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[superbob]

So I've looked up these posts:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69412.msg1678846#msg1678846
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=42102.msg769212#msg769212
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=5505.msg70856#msg70856
And I know it's on the way. Just want to add input without digging up old threads.

1 - continuity. Basically I'd like to create a dwarven adventurer, do adventuring stuff and once I'm a powergamed demigod (why bother pretending that's not the point?), gather some volunteers and supplies, and set off to found a fortress. Spend some years  building it, defending against sieges, making my adventure-dwarf even more powerful (if a bit rusty). Then if everything went well, have my adventurer leave the fortress (along with legendary adamantine gear crafted there) and walk the world for a while before starting another fortress.

2 - badassery. By creating powerful adventurers, surrounded by nearly as powerful followers, I'd like to conquer sites that would be otherwise impossible to embark on - either super-hostile evil biomes or reclaiming a fortress that's known for digging too deep. Then once the area is clear, embark with military that is sufficiently strong to get the fortress going.

Both cases would clearly benefit from starting from a position that is generally unattainable for a normal embark. Even if you mod the game to have a lot more points to spend during embark config, you still can't have a legendary adventurer with specific gear and followers start with you.

The way I'd like to see this (eventually) implemented would be gaining an audience with the local dwarven authority, requesting permission to found a fortress, then purchasing a cart (or carts, since an adventurer may be quite wealthy) and setting off on an expedition to an applicable site. But that's optional, I'd be sufficiently happy being able to conquer and settle evil biomes or hostile cultures' lands.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The Suggestions subforum encourages that you dig up older threads, and you really shouldn't just repeat the obvious reasons why a planned suggestion should be added.

[Garrosh]

It's the "continue on your way" part that prompts me to write this reply.

I've been thinking over how I'd like to see some unity/continuity between adventurer mode and fortress mode. I've seen many suggestions about adventurer embark options, and I mostly agree about it all. The part I think most people are fuzzy about is the "Continue on your way" part.

First major problem: What happens if your founding adventurer dwarf dies? Ideally, an other dwarf could take on the job. But who and why?

I noticed a personnality trait that relates to adventuring: "Likes adventure" or a message of that nature. Why not simply tag adventury dwarfs as potential adventurers? They could be ordinary dwarfs, with benefits. Adventuring benefits. When non-player fortresses get implemented, maybe we could start an adventure by selecting one of those "adventury" dwarves and clicking "Start Adventure!".

Of course, the major obstacle is the definition of an adventurer dwarf. For this to work, it would need to be a regular dwarf, with all the same mechanics, but with additionnal properties/methods. A subclass, if you will. Anything the adventurer does different than a normal dwarf would be implemented in the derived class, things like ownership checking and thoughts, I guess. The fact that the dwarf is an adventurer would most likely have effects on skill performance, since there is two sets of skills right now: adventure skills and fortress skills.

I don't know exaclty how the code is structured, but I'm thinking all of these questions would be resolved by properly subclassing a dwarf to become an adventurer. We definitely would be able to go back and forth between fortress mode and adventure mode, at the dwarf level. There would still be the problem of world information to be loaded, but with the increased world animation, I'm guessing most problems are already solved. And when non-player fortesses can run, everything will be in place for Dungeon Keeper - style play.

An other point to note is the end of the two distinct skillset. An adventurer would start with the same skills as a regular dwarf does, with the same interaction possibilities, but would gain adventuring skills. Instead of making two complete skillset mechanings, we'd need a single unifying skillset that can be expanded to provide an "adventurer". If we go down that path, it may be possible to completely alienate "nobles" or "merchants", if we wish the majority of dwarfs to simply ignore those skillsets. Multiple inheritance could also let us separate each skillset and combine them again on dwarfs for whom those skills are relevants. That way, we could have "civilian" dwarfs, that only have farming and other utility-based skillsets, while we could have a "noble", "merchant", "military", "adventurer" of death.

The point of this post is not to try and sell the idea of "civilians" that don't have access to other skillsets, but in fact to enunciate this fact: Restructuring the adventurer definition to become a subclass of a fortress dwarf is necessary for fortress to adventure mode transitions. An other less important point to be made is that the restructuration will positively affect the user-experience for adventure-mode.

[superbob]

I'd be perfectly happy if the adventurer-founder was the only dwarf capable of leaving a fort as an adventurer. Allowing generic fortress dwarves to become adventurers would make the founder seem less unique.

OTOH, making the predisposition toward adventuring a trait would be interesting. Imagine dwarves with this trait getting an "adventuring" mood, which makes them
1.request a few pieces of equipment
2.set off on an adventure, targeting nearby historical figures or artifacts
3.upon success, return to the fortress, gain one legendary skill and bring back a trophy.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Why should the founder be arbitrarily unique?

[superbob]

Because this dwarf is already an adventurer, with everything this entrails code-wise. All that needs to be done is partial conversion to a fortress-dwarf for the duration of the embark, then back to the adventurer-dwarf mode. Everything that has no direct parallel in fortress mode would simply be appended to the save file, for use when leaving.

It just appeared to me as potentially easier to implement than allowing every dwarf from the fortress to be picked to leave as an adventurer.

Also, I do like the idea of making it possible to leave the fortress as an adventurer only if you started in the adventure mode and actually worked your way to the point of being able to embark.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Why couldn't the other dwarves also pack up and leave?
A. Toady isn't a lazy jerk.
B. There is little that differentiates an adventurer from an NPC.

