Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Courtesy Arloban]

The first part of the suggestion is to have a number in the world gen for maximun number of ghosts, and people who don't want them could set it to zero.

The regional interaction by default would be all, but moddable so you can set it for evil biomes for example. Legends mode can include entries like urist mcghost fell in battle to the goblins and his body was suspended(desecrated) his spirit rose with a thirst for vengence!  Or Urist mcHungry starved to death in famishedparched, he rose as a hungry ghost!  Or Urist McChild dreamed up an imaginary friend in the year 08, in 15 she was told to quit imagining things, in 15 she created Knobby Tommer the poltergeist.

New tags would be neccesry that give attributes to ghosts including the default, but also enough to procedurally generate different kinds of ghosts, and be usable by modders for other creatures, like ghostly monsters.  These tags would be added the same way as for vampires, and husks.

[GreatWyrmGold]

On one hand, this makes some sense from a world perspective, depending on ghost lore.

On the other hand, this makes no sense from a game perspective.

Overall, why would ghosts not care about being memorialized in certain areas? Also, giving dwarves [CANNOT_UNDEAD] makes them not turn into ghosts.

[Courtesy Arloban]

They wouldn't care in those areas because they're dead they don't feel anything.  For the regions they do rise it's because of a necromantic taint in the soil, the same that allows husks to rise when there is a body in the evil zone, but the same body stays unrisen in a good zone.

For the record I don't beleive in ghosts, and it ruins my suspension of disbeleif to encounter them in the game. (I'm adventuring in a deserted town suddenly encounter a ghost, Why is there a ghost?  Oh right I'm playing a game.)  I am one who would set ghost number to zero and mod their abilities into demons.

Centaurs aren't in the game because they are considered too high fantasy, but ghosts are considered low fantasy?  Centaurs are a magical hybrid with too many limbs that make biologists cry.  Ghosts are the Spirit of a deceased creature of some discerning attribute, that converts into a form of matter/energy that interacts weakly with light, interacts with nothing else unless it wants too, and is cohesive to itself despite passing through solid objects.

I do beleive in life after death, but not in that form.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Does it ruin your suspension of disbelief to find dragons? necromancers? elves? goblins? titans? rocs? caverns full of monsters? sewers full of monsters? animalpeople? gnomes? kobolds? zombies? magical fog? sunberries? elves? grass made of feathers or eyes? DWARVES?

Seriously, do you believe in all of those and not ghosts, or are you just making an arbitrary distinction?

I fail to see why a ghost would only feel something in an area that raises the bodies of the dead, since the soul is not attached to the body after death. And if I were dead, I'd care about equally about the status of my body wherever it was.
Maybe ghosts could be different in different areas, but completely absent in most? No. That's rolling back progress.

[Courtesy Arloban]

I was modifying my previous post, and it didn't warn me you posted, so I posted my distinguishing feature and yes I'll believe all of those in can exist in real life, before I'll believe in a ghost in a game.

I wouldn't give a single thought to my body after death, and I'll never feel or know what someone does with it. I won't need to turn into a spectre to travel to heaven because it's another realm, and I won't be given a choice to hang around and watch it.

My suggestion allows a more diverse selection for different peoples beliefs on ghosts, as peoples opinions do vary more than the game allows.

You may have missed it but my suggested default setting for regions is ALL, so it wouldn't change the game by itself, except for including some randomly generated ghosts in addition to the vanilla defaults.  Setting ghosts for a particular region would only be possible for modded ghosts and whatever other regional interactions modded in.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Centaurs aren't considered high fantasy, they're considered to not exist. Just like how gnomes don't exist in Lord of the Rings. Are you going to argue that short, mechanically-inclined people are more high-fantasy than demons of the darkness below, almighty wizards, and the Valar, just because gnomes don't exist in the Lord of the Rings?

Besides, your argument for why centaurs should be low-fantasy is fallacious; DF has other 6-limbed creatures, many more bizzare than the centaur. Clearly it's not that centaurs are too "high-fantasy" for DF, it's just that they don't exist.

Anyhoo, what do you mean, "My suggestion allows a more diverse selection for different peoples beliefs on ghosts, as peoples opinions do vary more than the game allows?" Are you suggesting that DF conform itself to every belief possible at once, just to avoid upsetting people whose beliefs on the subject of spirits isn't the same as the reality in a fantasy game? I really don't get that.

If ghosts are supposed to appear in ALL regions, maybe, but it strikes me that unless you completely prevented ghosts from spawning that would leave no room for modded ghosts. I do admit, however, that if interactions could summon ghosts, there would be a lot of neat new opportunities opened up.

[Courtesy Arloban]

The Centaur argument isn't mine I was argueing against it.  Centaurs aren't in the game, and yet ghosts are.  I find Centaurs more believable.

Getting different ghosts than the usual is a matter of turning ghosts number to zero and modding in your own ghosts.  The ghosts you mod in can also have their regions set to all, or you can mod banshee to only appear in wild areas, or you can mod in extracted ghost interactions changed so that they only occur in evil regions.  The justification being that the region is haunted and it produces the ghosts the same way it would a husk cloud.

Obviously my opinion of ghosts (that they are impossible on both theological and scientific grounds) is not really representable in the game.  I've tried several ways to remove ghosts, but they do not work.  I've also previously agreed to someones suggestion for a no ghosts option in the init files.

