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[Exlo]

And that's exactly what Toady talked about when he mentioned "Dwarven Magic".  As in, no fireballs, no lightning bolts, no magic missiles... just good solid Craftsdwarfship, plus maybe a blessing from the Gods.  Basically, Dwarves will never have "proper magic", but rather they will only have "artifacts".  We have the artifacts already, but for now they're just pretty, very expensive, very dangerous goblin/kobold bait.  But sooner or later they'll have special powers.

And that's what will allow people to mod in glasses.  As it is, I don't believe items can affect stats or skills other than armor values... and even then it's actually seemingly handled by adding an extra "tissue layer" of metal/leather/chain onto the skin of the wearer's body... not AC or HP or anything like that.

As an artifact, glasses would be very hard to procure, if that's what your getting at. I think they should be hard to craft, but not that hard. That's also very random. I think magic artifacts are fine and dandy, but glasses should be like that without being true artifacts.

I was also unaware of the lack of stat and skill changing by items, that would make what I'm suggesting significantly harder to put in the game as is...

[tHe_silent_H]

personly I think glasses and maybe monicales should be in the gzme, along with vision degredation due to age/hereidry/illines or combat, and be more of a medical thing/adding to descriptions/feel of dwarfs, say a bookkepping dwarf might have to have reading glasses after a time and thus making them "look" more like a bookkeeping dwarf, would also be good for old dwarfs telling stories in the up and comming taverns.

[Jeoshua]

No, that's not what I'm saying at all, tho I do agree partially.  The chances of someone crafting artifact clothing is pretty rare, and any one specific piece even more rare (and if you believe the Dwarven Index theory, rarer the more useful it would be)

What I had meant was that until the framework for items boosting skills through magic is in the game, it's unlikely that monacles would mean anything more to the game than basic "eye clothing items"

[Exlo]

No, that's not what I'm saying at all, tho I do agree partially.  The chances of someone crafting artifact clothing is pretty rare, and any one specific piece even more rare (and if you believe the Dwarven Index theory, rarer the more useful it would be)

What I had meant was that until the framework for items boosting skills through magic is in the game, it's unlikely that monacles would mean anything more to the game than basic "eye clothing items"

I see. I just think its silly that it would have to be done with magic, (Though that way seems easiest.) some items just naturally improve things. Like medicinal herbs or, obviously, glasses, if made the right way.

[NW_Kohaku]

There were such things as very basic reading glasses in the ancient and medieval world.  They were something you would have to hold up to your eyes to use properly, kind of like binoculars, but with only one lens per eye held together by a triangular metal frame.  Jeweler's glass would be a form of monocle, at that.  They used those for focusing in on the details of a particular gem. I'm not sure when jeweler's glass first came into use.

As for "what is period-appropriate", the cutoff date is generally listed as 1400, which has nothing to do with the year that DF has as a default starting date.  1400 is basically the start of the Rennaisance, when gunpowder weaponry and the like started to really take off, and the sciences were starting to really be rediscovered and improved upon.  (Of course, many Classical Greek/Roman styles of machinery and architecture are still used, so the "rediscovery" part is fine.)

Generally, the guidelines seem to be "It's cool if the Romans, Arabs, or pre-14th century Chinese did it first".  Exception being the toy steam engine not being a real steam engine before we have THAT argument again.

[Uristocrat]

Generally, the guidelines seem to be "It's cool if the Romans, Arabs, or pre-14th century Chinese did it first".  Exception being the toy steam engine not being a real steam engine before we have THAT argument again.

Even so, if we get sufficiently movable fortress sections, you *know* that someone will try to hook up an ancient dwarven adamantine battlemech with magma blasters.

[sockless]

I'm in two minds about adding in steam power and stuff. I would love steampunk DF, but at the same time, I like it as it is.

Basically, I'd like to have the option to mod in steampunk DF if I wanted. The problem is that Toady isn't going to add in a framework for steam power if it's not going to be in the core game.

Coking was first used for industrial applications in 1601, so not everything follows the guideline, and I don't thing it should, because as it has been said: This is Dwarf period.

[NW_Kohaku]

Even so, if we get sufficiently movable fortress sections, you *know* that someone will try to hook up an ancient dwarven adamantine battlemech with magma blasters.

Hell, that "someone" will be me. 

Well, actually, I'd make it from stone, and I'd probably make it use windmills for power just because I could, although water reactors would work just as well.  And I also want the spider walker to have marksdwarf pods where they sit in bubble "turrets" of battlements surrounding a stairwell.  Presuming we don't have the ability to turn pieces of fortress, there will need to be two sets of legs - one for moving north/south and one for moving east/west.  That will make "spider walkers" more likely.  It depends a bit on the size of the moving components, but I could sketch one out right now based on what I expect the pieces to look like. 

But anyway, moving pieces is something that will let players do all sorts of really crazy things, but which don't really alter the timeline, it just abuses the heck out of the loose physics of the game.  After all, that walker will be standing on one or two legs that don't need to be balanced at all, and where I can make the entire body out of stone, and the legs out of soap, yet it will support the weight of the walker just fine.  There are some things that are just silliness, but because they don't dramatically impact the feel of the game unless players really want it to, it's OK. 

Royal Jelly isn't really realistic, but it doesn't change the game much by being there.  Making gunpowder and steam engines changes the setting of the game. 

It's hard to have a world where adventurers fear the shadows at night when alone when at the same time, they are waxing their handlebar mustache and setting their phasers to "vaporize bogeyman".

Top hats and monocles are silliness that changes the feel of the game, so I wouldn't want them in vanilla, but would be quite happy to have the option to mod it in. 

For vanilla, something like a jeweler's lens or a spyglass wouldn't be totally out of character with the game, if potentially a little anachronstic, but monocles are just silliness for the sake of silliness.