn't kill anyone, then "killed your parents" wouldn't be available as a random or chosen event, simple enough.  All that takes is enough sanity checks to cover the contingencies.

The point would be that the model would look for what is possible, but not confirmed by hard facts, so as to allow for, again, Schrodinger's Gun to be valid. If someone did die, but it wasn't clear who, you can say it was your dad/mom/brother/boyfriend/identical twin, or at least, that it was your favorite pet chicken that the wereboar devoured if the only deaths were chickens. (NOOOOOOOO! CLUCKY!)

Or, to put it another way, there might be a pool of random events that might be possible no matter what, (for example, being mugged in a city might be an event that could always happen, because such an event wouldn't be historically notable, anyway,) but if there was a military invasion, and the city where you grew up was conquered, then it makes sense to have that event take place in the background narrative, just like if you were writing a historical fiction book about someone growing up in East Germany after the Russians put down the Iron Curtain, then you'd have to account for major dramatic events like the Berlin Airlift, or the fall of the Berlin Wall being in their past.

[GoblinCookie]

The basic problem with this kind of idea has always been that player's would simply take over characters they do not like and then have them commit suicide for no apparent reason or sabotage something in a certain way in order to facilitate the success of a characters that *should* be the enemy of that character.  Having the game replace an existing character by having them die for gamey reasons is basically the npc commits suicide for player ends problem actually written explicitly into the mechanics. 

Aside from that, pretty much everything is already in; we already choose our skills, we also in a very rudimentary way decide our social standing; so I cannot really see how this suggestion is not really already implemented.  The only really notable idea on this thread is the potential to define who your (non-historical) parents and other family members are out of the available professions of the site, that would add something to the game but since important people do not have non-historical children being the child of a noble is ruled out. 

Most of this thread is basically the player is an omnipotent god that should be able to rewrite history and bend the universe to his will effortlessly.  However there is one way that the child of noble wish of the player could be met I can think of.  That would be to select an existing historical couple, have them conceive a child that would not otherwise have existed and run the simulation on autopilot for as many years as it takes for them to grow up (or reach a user-defined age).  Of course there is the risk that the player's character will come to a sticky end in that time, or end up in a goblin fortress more likely; but that is I guess in the spirit of the game.  So in essence the whole concept is kind of "if this couple made a baby now what would happen to it?". 

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

In fact, that is similar to my idea! Did you mean that the time would HAVE to pass in hands off, worldgen mode, or that I could make a fort in the mean time?

[Bumber]

Be the person you want to be in just 3 easy steps:
Step 1) Desire to have a warm personality.
Step 2) 777
Step 3) ‼Profit‼

And this is the truth.

Odd that you feel the need to assure me that you weren't just lying the whole time. 

haha, I have no idea why I felt the need to say that.

Untrusted4life, yo.

[GoblinCookie]

In fact, that is similar to my idea! Did you mean that the time would HAVE to pass in hands off, worldgen mode, or that I could make a fort in the mean time?

I think we would realistically have to take time off, all manner of complications are liable to occur if we were allowed to play (in either mode) while our character was growing up.  We have the simulation running and then we potentially have our character being offloaded, onloaded, offloaded, onloaded again and so on; it is my hunch that the likely outcome of this is going to be a small legion worth of bugs.

[NW_Kohaku]

The basic problem with this kind of idea has always been that player's would simply take over characters they do not like and then have them commit suicide for no apparent reason or sabotage something in a certain way in order to facilitate the success of a characters that *should* be the enemy of that character.  Having the game replace an existing character by having them die for gamey reasons is basically the npc commits suicide for player ends problem actually written explicitly into the mechanics. 

Your grammar made that rather difficult to read, but presuming I understand it correctly...

What you're complaining about in the first paragraph is pretty much exactly what already exists in games like Crusader Kings II if you don't play Ironman Mode - you can play as a king of one nation, save, go back to the menu, then start playing as another landed noble. Hypothetically, you can sabotage a nation, then play as a smaller rival to take advantage... But honestly, I've never seen anyone really do that, just because it makes the game dissatisfying. 

It is, after all, basically cheating, and if you wanted to cheat, there are more direct ways of doing so.  Worrying that players will take advantage of extraneous methods of game manipulation like this is on par with worrying that mods will allow players to make dwarves that do not eat or have emotions.

Aside from that, pretty much everything is already in; we already choose our skills, we also in a very rudimentary way decide our social standing; so I cannot really see how this suggestion is not really already implemented.  The only really notable idea on this thread is the potential to define who your (non-historical) parents and other family members are out of the available professions of the site, that would add something to the game but since important people do not have non-historical children being the child of a noble is ruled out. 

