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[Nasikabatrachus]

Yeah, Legends mode is already pretty fun to trawl, especially since one's ability to gain information during play is relatively limited. My biggest personal hope for future DFs is that one will be able to wander the world in adventure mode and write Silmarillions based on the information one can gather with some persistence and curiosity. Even so, I suspect that Legends mode will rise in popularity after this next release.

Anyways, questions.

Dear Toady One, you've mentioned that you don't want PC adventurers to be forced to run away involuntarily because of emotional status effects like terror. Will PCs instead be affected involuntarily by such emotional states with things like combat effectiveness penalties, etc?

[Footkerchief]

Dear Toady One, you've mentioned that you don't want PC adventurers to be forced to run away involuntarily because of emotional status effects like terror. Will PCs instead be affected involuntarily by such emotional states with things like combat effectiveness penalties, etc?

Some extensive speculation from DF Talk:

Capntastic:   I think that the important thing would be to - if there are limitations - maybe not make them limitations so much as guidelines, and if there are guidelines make them something that the player wants to follow. Maybe through some sort of cultural benefit or something similar, or just make it ...
Toady:   For dwarf mode, yeah, for that. It's the conflicts we were talking about where we let the player do what they want but there are norms that can be followed. It's kind of the same idea as putting a personality on your adventurer, it's like 'Your adventurer's a coward' ...
Capntastic:   'You're a coward and you cry yourself to sleep every night'
Toady:   And then when you go to attack a monster there are two choices, you can either act out of character and maybe the game doesn't actually penalise you for that, or the game is like 'no you can't walk towards the monster'. That would be annoying, there's this sense in which your adventurer having a personality is a real hindrance on play and you'd have to be very confident in your system if you were going to actually force restrictions, and I don't think I'd ever be confident enough in setting something up that wasn't really annoying. So you'd want to allow the maximum freedom there. You could put in penalties, like attack penalties if it thinks your player should be freaked out or afraid or something, but even that interferes with a role playing in a sense because maybe the confluence of events that led up to that point would not really admit cowardice even in a cowardly person for whatever reason. So if it suddenly popped up 'You're feeling a little afraid' at the bottom of the screen 'minus five', then that might drop you out of whatever moment you've been building towards. It's difficult to do internal psychology that way and at the same time maintain the role playing immersion. On the other hand maybe it enhances the role playing immersion in a lot of ways because you see that the character is behaving in a predictable fashion, so like I said it's down to the quality of the system and I'm not sure how good I could do there.
Capntastic:   What might work there would be an Ultima style 'if you had to fight a dragon would you throw rocks at it, or sneak up behind it and hit it with a rock, or drop a rock on it from a contraption you built', maybe not with the rock theme but instilling the personality onto the character before you play it.
Toady:   And then at that point ... I guess the issue there is that dealing with a changing situation might be difficult and that's kind of what I was getting at with the half baked example is that you need to be able to deal with situations where the character's personality could be overcome for a moment, and if it decided that you didn't overcome it but in your mind you had that's where you start to chafe a little bit. But yeah if you write down what you think the player is like just so interactions in town are befitting your overall demeanour and that kind of thing is certainly doable, just for an overall reactions thing. Specific penalties and mechanics might still be an issue but for the overall reputation and just how people react to how you are, it could be good. Also as kind of a general ... what's it called, perks and faults and all that kind of thing, if that worked through a personality system then it would be easier to swallow mostly if you picked that you were cowardly and then you get combat minuses all the time; at least you wouldn't be surprised.
Rainseeker:   Perhaps you could go on a quest to rid yourself of cowardice.
Toady:   Well if you go on a quest it should probably rid you of cowardice. I guess that's one of those lessons from children's books. It's all about judging player intent, I don't know if it's even weird to half way through your life or anytime you want to be able to go in and tweak your personality numbers. You'd run into power gaming issues there I guess, it's a thing where you can tell the ... If you told the game 'I'm angry right now' and then it started reacting accordingly it fits back into the conversation engine; should you be able to not just say a thing but put in the tone for how you're talking to somebody and so feed your tone and your actual content of your statement - tone, gestures, all that kind of thing - to the extent that you want to feed that information in to vary the responses, so that you can behave in character. Maybe you wouldn't be able to raise your voice at somebody if you had the wrong personality for it or something, it's undetermined right now, but all very interesting anyway.
[...]
Rainseeker:   I just remembered, my priority is not battle, it's thinking! I'm going to go think now!
Toady:   Having anger screw you up when you're fighting or having that kind of stuff, or just being totally scared, having that screw you up, that's certainly ... You'd hate to start with that sort of constitution as an adventurer probably, just always being a coward, but that runs into a whole larger conversation about whether or not adventurers should have emotion at all when they player's playing them ... There's a big question there about how much that interferes with your role playing. I think there's an ongoing discussion right now about that in one of the dev things, like whether or not it would be a good idea to have you get bored, so that you want to go off drinking and whoring or whatever you need to do, or sitting in your fancy leather couch so that you regenerate for your adventurer. It interferes with role playing ...
Rainseeker:   Kind of turning into The Sims at that point.
Toady:   Yeah. It interferes with role play to tell you what you're thinking , but at the same time it makes you act more like a real person. So it's a trick, and I don't like doing that, but it makes a lot of sense to, so it's a difficult decision.

[Toady One]

(probably going to miss another dev log today -- weekend has been surprisingly camera and mic-full, though I did get started on post-world-gen AI reclaims, hopefully get something up on that in a day or two)

[Cruxador]

(probably going to miss another dev log today -- weekend has been surprisingly camera and mic-full, though I did get started on post-world-gen AI reclaims, hopefully get something up on that in a day or two)

And here I was hoping it meant you were getting ready to release.

[DG]

Tarn's celebrity is rising.

[monk12]

Yeah, I'm intrigued to find out what that's all about.

[EnigmaticHat]

Tarn's celebrity is rising.

Knowing Toady, he's probably going to find all sorts of ways to make money off of this.

[LordBaal]

Ladies calendar's anyone? Thought seriously, it's weird to hear about that, according to mainstream media, our beloved duo is camera shy somehow.

[Mel_Vixen]

Maybe a lecture interview on how to make consistant procedural worlds. I for the Games industry toadys experience must be like a treasuretrove.

Heh that or toady was out in the woods photgraphing and recording Animals to incoorporate the sounds into the game

[thvaz]

From the devlog:

The mayor's father was a tragic character, obsessed with his own mortality, but unable to secure the secrets of life and death before becoming a skink monster, attacking communities until he died of old age in 93.

Don't werebeasts live forever (unless killed) in the current version?

[dennislp3]

I have never heard of were beasts living forever, just vampires as far as I know

[Knight Otu]

Godcursed werebeasts live forever. The infected ones can die of old age.

[Calathar]

If we happen to reclaim a fort which fell to a FB or other MB, and if the beast happened to set its lair there, are the initial 7 to actually confront it? I.e. will the beast be there when the party arrives?

I think we can assume he meant that it would be there when he put

Over the last 100 years, the dragon has defeated seven heroes and is looking forward to seven dwarves or another naive adventurer.

which meant either your adventurer or your starting 7 in dwarf mode can confront it.

[Dwarfu]

In 2010 Toady had the game tested by a small group of testers before release. Given that this version surpassed 2010 DF's length of development I wonder if he is gonna try it again.

No.

[misko27]

Well, Google indicates the most recent and only news articles to show up on the search regarding Tarn were on Dec. 19 and Dec. 30, and the latter both only referenced a previous article as a year-end recap.  However, his results are small enough that I can make a Google alert for "As it Happens" and not get spammed, so I will let people know when I see it.