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[4maskwolf]

[snip] sieged by [snip] Na'vi [snip]

Brain Bleach. WHERE IS IT OH ARMOK THE HORROR!!!!!!!
Fractalman has canceled post: went insane.

This was hardly necessary, and certainly not worth a necro.

[Treefingers]

Just like an extremely evil region seems to want to kill you just for the fun of it, I could see how an extremely good region might be so aggressively protective of its joy and purity that it does whatever it takes to expel beings/objects that don't meet its moral standards.

So maybe you can embark safely, but if you start acting like anything less than a paragon of virtue, the area turns on you until you leave. In the eyes of an extremely good region, some common dwarven activities could be as death-worthy as common kobold and goblin activities are to dwarves. Example transgressions might be killing puppies (or maybe killing anything at all), establishing dangerous educational facilities, seizing trade goods or not offering generous enough profits to visiting traders.

A variant might be that the region directly prevents you from doing these things. Maybe your dwarves become so serene that they go all vegan pacifist, simply refusing to slaughter animals or make weapons. You'd have to find ways to live on plants alone and defend yourself non-violently through trap/release and misdirection. Maybe when invaders start getting violent, the region becomes hostile to them and effectively defends you fortress for you.

So basically some things would be easier in exchange for others being more difficult. And keep in mind that I'm only suggesting that any of these things happen in the most sickeningly wholesome corners or the world. No reason other good areas can't be just as they currently are.

/two cents

[Solarius Scorch]

Beautiful and sensible post, Treefingers!

[darknessofthenight]

Treefingers has a very good idea.
When you say that the region turns on you however that seems less than good because the region would be using violence to stop violence. Maybe the region could just mess with thought values such that everyone would become really sad if they killed something...

[Blastbeard]

I also like the idea of a good region rewarding good behavior. But 'good' is a point of view IMO, and according to Dwarf Fortress with those murderous unicorns in particular, 'good' can be pretty damn violent. Which can be good.

I've always wondered what makes good regions so good. Maybe it's because there's some force at work actively removing negative elements, similar to how the general maliciousness of evil regions making normal life impossible. If that's the case, good creatures in good regions should go out of their way to destroy or repel things they regard as evil, if only out of instinctual fear of seeing their home become a husk-producing wasteland.

'Evil' could be anything from a goblin's inherent evilness to uncouth behavior such as excessive tree harvesting, eating sapients, or having performed acts of cruelty such as torture and brutal executions. There's no shortage of any of these in most worlds, and exactly which acts result in a violent reaction could depend on how good a region is. Regardless, the average blacklist for any good region would probably be extensive.
Whatever the criteria is, if a creature entering a good region meets it, all the unicorns and fluffy wamblers and whatever drop what they're doing and hunt the intruder down until it dies or flees the region. It's kind of like an immune system's response to bacteria, relentlessly pursuing foreign agents until they are destroyed to protect the body.
They should probably prioritize the most 'evil' target first simply because it would be the most offensive intruder. Given the choice between a neutral dwarf, a goblin that beheaded an entire family of humans, and another goblin that tortured a cat once, creatures behaving like this would ignore the dwarf(unless it does something foolish like attack the evil-hunters) and go after the family-slaying goblin first before focusing on the other one.

The good part of this comes when you establish a fort in a good region and somehow manage not to turn it against you. If you could manage to live in harmony with a good region that somehow understands and rewards that, your dwarves would receive a degree of protection from the land. Good creatures would neither threaten nor frighten citizens provided they leave them alone, and if a goblin siege appears, you might be treated to something spectacular like the arrival of a massive herd of unicorns with a serious hate-on for the color green.
A possible downside of this is that your dwarves could also eventually become part of this response system, feeling an uncontrollable rage at the presence of offensive intruders and go out of their way to kill them. This would probably result in numerous civilian casualties and an inability to peacefully deal with other races that that have aggravated the region.

[catoblepas]

Building on treefingers idea, perhaps such regions can have their own ethics tags, like civilizations have? So one good region might kill those who harm plants, while another might allow it but has harsh penalties against lying or something similar. Such infractions could be handled in any number of ways already mentioned in this thread: Fairy swarms chasing and stinging dwarves with their tiny spears, crops refusing to grow, the wildlife turning hostile and sieging the fortress, etc. Although I think to make things interesting Good regions should have their own quirks to set them apart. I think it would be entertaining to have gnomes come by to attend parties (killing them would obviously have consequences) pixies causing hunters to get lost in the woods, faeries stealing children-but leaving changelings behind. Mischief related things that might not be directly deadly to your dwarves, but which present their own challenges etc. Good biomes shouldn't be the default best place to embark, but the shouldn't be murder traps like evil biomes are either. I think generally non-fatal challenges would be a way to set them apart nicely, and I like the idea of biomes (evil or good) of having their own distinct 'personality'.

