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[Kriby]

Suppose you lived in a world where magic was possible. Not only was it possible, its use only required the proper knowledge. What keeps the inhabitants of this world from sharing magic freely and living in eternal unending bounty?

I think magic in DF requires a "source" to be balanced. A drawback that keeps the world from descending into pitch-black evil darkness or supreme bliss depending on in what favor magic swings the scales.

To project this ball in a parabolic arc towards a !!FUN!! target I'll add some suggestions!

The source of magic power could be randomized in world gen like many other supernatural aspects.

Blood Magic - Blood has to be present in the open within X number of tiles, or you have to be bleeding to cast. Casting using your own blood can leave you fatally anemic.

Focus Magic - Magic drains your mental stamina, causing you to get sleepier and sleepier the more spells you cast, possibly knocking you unconscious.

Body Magic - Casting magic drains your physical stamina, possibly knocking you out from over-exertion.

Pain magic - Casting spells harms you physically, depending on the power of the spell. A small spell might inflict a cut or blunt trauma on a random part of your body. More powerful spells have more drastic drawbacks, larger cuts/blows and possible delimbing/decapitation/necrosis.

Life Magic - Casting spells makes you age.

Food Magic - Casting spells makes you hungry!

Temperature Magic - Casting spells heats or chills you and your surroundings by an amount proportional to the power of your spells.

Demon Magic - A tainted source of magic that allows Demons to sometimes pass into the world near you when you cast.

Warp Magic - The fabric of reality rips and tears around a channeling spellcaster, rending physical space nearby. !!FUN!!

Air Magic - Casting spells drains the air from around you and inside you. Probably needs a more detailed gas system to be implemented first.



Yes, yes, Toady has a bajillion things more important to do.. but it's just a suggestion! I'd love to hear your ideas for magic sources so please share

[glopso]

Did we have magic by 1450?

This is a low-fantasy setting, as indications show me

[10ebbor10]

Did we have magic by 1450?

This is a low-fantasy setting, as indications show me

Magic is planned.

Toady is still working out a system to do it though.

[UHaulDwarf]

Did we have magic by 1450?

This is a low-fantasy setting, as indications show me

There have been many reports of ''magic'' from before 1450.
One lazy search on Wikipedia latter tells me that there was "magic" in Ancient Egypt, and ever since then too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_%28paranormal%29#History

[Silverionmox]

I'm going to mention the circumstances and surroundings a way to determine spell power. The presence of blood is one particular element in the environment, but each ritual/type of effect/spell could have a list of elements that facilitate it: examples of elements that could matter: material types, colors, presence of creatures, personality characteristics, furniture, height differences, terrain features like large height differences, belief in particular deities, imagery, types of clothing, time of day, moon cycle, ebb/flood status, weather, etc., etc.

In order not to make this look like random shopping lists (not more than is fun, anyway), there probably should be general rules, like:
- summoning is facilitated by images of the creature you summon
- crystals facilitate all scrying/identification spells
- the concentration trait of the caster always contributes to the spell casted
- healing magic is aided by soothing music
- ...

These could be in the raws, while the other elements of the spells could be randomized from world to world, depending on the available elements in that world etc. It also offers a way to learn a spell and improve it later ( = learn more contributing elements).

A concrete example: summon black-crested gibbon has ten randomized elements (orthoclase, peach-faced lovebirds, strawberry wine, blue, the god As, scarves, brooks, tin, noon). A setup conductive to summoning gibbons would then be an orthoclase building next to or over a brook, engraved with images of gibbons and adorned with peach-faced lovebirds in tin cages, while the casting would be done by mage that worshipped the god As, dressed in a blue scarf and standing on a barrel of strawberry wine.

(Another option is to only have general spells (eg. create energy, summon creature, ...) and let the specific form and result of the spell depend on the circumstances. Eg: if you summon a creature amongst ivory statues of elephants, you'll likely get an elephant. If you create energy, it might show up as an aura, bolt, wall, or uncontrolled, depending on the random associations in worldgen.)

The importance of linking it to the surroundings has advantages:
- It encourages the manipulation of the environment, something that's particularly suited for dwarf fortress.
- There is a defensive advantage. This in turn preserves more diversity in the world, making adventuring and trade more interesting. In addition, it's an incentive for trade and adventuring to obtain exotic items.
- It allows a player to specialize in particular spells, but it's practically impossible to have an optimal location for every spell in a single fortress. Likewise, it's very unlikely that an adventurer can use his magical power as a generic (and therefore boring) solution to all problems.
- Different fortress locations make for different magic options. Different locations make for different adventuring atmospheres.