Most of this thread is basically the player is an omnipotent god that should be able to rewrite history and bend the universe to his will effortlessly.  However there is one way that the child of noble wish of the player could be met I can think of.  That would be to select an existing historical couple, have them conceive a child that would not otherwise have existed and run the simulation on autopilot for as many years as it takes for them to grow up (or reach a user-defined age).  Of course there is the risk that the player's character will come to a sticky end in that time, or end up in a goblin fortress more likely; but that is I guess in the spirit of the game.  So in essence the whole concept is kind of "if this couple made a baby now what would happen to it?".

The children of a historical, yes, but not necessarily the grandchildren to the best of my knowledge. 

Regardless, there are more important aspects to characters than just their skills. I'd rather see player character personalities modeled.  (In fact, I'd like to see player playstyle actually affect player character personality.)

You may trivialize adding in a backstory to a player character to the point where you apparently don't even acknowledge that was the main request, but many players would obviously greatly appreciate it.

[Untrustedlife]

The basic problem with this kind of idea has always been that player's would simply take over characters they do not like and then have them commit suicide for no apparent reason or sabotage something in a certain way in order to facilitate the success of a characters that *should* be the enemy of that character.  Having the game replace an existing character by having them die for gamey reasons is basically the npc commits suicide for player ends problem actually written explicitly into the mechanics. 

Your grammar made that rather difficult to read, but presuming I understand it correctly...

What you're complaining about in the first paragraph is pretty much exactly what already exists in games like Crusader Kings II if you don't play Ironman Mode - you can play as a king of one nation, save, go back to the menu, then start playing as another landed noble. Hypothetically, you can sabotage a nation, then play as a smaller rival to take advantage... But honestly, I've never seen anyone really do that, just because it makes the game dissatisfying. 

It is, after all, basically cheating, and if you wanted to cheat, there are more direct ways of doing so.  Worrying that players will take advantage of extraneous methods of game manipulation like this is on par with worrying that mods will allow players to make dwarves that do not eat or have emotions.

Aside from that, pretty much everything is already in; we already choose our skills, we also in a very rudimentary way decide our social standing; so I cannot really see how this suggestion is not really already implemented.  The only really notable idea on this thread is the potential to define who your (non-historical) parents and other family members are out of the available professions of the site, that would add something to the game but since important people do not have non-historical children being the child of a noble is ruled out. 

Most of this thread is basically the player is an omnipotent god that should be able to rewrite history and bend the universe to his will effortlessly.  However there is one way that the child of noble wish of the player could be met I can think of.  That would be to select an existing historical couple, have them conceive a child that would not otherwise have existed and run the simulation on autopilot for as many years as it takes for them to grow up (or reach a user-defined age).  Of course there is the risk that the player's character will come to a sticky end in that time, or end up in a goblin fortress more likely; but that is I guess in the spirit of the game.  So in essence the whole concept is kind of "if this couple made a baby now what would happen to it?".

The children of a historical, yes, but not necessarily the grandchildren to the best of my knowledge. 

Regardless, there are more important aspects to characters than just their skills. I'd rather see player character personalities modeled.  (In fact, I'd like to see player playstyle actually affect player character personality.)

You may trivialize adding in a backstory to a player character to the point where you apparently don't even acknowledge that was the main request, but many players would obviously greatly appreciate it.

If the parents are historical all their children will be historical a creature cannot lose its "hist fig" status . An sicne it tracks over many many years, all the noble families tend to be tracked since the worlds beginning and thereby all of their family members will be hist figs aswell.

(unless the Nobel families die off, in which case it then will grab from the entity population and create new ones)

Regardless, there are more important aspects to characters than just their skills. I'd rather see player character personalities modeled.

Also you can completely define your player characters personality in the current version, down to everything Not just skills.
But I know you said you dont play version 42, so you didnt know that.
That also effects your "needs"

[Dirst]

I like NW's idea of using Schrodinger's Gun, but I'm not sure how much overhead will be needed to store possible choices.

In an ideal full-information Schrodinger's Gun character generator, you would see every possible event/characteristic that could be applied in the context of that game world (if you don't have any babysnatcher civs, then you can't be snatched as a baby).  Select one of those, and a bunch of the other options go dark because they can't plausibly happen together.

For example, if you picked "survived a megabeast attack during childhood" it probably constrains a lot of you history because not many sites can accomodate that event.

With luck, the player doesn't get painted into a corner requiring a historical figure (which puts crippling constraints on just about everything).  With "cull insignificant historical figures" enabled, more options are available.  Ideally the character is coming from the general population, where the full range of stats/skills/personality for that race and civ are plausible.

