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[Lestrage]

Legends mode has a rich variety of world information that the player of a fortress or adventure may not come to know. Even searching legends mode itself a person may not read a lot of interesting stuff due to the amount of info there is. Legends mode details all things significant or insignificant, So why not take interesting info from legends and make these available in gameplay which can enrich the context of the world played in. And if teh player is curious then can go to legends mode to find out more.

This might work if it is possible to make a pattern recognising program agent that mines on the legends information. I've read a very small amount of legends info on a dragon, so I'll talk using this example. This is just a vague suggestion to get across idea I wouldn't know how to implement.

The program is built to detect possible interesting narratives, patterns and story arcs. So it would find events that match resolutions or climaxes : eg a great battle / or slaying of a great beast may be a climax,  the dying of a hero or fall of a civilisation/fort may be a resolution. The program finds relevant details that fill between these, and exposition information that comes before as well as and relevant aftermath events and puts these all in order. It could also could check for patterns and mark sub-subjects that are linked with main subject: If an ongoing menace by megabeast is main subject, and it continually attacks a settlement, there could be expanding on the details of settlement.

I wonder if it is possible to program game so that events that occur fall into patterns of narratives and story arcs (changing probabilities)



Suggesting applications :

+++ a "researcher" profession. As you play fort mode you will find artefacts : engravings, writings, objects, structures etc that have research value. You can designate these to be researched, and a dwarf with the skill will spend time at the artefact gathering information. Once job is completed you get a report of historical and background info. It could be that one of the dorfs does research, or it is actually manually done by player in fort or adventure mode.
Research may add important world related rumours to your map screen.  in fort mode you may be able to send dorf parties abroad on exploration and research expeditions.

+++ historian profession : Researchers or working with researchers These dorfs / npcs keep records of context / historical information, and can be consulted. They can publish more extensive historical book artefacts with interesting information. (profession possibly merge with researcher). Story and
historical books may have hight value or magical properties in world (after myth gen update).

+++ story tellers : These dorfs learn interesting narratives from available information, and can do story telling activities to crowds of people. People who hear stories gain further happy thoughts and are entertained. The probability that they may be taken by a strange mood and create a related artefact is increased. These is a chance that crafters who hear a story telling or read written work may create higher quality non-artefact items (possibly related).
Story tellings can happen once a season or year.

- I guess also newer story tellers may learn from preceding story tellers, so stories get handed down generations. Maybe the story may change/generalise/inflate over time possibly turning into myth and legend level stories.


Benefit? 

After uncovering legends info, these can be added to descriptions of locations. A location may receive visitors, pilgrims or adventurers if the fame of story reaches outer world. Info that reveals locations of lost artefacts may be found. Info that reveals hidden or lost secrets and powers of world may be found. Info that reveals/expands context important characters may be found (eg person X is descendant of hero Y). Possibly uncovering story may trigger further interesting chains and patterns of events to occur in fort or adventure.

These are a few ideas I could think of and the idea is legends mode can be the starting point to enrich context and narrative of both adventure and fort mode. I'm not sure how story miner can be implemented or on the effects of uncovering story.

[Putnam]

Dwarves already tell stories when socializing, actually, and if you v->enter them during such it'll say which legends even they're telling a story about in particular.

[Lestrage]

Thats interesting I did not know that, I've not encountered many books so far - is there any chance collections of legends info can be read in works by dorfs?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Thats interesting I did not know that, I've not encountered many books so far - is there any chance collections of legends info can be read in works by dorfs?

Yes, but it's only one-off events so far. "Urist tells the story of the stealing of a pig-tail sock by Melty-Kiss the Purple Flame, the dragon".

Building a sophisticated AI to understand how threads of Legends info could string together into a sophisticated (or even vaguely interesting) story is something that sophisticated AI narrative programmers are all striving to achieve. If Toady put his mind to it, he might get there one day. More likely a modder will get there first though as the data is all (mostly) exportable.