[King Mir]

Having people come back as a ghost for reasons other than improper burial is a good idea. Though I think these reasons should be limited to things that can occur in adventure mode or fortress mode.

But I don't see much benefit to prohibiting ghosts regionally. It's good to force the player to memorialize the dead.

[Courtesy Arloban]

Having people come back as a ghost for reasons other than improper burial is a good idea. Though I think these reasons should be limited to things that can occur in adventure mode or fortress mode.

But I don't see much benefit to prohibiting ghosts regionally. It's good to force the player to memorialize the dead.

What if I want to mod in a culture that sees memorializing the dead as sacriligious?  And they're nudists.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

someone's going to call me an elf in less than 7 posts.

[King Mir]

Having people come back as a ghost for reasons other than improper burial is a good idea. Though I think these reasons should be limited to things that can occur in adventure mode or fortress mode.

But I don't see much benefit to prohibiting ghosts regionally. It's good to force the player to memorialize the dead.

What if I want to mod in a culture that sees memorializing the dead as sacriligious?  And they're nudists.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

someone's going to call me an elf in less than 7 posts.

I'd rather see more features added to the primary game before Toady starts adding features that are only used in Mods.

[Courtesy Arloban]

That would leave out this whole idea, because other than a couple of random ghosts based on a limited number of extra options, a hungry ghost getting into a food stockpile, a revenge minded wraith killing goblin invaders, and a poultergeist that behaves like a couple of other ghosts already implemented, this suggestion wouldn't change the normal game.

For modders however it would enable people to create ghostly monsters, change everything about ghosts in the game, have something else other than ghosts pop out of a person like a physical heartless or fiends.

Well there is one other thing it offers non-modders, the ability to set number of ghosts to zero during worldgen, or set it to the highest number it'll let you.

[misko27]

I have to say, encountering ghosts in non-fort settings seems a good idea. In terms of the ideas of ghosts, everything in your fort has a soul (already a suspension of disbelief), but nothing else in the world does. Why do I not get the ghosts of Battles long-past (both world gen and fort) in my fort? If I build on a ancient burial gound, I want to distub the dead.

[thiosk]

I don't believe in ghosts either, but that doesn't mean I don't think they're awesome.  Especially when the show up out of nowhere and hack someones leg off, and then he has to hobble around on a crutch for the rest of his life.

Dwarves like to be buried, and they get so pissed when they aren't, they're coming back to getcha.

I haven't gotten into Adv mode yet, but I think ghosts there opens up a whole new class of fetch quest.  Purify tomb, etcetera, and so on, and so forth.

[Courtesy Arloban]

Worldgen settings would default number of ghosts at 20-25.  That would actually mean 20 types of ghosts as with other procedurally generated creatures

Changing the setting to zeo would mean no ghosts, setting it to one would mean that every ghost generated was a forlorn ghost, as the setting increases any deaths that fit the qualifications for a type of ghost, will choose the one with higher priority up to number 11 including the murderous ghost.  Over 11 generates ghosts with characteristics the vanilla ghosts and new characteristics allowing them to eat your food stockpiles, or attack a specific enemy that could be invaders.  When the settings cranked up ridiculously high a dead creature is more likely to become a procedurally generated ghost.

Making ghosts an interaction would also allow other interactions to disqualify a creature with a single line of code, which might be desired.  Does husks becoming ghosts make sense to someone who ghosts make sense?

As for why I think it should be a regional interaction with a default of All regions, is that when something in fantasy is really unbelievable, I like to have an explanation provided.  I know that sounds more science fiction than fantasy, but it is done in fantasy, the explanation is just not as technical.  Tolkien gave an explanation for his ghosts that was they broke an oath that was sacred, and therefore magical in tolkien's world.  They were held not by their own power, but by the powers that be.  He also gave explanations for elves, dwarves and goblins as humanoids similar to ourselves, so that people don't realize that wasn't the mythological origin for them.

Creatures rising from the dead as an exotic energy/matter just because they weren't buried and didn't get a memorial just does not make sense to me, unless that same exotic energy/matter is a part of the enviroment and burying them, shields them.  If the characteristic that makes a creature become a ghost in fantasy is a part of them before death then it should be just as apparent and effective before death if not more so. 

If they can see as ghosts, then they should see fine without eyes, the same goes for other sense organs, as well as the vocal chords should be uneccesary if they can talk as a ghost.  If they can move as a ghost, they shouldn't need muscles and nerves when alive, and if they can remember they have some sort of attachment to their body they shouldn't have memory problems with their brain damaged or removed.  That they can only do without these things when the physical processes that support life fail them is ridiculous.

[Manveru Taurënér]

DF is a fantasy game. Fantasy meaning everything doesn't have to work according to real life rules and make complete sense when looked at too thoroughly. I'm sorry to hear that you are unable to uphold your suspension of belief when playing. Ghosts aren't any more unbelievable than anything else in fantasy really, apart from a completely subjective point of view. I don't think any notable amount of time should be wasted trying to make fantasy elements make more sense than necessary when it's not really needed, especially if that hinders creative development of the concept with a focus on fun, which should be the main focus in this case, not real world logic.