(Also, it's not a battery. Most games make powerful magic and then try to limit its unbalancing effect by limiting the amount of castings, the casting energy or the amount of charges in a magic item. That's too technological for magic, IMO.)

[Nyan Thousand]

Did we have magic by 1450?

This is a low-fantasy setting, as indications show me

This 1450 shit is getting really annoying. Where did 1450 come from anyway? Besides, did we have dwarves in 1450? Elves? Pig tail fiber socks? I doubt it, man.

I think magic should have dedicated reagents. What I mean is there are items solely used for magic. Some more powerful schools of magic would have different/FUN reagents though.

[10ebbor10]

Did we have magic by 1450?

This is a low-fantasy setting, as indications show me

This 1450 shit is getting really annoying. Where did 1450 come from anyway? Besides, did we have dwarves in 1450? Elves? Pig tail fiber socks? I doubt it, man.

I think magic should have dedicated reagents. What I mean is there are items solely used for magic. Some more powerful schools of magic would have different/FUN reagents though.

1450 is a limit set by Toady, and is sometimes considered the end of the middle ages. (There are a lot of other dates for that too). Keep in mind howver that the limit isn't strict and is only intented as a guideline for RL tech suggestions.

[slothen]

I wouldn't mind some system to put a cost or limit on interactions, but you make it sound like magic is going to be everywhere.  Magic is going to be based on the interaction system, current interactions are generated at worldgen and not modable, however interactions can be modded in via the raws I believe.  I do rather like the idea of having several hardcoded schools of magic, of which one or several may be discovered or present at worldgen.  The schools or branches would form a framework to mod in interactions via the raws, while still allowing each school to have distinct requirements or mechanics that would otherwise be very difficult to completely abstract to the raws.  Perhaps not related, but I think there should be a trait and a soul attribute associated with magic (or even particular schools of magic).  Currently anyone who can read can become an immortal necromancer, a genetic component or an otherwise natural proclivity for magic or a school of magic would be useful.  After all, magic shouldn't be everywhere.

This is a low-fantasy setting, as indications show me

DF is solidly in the realm of high fantasy.

[NW_Kohaku]

Toady has said his idea for magic is not set in stone, and that he encourages people to come up with, basically "weird" concepts for magic, so that he can try to do an and-the-kitchen-sink fantasy type of magic world, with the ability for players to mod the game to whatever fantasy level they see fit.

Toady has talked about artifacts and alchemy (or "reagent magic") as dwarven methods for magic, as well as divine sources like those necromancy slabs, as well as innate "dimensional" magic, like how the HFS is supposed to be another co-planar dimension (as in, it's not physically the center of the planet, but a portal to a new dimension carved through cotton candy), and how we might get more of those, later. 

Toady also talked about having a "Wizard Tower Mode" as a later development goal, where presumably, magic works something like in the Threetoe stories.  I would obviously expect wizard characters to have access to more varieties of magic than dwarven townsfolk do. 

Anyway, what Toady finds most helpful in terms of magic suggestions is in finding very strange or unique forms of magic.  He's played enough RPGs already to know about MP and Vancian magic.  Strange environmental magics, or systems based upon an alien dimension powering your spells, with costs associated with trying to tap it or costs for abusing it, and especially things like old fairy tale magic, where we can meet a wood sprite who teaches us to make a contract with the soul of a lake that lets us call upon water to create rains for our farms, provided we honor our contract with the lake spirit by paying back a wooden figurine to a shrine once a year, or leaving a saucer of milk to a black cat every day or some other strange contract magic. 

You should also be aware that Toady wants to use the sphere system with magic.  That means "War" magic or "Craftsmanship" magic or "Poetry" magic.  (Although I'd watch out for that "Depravity" and "Lust" magic....)  So try to keep your sources somewhere near those spheres. 

[irmo]

I'm going to mention the circumstances and surroundings a way to determine spell power. The presence of blood is one particular element in the environment, but each ritual/type of effect/spell could have a list of elements that facilitate it: examples of elements that could matter: material types, colors, presence of creatures, personality characteristics, furniture, height differences, terrain features like large height differences, belief in particular deities, imagery, types of clothing, time of day, moon cycle, ebb/flood status, weather, etc., etc.