[Treefingers]

Nice ideas! This is fun to think about, even without DF in mind.

I like Blastbeard's immune system idea, but with different justification. Good isn't a point of view according to traditional fantasy RPG rules. I was never into pen and paper, but I know from computer DnD games that Paladins and Solars and the like (lawful IIRC) are pretty much required by their alignment to be mortally opposed to anything evil-aligned. DF clearly labels "good" and "evil" regions and has an explicitly medieval setting. So I take the moral scale to be pretty absolute (with dwarves, elves, and human civs on the whole being somewhere in the neutral zone). Maximally good beings are more than just nice and friendly. They know exactly what evil is and will try to wipe it out. It's not just violence stopping violence, it would be more like righteously driving vandals from a temple sanctuary. You've arrived in their immaculate paradise with the stench of moral compromise about you, pulling wagons of slaughtered trees, the bones of mutilated sheep dangling around your necks. The region's residents will consider violently purging even slightly evil beings to be a good act, fully justified (even required by duty) since it would restore the region's purity.*

Yeah, I don't want RL humans acting like this because we're so far from agreed on whether good and evil even exist, let alone what they are. But in the hypothetical context of there being a real, knowable Good, I'd fully expect its legit representatives to act this way.

I'm not sure I'm okay with good regions altering the minds of those who stick around long enough. For whatever reason, I consider free will to be integral to their being a valid difference between good and evil. Without a choice, acting one way or the other has no moral value. So if a region "compels" you to do good (in gameplay terms) I'd want to see it reflected in the dwarves listed personalities and preferences, and in a way that suggests not that they're becoming mindless cuddle zombies, but are inspired by their new environment to strive to be more humble, calm, and empathetic. This would bring in a justification for darknessofthenight's idea. Your veteran dwarves might eventually be so transformed that instead of taking joy in slaughter, they will instead be horrified at themselves for killing something, even by accident or in self-defence.

Maybe only dwarves born in the region are capable of becoming fully good. Maybe they're born fully good to start. Maybe along the DnD alignment end, catoblepas' idea for region personalities could be minimally fulfilled if the current chaos axis wasn't just "calm to wild" but was more like "chaotic to lawful" with calm in the middle. Lawful would be the "purge all evil" type. Chaotic might be more of a hippie love-in pacifist thing which would be much easier to take advantage of economically, but wouldn't offer the protections of a lawful region, and the locals might not share dwarven concepts of private property and personal space (some of that in good regions already).

* I realize that perhaps this kind of agency should only be found in the "higher" creatures (humanoids and the like) while "lesser" creatures might act instinctively or indifferently. It's a complex game, right?

[Manveru Taurënér]

Think it'd be a good idea to once again point out that both good and evil regions are a placeholder destined to be scrapped in a probably not too distant part of development. Instead we'll be getting magical biomes linked to the various spheres in the game, such as a Desert of Truth, Forest of Nature and Hills of Murder etc. So almost all the various takes on the matter will be possible given the right biome.

Some such as Charity, Hospitality and Generosity will most likely be of the giving with little consequence type, whereas Nature, Earth and Animals could give benefits but strike back if you don't play by the rules. Some such as Order and Balance would obviously be even stricter about not upsetting the status quo. And the more directly sinister versions would be represented by Torture, Disease, Misery etc. You could possibly even go with combinations of different spheres, same as the gods tend to represent a few different ones. A Tundra of Revenge and Trees would obviously have Nasty Treants/Ents or similar wreaking havoc if you dare to cut any down.

No matter how it turns out a sphere-oriented system sure has a lot of potential. The way I'd see it done would be to have spheres sort of grouped into a few different categories. Each category would have some base properties applied to the land, like for example Nature, Fertility and Plants among others all creating the current sort of nature-themed biome that elves are so fond of with the unicorns and stuff. Then each one would have a few unique characteristics setting them apart as well.

This would leave well enough room for having a good number of both "painfully good" regions as well as the more friendly ones.

Edit: Almost forgot linking the quotes from the dev plan etc.

Scrap good/evil lands for lands with more variety

Core94, RANDOMIZED REGIONS AND THEIR FLORA/FAUNA, (Future): The current good/evil regions should be scrapped and replaced by a system that aligns a region to varying degrees with a set of spheres. In this way you could end up with a desert where the stones sing or a forest where the trees bleed, with all sorts of randomly generated creatures and plants that are appropriate to the sphere settings. It's important that randomly generated objects be introduced to the player carefully during play rather than just being thrown one after another to allow for immersion, though there's also something to be said for cold dumping the player in a world with completely random settings, provided they can access enough information by looking/listening and having conversations, etc.

