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Toady should start it now and include some of the beasts in the next (major) update!

3 (6.8%)

It sounds like something that should be done soon.

5 (11.4%)

Toady should probably do something like this eventually, but it's not important.

14 (31.8%)

Only if Toady needs the donations.

7 (15.9%)

No, this is a bad idea.

15 (34.1%)

Total Members Voted: 44

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Instead of those laws being part of spheres, i'd rather see commandments being issued by the deities of those spheres to their followers.
Punishment could range from a slap on the proverbial wrist, to a plague, to permanent and ironic punishment (being turned into a wendigo for engaging in cannibalism)

Well I was intentionally trying to keep it simplified because I was going rather off topic. I was trying to completely avoid by what and how the punishments were dealt. The reason for this is I believe that, unless it's the type of fantasy world you want to simulate, deities alone are not good enough alone to completely handle "laws" and "punishments" alone.

Basically I would make it that there are powers outside of just deities of spheres. I can see up to three forces.
Gods -  deities are what affects the mortal realm the most. However even the gods have to abide by laws. Deities would have to carve their own powers from the spheres. They are aligned to one or two "major" spheres and specialised in a couple of "minor" spheres. A deity can have it's own laws inside it's "shaped" spheres which allows for religious and cultural variations of their subordinates.
Natural Laws - Laws that either stem from nature itself or laws so ingrained into a culture it's become second nature. Almost all humans for example would have natural laws against things like murder, rape and cannibalism. Natural laws would generally be a lot lighter on the punishment making it more like the idea of "karma". Natural laws differ from spheres due to their much more passive and "neutral" behaviour. Natural laws are not governed by spheres.
Spheres - The most ancient of all laws and what governs the world. Spheres fight for dominance and control. They often give boons to those that align themselves to them. The forces have a bigger impact in the "god realms" but can't affect the mortal realms as easily. Spheres corrupt lands, attracts beasts and servants and will attempt to destroy anything of it's opposing sphere. Spheres would very rarely deal out "punishments" since it's more of the deity's obligation. To gain the "punishment" of a sphere would take an extremely powerful act and the sphere would be acting more in "self-defence" than any real idea of justice.

Using a system like this you could tweak world generation so it can generate different "genres" of fantasy. The standard would be the generic "high fantasy" mash-up. Lowering/removing the power of the gods and increasing the power of natural laws could generate a "dark fantasy" world. Increasing the power of the spheres and lowering the others would give you a very strange Planescape-esce setting where everything comes down to alignments. Increasing the power of the gods could get a very theocratic centred world where power comes from worship and wars are fought over heresy.

You've got me on a tangent and although I love discussing spheres/gods I think it's distracting from the main subject matter. 

[GreatWyrmGold]

Pseudoprocedural? Like curent werebeasts and vamps?

I was thinking more like Toady's plans for dragons, but kinda yeah.

Would be cool if medusa would get different qualities, not straying too far from original concept. Like one medusas in one world has 13 king cobra hair, petrifying to bauxite statue stare and legs, and other 1 black mamba "hair", petrifying bite to iron ore statue with tail instead of legs.

That would indeed be awesome.

[Bloax]

Medusa(s? For all I know it's actually a name. But who cares.) would definitely be Cool++ if they ranged from residing in titan-like shrine-temples with snake tails instead of feet and hordes of snakes for hair, to looking perfectly normal with the exception of snake hair, which they would then hide under a turban or something and otherwise be human nobles that could visit your fortress.

Because you could make them adventurer-only semi-megabeasts, it'd still be a shame if you excluded the Dorf mode players from all the fun, wouldn't it!

[Di]

Concerning the sponsorship drive, I think this is horrible idea. The previous one has been started by accident when one of the donators has asked to add some critter and Toady decided to play along.  In the end, we have a horde of functionally identical creatures that don't contribute to a gameplay much.
The only partially positive result of it was half-assed bee-keeping industry for which Toady has managed to snatch some working time.
I think it's best to leave decisions when to add this or that to Toady himself. Especially concerning something that requires special game mechanics. It's not like toady would leave out any remarkable myth.

[Neonivek]

Well what this means Di is that if we ever do a sponsorship drive we will need to SEVERELY limit the number of critters that are actually going to be added.

So we don't get the tons upon tons Toady had to deal with this time around.

For example limiting it to 10 or 20 mythological creatures... if that many.

[KrEstoF]

What we totally need is the mythical pink sheep!



Or not, but it would be kinda funny. Extremely expensive wool as hard as adamantine yet soft as silk. Extremely high regeneration ability. And legendary biting and kicking abilities.   

[King Mir]

Then why did he run the Animal Sponsorship Drive?

This would be that, but with mythical or otherwise fictional creatures.

I don't know if the Animal Sponsorship Drive was a good idea or not. I am grateful for the result though, because it makes the game have a sizable quantity of non fantasy elements, as I feel it should. A Mythical Beast Sponsorship drive doesn't do that.

Another reason I don't think a mythical beast drive is not such a good idea is that adding a low priority animal with out adding full content for it, so that it doesn't behave quite like the real thing, doesn't feel like insufficient. But adding a mythical creature without adding the unique features that make it magical, does.  For example, swordfish may not properly slash at targets like real swordfish. Is that a big deal? not really. But if a Domovoy didn't do it's signature thing of handing around people's houses, then it's better not to have them at all. So The particular approach of just adding minimal form, giant, and person models for most animals wouldn't be reasonable for Mythic creatures.