Magical rituals are just going to be big clusters of random stuff, aren't they?

In order not to make this look like random shopping lists (not more than is fun, anyway), there probably should be general rules, like:
- summoning is facilitated by images of the creature you summon
- crystals facilitate all scrying/identification spells
- the concentration trait of the caster always contributes to the spell casted
- healing magic is aided by soothing music
- ...

Okay, this has potential...

A concrete example: summon black-crested gibbon has ten randomized elements (orthoclase, peach-faced lovebirds, strawberry wine, blue, the god As, scarves, brooks, tin, noon).

Nope. Once again, "procedural generation" turns out to mean "roll ten times on the Random Crap Table".

(And why would there be a spell to summon black-crested gibbons? (Setting aside the larger question of "why are black-crested gibbons in the game?") Magical summoning is a thing. It was a big part of Renaissance ritual magic, for example--lots of books listing different spirits and the rituals to summon them and what you could ask them for. But the point of summoning is to get access to beings that are not naturally occurring. If you want gibbons, you go to Borneo and catch them in a trap. You do a summoning ritual when you want Focalor, Grand Duke of Hell.)

A setup conductive to summoning gibbons would then be an orthoclase building next to or over a brook, engraved with images of gibbons and adorned with peach-faced lovebirds in tin cages, while the casting would be done by mage that worshipped the god As, dressed in a blue scarf and standing on a barrel of strawberry wine.

What does any of this stuff have to do with gibbons? I'll be generous and assume all summoning rituals are going to involve a cage so that the summoned creature can end up there. But why a tin cage? Why orthoclase? Why strawberry wine? Is As the god of gibbons?

(Another option is to only have general spells (eg. create energy, summon creature, ...) and let the specific form and result of the spell depend on the circumstances. Eg: if you summon a creature amongst ivory statues of elephants, you'll likely get an elephant. If you create energy, it might show up as an aura, bolt, wall, or uncontrolled, depending on the random associations in worldgen.)

This is somewhat better, because the general spells can be cast anywhere, and so there's likely to be some logic relating the circumstances to what you get if you cast a creature summoning there, instead of just a huge table of outcomes. But it's only better if there is some logic.

The importance of linking it to the surroundings has advantages:
- It encourages the manipulation of the environment, something that's particularly suited for dwarf fortress.
- There is a defensive advantage. This in turn preserves more diversity in the world, making adventuring and trade more interesting. In addition, it's an incentive for trade and adventuring to obtain exotic items.
- It allows a player to specialize in particular spells, but it's practically impossible to have an optimal location for every spell in a single fortress. Likewise, it's very unlikely that an adventurer can use his magical power as a generic (and therefore boring) solution to all problems.
- Different fortress locations make for different magic options. Different locations make for different adventuring atmospheres.

You make some excellent points here. Just for gameplay reasons it's useful for adventurers (though, as mentioned before, adventurer mode can go take a magma bath) not to be able to learn one spell and spam it everywhere.

(Also, it's not a battery. Most games make powerful magic and then try to limit its unbalancing effect by limiting the amount of castings, the casting energy or the amount of charges in a magic item. That's too technological for magic, IMO.)

I agree with you on that, but I wonder if you're assuming a false dichotomy where the only way to make it "not technological" is to make it an arbitrary jumble.

Magic is based on symbolic connections, which are not arbitrary. They're subjective, which is why you get different magical practices in different human cultures, but nobody's just picking things out of a hat. Your core idea is sound, but you need a way to set up connections between these objects and materials so that the spell to summon gibbons is somehow gibbon-themed. Requiring an image of the creature for all summoning spells was a good idea. Do more of that kind of thing.

As a start, I'd suggest making most materials, and especially most very common materials (orthoclase...), magically neutral.

[Escapism]

Myself, I'd like if magic was something that isn't innate, but rather borrowed/taken from the surroundings and/or deities.

If anyone has played Eon (I actually haven't, but I've made some characters in groups that never got to playing, you'd recognize this. Basically, all magicians have a "generate elemental power" skill. The amount of nearby "elemental power" corresponds to how much of that element is nearby; a pyromancer can drain fire from a fire or a volcano, a necromancer from corpses or decay and a druid from plants and trees. Elemental power is then used to cast spells, as a kind of type-specific mana. Pretty much as Silverionmox has described it.