Threetoe:   Okay, so the second question comes from King Mir: 'You've stated previously how the good and evil regions are ultimately going to be replaced by sphere-aligned regions. Recently you added a lot to the evil regions; how have these changes affected your future plans? Are you going to put as much work into every sphere? Will some spheres be much more distinct than others, or will you just stick with good and evil?'
Toady:   We did add a lot of undead and blood rain and mists and things floating around in the evil regions because we were just on our continuing night creatures drive, to get through those. It hasn't really affected the long-term plans. We still plan to diversify what the regions look like. The spheres ... talking about them specifically, like sphere-regions, is ... when you say, 'Will some be more distinct than others?' there are spheres like 'trade', or something like that, where because that's such a civilized concept ... there are probably going to be some spheres that simply aren't appropriate for regions, and a sphere is really just an idea, or a concept, so if you want to make one region more musical, or fiery, or evil, or torture-based, or darker, these different concepts ... that's really what we're getting at, that we wanted to have a strong sense of flavoring to the regions that sets the atmosphere but doesn't just go along this linear scale of good or evil, that allows things to be more diverse. So in a sense just adding stuff to the regions moves us along the way there. We haven't really started that project yet, but I it's still something that I think we're planning to do.

[Arowhun]

Maybe there could be syndrome clouds that could completely brain wipe dwarves, so they lose their ability to speak and do pretty much everything. They would act similar to zombies, but instead of being UNDEAD and OPPOSED_TO_LIFE they would strip naked and live in the wilderness.

[WillowLuman]

So basically slightly weaker husks in all but name?

[Solarius Scorch]

Maybe there could be syndrome clouds that could completely brain wipe dwarves, so they lose their ability to speak and do pretty much everything. They would act similar to zombies, but instead of being UNDEAD and OPPOSED_TO_LIFE they would strip naked and live in the wilderness.

One word: shrooms.

[Dirst]

As Manveru Taurënér pointed out, biomes will soon enough be linked to Spheres and pop out of the Good/Evil axis altogether.  Finding the borders between biomes at an embark site may become very important.

I can just see cutting open an entrance, going down a couple z-levels, and zipping 3/4 of the map sideways to get at the awesome minerals under the unicorns.

It would be interesting if civilizations or even historical figures came from off the map to defend "defiled" biomes.

The demon Anakakasak has appeared, enraged that you furrowed the dead grass it admires to plant disgusting strawberries!

[GuesssWho]

Given the choice between a neutral dwarf, a goblin that beheaded an entire family of humans, and another goblin that tortured a cat once, creatures behaving like this would ignore the dwarf(unless it does something foolish like attack the evil-hunters) and go after the family-slaying goblin first before focusing on the other one.

Surely you have this backwards.

[Melting Sky]

Hmm, there are some interesting ideas in this thread. I think there are a lot of ways that good regions could be made more interesting and fun without ruining their feel. In good aligned forest biomes you have things like mischievous pixies could make things more interesting by doing stuff like instigating parties out in the woods or teleporting around and randomly pulling levers and stuff. You could have ents that look just like the normal local trees except every once in a very long while they will move and if you try to cut one down or set one on fire it could react unhappily and defend itself. Various nature spirits could be incorporated similarly for instance a water spirit in a river or waterfall that might be provoked to respond if the dwarves repeatedly wipe out all the aquatic life in the body of water etc. You could even make the response more creative than a simple brutish attack and have the angry water spirit flood the river.

[Fluoman]

There's a lot of talk about pixies/fairies being mischievous, and I think it could be important to draw a parallel between good/evil & benign/savage and good/evil & lawful/chaotic. And then to put previous ideas along these two axis.
Pixies would be Chaotic Good (Joyous wilds), while the angel of justice incarnate would be Lawful Good (Serene). Both are Good-aligned, but one of them is unpredictable.
So there could be Good Forgotten Beasts: guardians (Lawful Good) of a certain aspect of nature/civilization. For example The Great Protector of Plump Helmets (A gigantic, moving, mushroom-shaped mushroom made of mushrooms) that seeks to avenge the murders of so many mushrooms. As aspects of nature, they can die temporarily but will come back (unless all plump helmets and spawns disappear from the world).
On the other hand, there could be Good Mishief Makers (contrast with Evil Mishief Makers such as syndrome clouds, freak weather, or Neutral Mishief Makers such as ghosts) like fairies etc. These things could have unspecified effects, but mostly good from a certain point of view -> bliss cloud making everyone fall into a coma (everyone happy! dreams!), all alcohols turn to sunshine/mead (sunshine, lollipops!).

Anyway, that's just something to think about while waiting for spheres.