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[Sfon]

This is more relevant to adventure mode than dwarf mode.

I was recently reminded of how a game called Darklands handled some things. One of the coolest things about it was literacy not being assumed. It was a skill as any other, and not the most common. In fact developing literacy and the like was just as much of a long-term commitment with gradual gains over time as other skills. As it and other such skill developed, many things became easier.

In Darklands it was difficult to get many services without education (literacy, language skills, and/or some knowledge about the subject). And being uneducated was a hard, though not impossible, hole to climb out of. It was very difficult to get tutors if you were uneducated as the elite didn't like dealing with bumpkins. And even when one agreed to teach you for a while literacy influenced how quickly you could learn. Snob skills were not important for learning everything, just snob things. However snob things included religion/lore, alchemy, and medicine which were important to every party. Simply finding an alchemist was nearly impossible without moderate knowledge and even then they were egotistical and easy to anger. Universities and especially doctors were easier to find. However universities were very picky and refused to even deal with you using the common tongue. Most doctors had poor skill, and you needed medical knowledge to avoid finding out the guinea pig way.

[JohnieRWilkins]

That sounds awesome. You make Darklands sound awesome. DF definitely needs to track literacy once books and literature come around. This could be a great use for the student/teacher skills.

[Dwarfoloid]

ADOM (another roguelike) has illiteracy as well. You can remove that by eating a corpse of a sage IIRC.

Anyway, it would be quite awesome addition to DF with all the possible social ramifications for dwarf mode and all the practical difficulties for adventure mode. Ofc, in adventure mode especially there isn't any need to read at all at the moment nor is there any detailed interaction with the world (such as seeking a tutor to teach you how to read), so it's more of something that should be kept in mind until the game becomes more fleshed out.

[Lord Vetinari]

Darklands IS awesome. Not the kind of awesome you'll expect these days (it was pretty much text-based, except for the fighting scenes), but it is one of the most complex, rich and rewarding CRPGs of all times, something that is eons above the shallow crap that most mainstream software houses pull out today.

Support, I'd love to see adventure mode become more roleplay oriented, with a wider range of NPCs interactions.