Alternatively, you can "borrow" the power of a deity. Deities (demons, nature spirits, gods) could grant powers depending on their sphere, but would require the magic user to worship and serve the deity. Maybe the deities can give mission (let's avoid the term "quest", because "kill 10 ice trolls lol"), demand sacrifices and require places of worship to be built. Failure to comply, or simply acting in a way that the deity deems blasphemous (cutting down a tree while serving a god of forests, for instance), would incite the gods wrath and subsequent punishment. How much magic a character could use would depend on how much influence a deity has in a certain area (a follower of the desert spirit of the Plains of Sorrows would be a lot stronger on that specific place, but have little to no magical power in other areas).

Either way, I think that magic inherently should be very dangerous stuff. Very likely to get the user killed, one way or another.

As for hardcoded vs procedural magic:
I think the best solution is to lay a hardcoded frame for spell types, and let the game generate as much as possible. You'd have, for instance, Conjuration spells, syndrome spells and "manipulation" spells:

Conjuration type spells would offer a lot of room for variablity. Fire magic users could summon/create magma crabs and fire snakes, forest magic users could summon/create treants and wildlife etc. You could possibly also fit in various natural phenomena in this, such as creating a magma fissure, summoning a sand storm or starting an earthquake

"Syndrome" type spells also allows RNG a lot of room to do its magic. Hopefully you'd have the possibility to afflict syndromes on items as well (corroding an enemy piece of equipment, when item damage is added, or enchanting your sword with shadows to blot out surrounding light). One interesting aspect of this is that you could have syndromes that are both beneficial and detrimental. You want to be able to breathe underwater? Sure, but you will become paralyzed for an hour afterwards. Though, for the sake of allowing the AI to make sense of stuff, you could have some that are exclusively detrimental/beneficial.

"Manipulation" spells would allow the user to manipulate the sphere, specifically "add" energy of the sphere's type to a specified tile (or an area of tiles). These are hard-coded and well-defined. A necromancer could drain life (or add "death"), a pyromancer could heat up an object, an ice magician would "add" coldness etc. This could pretty easily be tied to many of the mechanics already present.

As for conj. and synd. spells, they could be different for every world that is created (in worldgen: Number of Darkness spell types:x), , or you could have a system where you can "craft" spells, so to speak. If on were to use reagents, they could of course easily be procedurally generated according to spheres.

Edit: Hm, one could potentially combine energy manipulation and syndrome spells in a lot of cases. Generalizing will lead us to victory.

[Ruhn]

Magic
Adding magic sounds cool, but a Worldgen setting is a must in my oppinion.
So many games include it already, I like DF's "light fantasy" setting the way it is.

Since magic is really just spiritual powers granted by a deamon, having a small chance to spawn a random hostile deamon with every spell cast would be some Fun, right?

The ideas put forth by Silverionmox are very good.
To simplify, how about adding a new building for the Casting Point?
There would be a diverse list of materials, and the spells available are based on the combination chosen.
So you could have one built from ABCD on top of a tower for lightning bolts, and another from EBFG next to the dry moat for creature summons.

This casting point building could even be used to designate a room, and assigned to a dwarf (or squad? is magic part of military??).
I guess from there the game would be able to check what else is in the room (bird in cage) if the magic system gets really detailed.


Runes
I'm not sure if Runes are technically Magic for the purpose of this topic, but I would say they should be a high priority.
Dwarf lore is full of references to Runes on weapons and structures.

I would like to be able to carve Runes on a drawbridge(or door), to make it last longer against building destroyers.
Let me bring the artifact Axe to the Runesmith building, to be engraved and make it more powerfull... dealing triple damage and sending enemies flying with every swing.
Masterwork Steel Breastplate is nice, but add some runes to ensure internal organs are further protected.
I don't care what the Runes do, but I want them.


Glyphs
For anyone not familar, these are long term magic effects from a drawing on floor/wall/door.
They could be used to magically lock doors and create circles of healing/death/other status effects.
I've also seen them used for explosion/stun traps.
However, these ideas are just copies of what i've seen before, not sure how to make them more Dwarf.

[Silverionmox]

Magical rituals are just going to be big clusters of random stuff, aren't they?
Nope. Once again, "procedural generation" turns out to mean "roll ten times on the Random Crap Table".