Given the size of the DF screen, a more realistic approach would be something akin to the LCS life story, but (1) allow the player to skip back and forth at will, and (2) show grayed out options to demonstrate the full potential.  If the player picks something interesting in the middle, it could gray out almost every option before and after.

[NW_Kohaku]

If the parents are historical all their children will be historical a creature cannot lose its "hist fig" status . An sicne it tracks over many many years, all the noble families tend to be tracked since the worlds beginning and thereby all of their family members will be hist figs aswell.

(unless the Nobel families die off, in which case it then will grab from the entity population and create new ones)

(Insert joke about Alfred Nobel's lineage having an impact upon DF here.)

Anyway, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case.  I don't know, but there may be a category of "historical by association" that means historical figures that are notable only for being related to someone else who is notable cannot extend that notability past a few degrees of separation.  I don't have evidence of this, but it would make sense from a programming standpoint to prevent an explosion of historical figures from fecund races that live in peaceful times. 

At the very least, many such figures tend to get culled at the end of worldgen, and as such all records of their existence are lost because the game doesn't consider it worth keeping up on them.

A great-grandson of a queen might just be a farmer, with no entries in legends mode at all, which would be enough from which a player adventurer could claim descendence, even from a royal family that lost power.  Doing so doesn't require changing anything in Legends Mode, because they don't exist in Legends Mode. 

[Dirst]

A historical figure can only be culled if it never killed anyone and never had any children, so "historical figureness" never dilutes from a bloodline, some members of each generation in the bloodline might get culled.  Not sure if failing-to-reproduce-because-still-a-child-at-the-end-of-worldgen causes culling.

[GoblinCookie]

Your grammar made that rather difficult to read, but presuming I understand it correctly...

What you're complaining about in the first paragraph is pretty much exactly what already exists in games like Crusader Kings II if you don't play Ironman Mode - you can play as a king of one nation, save, go back to the menu, then start playing as another landed noble. Hypothetically, you can sabotage a nation, then play as a smaller rival to take advantage... But honestly, I've never seen anyone really do that, just because it makes the game dissatisfying. 

It is, after all, basically cheating, and if you wanted to cheat, there are more direct ways of doing so.  Worrying that players will take advantage of extraneous methods of game manipulation like this is on par with worrying that mods will allow players to make dwarves that do not eat or have emotions.

It is a concern that the devs have raised specifically regarding playing historical characters, I know that it bothers the devs *not* me in particular.  Given the nature of the game by which you die for real rather than being able to load again it is a real problem.  The reason is that a person might be pissed off/angry/frustrated with the game and there is no way to go back if they fly into a rage and decide to have everyone that killed them earlier throw themselves off a cliff and then there is no way to undo that once they have come to their senses. 

The children of a historical, yes, but not necessarily the grandchildren to the best of my knowledge. 

Regardless, there are more important aspects to characters than just their skills. I'd rather see player character personalities modeled.  (In fact, I'd like to see player playstyle actually affect player character personality.)

You may trivialize adding in a backstory to a player character to the point where you apparently don't even acknowledge that was the main request, but many players would obviously greatly appreciate it.

No, all children forever will be historical characters; by virtue of the fact that only historical characters actually reproduce and have families. 

I did not trivialize the request, I pointed out that the mechanics for having a general backstory are already in; you are either an ordinary person or a hearthperson/fortress guard.  There just are not many general backstories to have, mostly owing to the lack of social classes/division of labour in the world's Communist-like social system.  In order to have solid backstories that reference actual events or characters we will obviously have to be able to play historical characters as only these have a really existing life history that is detailed.  Rather than simply proposing that we add in social classes/divisions of labour simply for the sake of us having more types of generic backstory for us to select for our adventurer, I thought of a way that we could have an actual historical background while avoiding the player driven mass-suicide 'problem'. 

To those to whom detailed back story is important they can be given the option to play as the child of two historical characters that are presently existing and set a target age for them to become player-controlled.  You would select your parents and the game has the two conceive a child who then grows up for the predefined length of time as the world automatically progresses until the pre-defined amount of time passes at which point the player can step into their shoes of that person wherever they now are and whatever has happened to them.  If the player's future character dies before the time passes then the world-progression automatically freezes with everything that has happened being saved. 

[Dirst]

This has nothing to do with how the economy or social order work, it's about locating a non-historical figure that could plausibly have lived through a player-chosen sequence of events.

Events occur at sites that have generic populations.  The detailed backstory can be built up from the events (harassed by brigands, raided by a megabeast, repelled an invasion, etc.), and an important simplified mechanic can be to specify that the non-historical person spent their entire life at the one site.  This prevents the player from setting up a convoluted history that requires the child's family to move great distances every couple years.

Krystal (from Orphan Black): "No, I'm not alright!  Why do weird things keep happening to me?!"