[assasin]

I'd like to see all fortress dwarves being able to be sent on quests. Whether players should be able to control them is another story.

[superbob]

Why couldn't the other dwarves also pack up and leave?
A. Toady isn't a lazy jerk.
B. There is little that differentiates an adventurer from an NPC.

Now that you put it like that, I think I can see the underlying reason for limiting player controlled adventuring to prior adventures - they were initially under player's control, unlike all the other dwarves in the fortress. Allowing the player to control fortress dwarves directly would break convention.

I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy the option. We could take control of random historical figure migrants and try to continue their (historical) lives, make a military fortress that is an adventurer training camp, pick an ancient vampire as our adventurer (or spot vamps as dwarves we can't pick), maybe get rid of useless dwarves this way as well. And that's just few of the possibilities.

But generalizing the possibility would force Toady to deal with all of the exceptions(dwarf about to go berserk? strange mood?) , exploits and other unwanted stuff that wouldn't be a problem if leaving the fortress as an adventurer would be a special case.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Why couldn't the other dwarves also pack up and leave?
A. Toady isn't a lazy jerk.
B. There is little that differentiates an adventurer from an NPC.

Now that you put it like that, I think I can see the underlying reason for limiting player controlled adventuring to prior adventures - they were initially under player's control, unlike all the other dwarves in the fortress. Allowing the player to control fortress dwarves directly would break convention.

I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy the option. We could take control of random historical figure migrants and try to continue their (historical) lives, make a military fortress that is an adventurer training camp, pick an ancient vampire as our adventurer (or spot vamps as dwarves we can't pick), maybe get rid of useless dwarves this way as well. And that's just few of the possibilities.

But generalizing the possibility would force Toady to deal with all of the exceptions(dwarf about to go berserk? strange mood?) , exploits and other unwanted stuff that wouldn't be a problem if leaving the fortress as an adventurer would be a special case.

Well, for starters there would be ,imitations on whp could be controlled. Anyways, being able to control existing historical figures is planned. To an extent, at least. Controlling your own dwarves more directly is also planned to be possible. No reason not to bring these two together.

[Garrosh]

While I agree about the concept of building an expedition prior to launching in fortress mode (with the supplies, the cart, the animals, the pets, the dorfs, their booze, etc.), I think a reasonable step in that direction would be the actual transition into adventure mode. Clicking an option on an adventurer seems a lot simpler than the expedition logistics might be, since either way, the control transition will have to take place eventually.

I'm definitely not suggesting that the player could move back and forth between adventure mode and fortress mode inconsequently, like in Dungeon Keeper (not at fortress level, anyways). I'm suggesting that the player could launch an adventure in the dungeon he just created, with an adequately constituted dwarf (read: with the "adventurer" attribute, or whatever you want to call it). It's important, in my opinion, that not all dwarves can become user-controlled adventurers. Not everyone has what's needed to become leaders of their own private army.

If the player want to go back to fortress mode... Imagine a dorf going up to Urist McBoss saying "Hey, dude, I don't care who you are, the GODS have decided you're not in charge anymore" and SHAZAM, the player resumes operating his fortress like nothing ever happened... I don't really see it happening.

I wholeheartedly agree with the other suggestions made to transition into fortress mode from adventure mode. The litigation point appears what happens when the adventurer wants to occupy an existing fort, then? I think most "exeptions" fit under the criterion: What if Urist wants to start a fort in an existing location. Well I think that you'd get a message along the lines of "Someone's already established here, you can't do that", in those cases.

My mention of Dungeon Keeper was to say that you could transition into adventure mode directly from fortress mode. You would be able to do whatever you please in there, but you'd be very quickly considered a rogue element when trying to do your own thing (like recruiting party members from the fort's personnel). I think it would be best if there is simply no possibility of interaction without waiving the right to go back to the fortress as its rightful ruler.

I'm also not in favor of sending random dwarves on random quests. Not even selected dwarves on quests. The only dwarves that leave the fortress should either leave with you controlling them, because they hate you, or by means of a high-velocity apparatus which lauches him/her/it past map borders.

An other side effect of having the "adventurer" attribute as something distinct and associated with user-controllability is when your adventurer dies. You could be suggested to take control of a member of your party that has the "adventurer" attribute associated to it.

[Escapism]

I think I suggest this a few months ago, too... it's a classic.

Either way, it would also be awesome to do this in reverse, by assuming control of a random dwarf/squad leader/military dwarf from fortress mode, then going on an adventure/spying/embarking on a diplomatic mission/leading your military to plunder nearby settlements/going renegade and robbing trade routes and helpless wanderers. Maybe even lead some kind of crusades. You'd effectively generate your own "quests", then set about doing them, with your rewards not being an arbitrary amount of gold or some magical artifact, but actually having your quest affect the world by itself. (Retiring renegade armies left and right in the wilderness? I'm thinking you'd be able to bring about the end of civilization in more subtle ways than simply killing every sentient being)

Either way, this will require a fair bit of things being done beforehand. Dwarf forts need to be able to run without player interference, you'd have to be able to lead  large numbers of followers and also have some more nuanced diplomacy/entity interactions other than today's rather black-and-white system. It'd be very cool if all the modes were somewhat mergeable, and the distinction between adventure mode and dwarf mode a bit more blurred. Would make a huge leap in terms of connecting the dwarven forts to the world.