Reasons to do it this way:
- replayability: you don't get in a rut if the magic triggers are different for each world. (Yeah, time to get sulphur for the fireballs... again.)

- originality: fantasy games tend to fall back to the cliche spell associations of death->zombies, air->haste, fire->destruction, etc.. Blind selection would prevent this.

- workload: editing all potential spells by hand is by no means a trivial task. I'd love a version of the raws where all spell associations are hand-edited to adhere to the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus... but that would be a year's work. This would be a major impediment to create new association tables, so I'd rather have the vanilla version be random and then people can specify parts of it as their inspiration and experiences permit.

And of course there can be as many fixed rules as you wish, and their relative impact might be defined as large in comparison to the random stuff. Eg. For naturally occurring creatures, associated plants and animals are limited to a matching biome. (The problem with this rule in particular is that one summoning would increase your ability to summon other creatures from the same biome, etc. You need some kind of negative feedback.)

And all in all, if there's a place or bizarre and outlandish combinations, it's in magic.

(And why would there be a spell to summon black-crested gibbons? (Setting aside the larger question of "why are black-crested gibbons in the game?") Magical summoning is a thing. It was a big part of Renaissance ritual magic, for example--lots of books listing different spirits and the rituals to summon them and what you could ask them for. But the point of summoning is to get access to beings that are not naturally occurring. If you want gibbons, you go to Borneo and catch them in a trap. You do a summoning ritual when you want Focalor, Grand Duke of Hell.)

First, I'm assuming a somewhat limited availability of spells: sometimes summoning a gibbon might be all you have to work with...

As for the concept of summoning, I've just taken a traditional spell example: make a creature appear and bind it to your will. Depending on the cosmology there might be a plane of gibbons, or you're just creating a body for a gibbon soul to inhabit in exchange for its servitude, or it's a kind of teleporting abduction, etc.

So all in all, mid-level rules to guide the random associations can balance the predictability and surprise needed to keep it fun. People should still be able to mod in very specific spells also that overrule the computer-generated ones.

[irmo]

Reasons to do it this way:
- replayability: you don't get in a rut if the magic triggers are different for each world. (Yeah, time to get sulphur for the fireballs... again.)

Only a problem if you can reliably get all of those materials every time you play. This is why I suggested making the most commonly occurring materials non-magical.

- originality: fantasy games tend to fall back to the cliche spell associations of death->zombies, air->haste, fire->destruction, etc.. Blind selection would prevent this.
- workload: editing all potential spells by hand is by no means a trivial task. I'd love a version of the raws where all spell associations are hand-edited to adhere to the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus... but that would be a year's work. This would be a major impediment to create new association tables, so I'd rather have the vanilla version be random and then people can specify parts of it as their inspiration and experiences permit.

What you're aiming for here is the semblance of "originality" without anyone having to have any original ideas. This doesn't work unless your audience is extremely stupid.

Fantasy games also tend to use the "cliche", if that's what you want to call it, of dwarves: short, muscular, bearded dudes who dig in the earth and drink a lot and hoard treasure and make wondrous things out of stone and metal. As we've seen, it's still possible to build something pretty interesting using that as a foundation. On the other hand, if you start by throwing it out and Mad Libbing up a new fantasy race that's (height) and (build) and (facial feature) and builds (habitation) in the (environment) and (recreational activity), then you can't really tell any durable stories about them. You can't build a world this way. The enjoyment of it is pretty much limited to the Mad Libs level of chuckling over the incongruous thing you've created and then forgetting about it.

As for the concept of summoning, I've just taken a traditional spell example: make a creature appear and bind it to your will. Depending on the cosmology there might be a plane of gibbons, or you're just creating a body for a gibbon soul to inhabit in exchange for its servitude, or it's a kind of teleporting abduction, etc.

Pick one and stick with it, then. Cosmology matters. You can't set up a magic system in which "how the universe is constructed" is one of the variables.

[NW_Kohaku]

I would say that there are some places you could work on something similar to what Silverionmox is talking about, but with a greater control and structure.

For example, you might make a fireball spell randomly select something from a material category, like a "flammable" selection of coke, coal, wool, sulphur, saltpetre, or other things I'm not thinking of at the moment that's an easily flammable material that is already in the game. 

To do this, of course, you'd need to give some algorithmic categories to different material types, but that might be necessary in the long run, anyway, just to make things like alchemy work.