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[Dunamisdeos]

I'll throw in my 2 cents small novels about magic and religion, and address some of things i've read here in the thread.

I don't think magic or religions should be fully procedurally generated, at least not to the degree that say, FB's are. This is for the same reason that, say, metals usable by a given civ are not procedurally generated. Certain civs should have their own defined magic system, or all civs should one system. Otherwise we are going to roll systems that require raw adamantine earrings to be worn in the daytime, or the sacrifice of a dwarf every month.

Madness! 

I don't see any reason why DF shouldn't have magic, however. It should be defined in the raws the same way any reaction-allowed is. And it should certainly be optional, in the same way that defending ones base with traps as opposed to a military is optional, or supplementing your fort with fish as oppossed to raising livestock, or what industry you choose for export. That kind of thing is at the heart of DF, and having it be a forced part of the game would take something away.

As far as other applications of magic and religion, I definately think it should be related to the culture of certain races. It could even act as a secondary ethics system. The culture that rolled a respectful summoning of good spirits to aid in the harvest would naturally be at odds with the culture that summons spirits for the purpose of forced labor. I don't think it should be possible for a culture to roll NO magic (unless it is a deliberate feature of the culture itself). A player could simply not include magic in their playstyle. Some other applications besides combat could be faster crop or even tree growth, the generation of wind on a map that has none, or purification of water.

As far as "realistic" religion goes, the fact of the matter is that specific religions are real parts of many people's lives, and people would be insulted if they were mishandled. Religions should stay procedural, though it would be great to see more detail. For instance, specific rituals that, if made possible in ones fort, would result in a happy thought. I do not think dwarves from other religions should have an unhappy thought from this, nor should there be any penalty for differing religions in a fort, as religious bigotry simply does not need its own simulator. That said, it would be amusing to see a procedurally generated ritual. I'd laugh to see Urist have a happy thought because he Dissected a Trout on a Black Bronze Chair covered in Whale Fat in December. All hail Sarek, Deity of Trout and Caves! It would also be fun to see Urist turned into a Weretrout for sacrificing a carp.   

Monthly or seasonal: These rituals should be noticable in fortress mode; in the example above, several dwarves would line up at the local river or well three times a season.  Devout worshippers should get a negative thought if they cannot participate due to combat, burrows, or interruptions.

If they do get a negative thought, it should be minor. What about a ritual that requires water, but the dwarves have embarked in a desert (or other similar situation etc)? It wouldn't do to have a fort fail due to lack of sacrificial trout 

To sum it up: I think that magic / religion certainly have a prospective place in DF, so long as it doesn't run wild, and does not become a forced gameplay element.

[Deboche]

The current downside of armor is encumbrance, although that is mostly temporary with armor user skill.
Carrying half a tree worth of spellbooks and scrolls should also be pretty encumbering.

According to my system, there would be no scrolls or spellbooks in the game that you'd need to carry around with you. You'd need a book as long as you were learning its system, then you wouldn't need it anymore.

Magic should be optional, of course. It could be a setting at the begining of a new game but I think it'd be more interesting if it was a law that you made for your fortress outlawing magic or by enforcing a certain magicless religious tradition such as atheism, for example.

dunamisdeos: I really liked your post. Let me just clarify this:

When I said magic should be based on existing systems, I meant occult systems such as qaballah, wicca and so on. Occultist aren't the type to get touchy about their beliefs though, not like religious people in general. Of course, it would be a mistake to include Jesus or Shiva in the game. Only the workings and perhaps the esoteric symbols should be used.

[breadman]

If you talk in a lot of topics Breadman there is this strong sense that magic should be completely optional. That it has such strong disadvantages that "Not having magic" is perfectly viable.

My oppinion is as such: There is no reason why you wouldn't want magic in the same way there is no reason why you wouldn't want armor or you wouldn't want weapons or you wouldn't want food. It is a layer of the games strategy when introduced and if introduced.

Many cultures didn't opt out of magic because you couldn't. Doing so was death.

I'm confused.  How does this relate to what I wrote?  Are you arguing a) against or for religious rituals because b) they're too optional or not optional enough?

As written, I proposed a system that would benefit a fort to the extent of producing a little more food, or fighting a little harder, or working a little faster, or being a little happier, but not by more than perhaps ten percent.  It wouldn't be deadly to neglect such rituals, any more than it is deadly to not have them in the current game.  On the other hand, I see where you may be coming from about opting out of magic being death; to ancient Egyptians, the priests who had mastered the calendar of the Nile may well have seemed like magicians.  In other times and places, metalwork felt like magic.

I don't think magic or religions should be fully procedurally generated, at least not to the degree that say, FB's are. This is for the same reason that, say, metals usable by a given civ are not procedurally generated. Certain civs should have their own defined magic system, or all civs should one system. Otherwise we are going to roll systems that require raw adamantine earrings to be worn in the daytime, or the sacrifice of a dwarf every month.

Indeed.  It should be possible to procedurally generate a wearable item that can be produced by the civilization, at least.  Granted, not every fort will have the kaolinite required for my porcelain earring example, even if it did come from a real item in Razorpacked.

As far as "realistic" religion goes, the fact of the matter is that specific religions are real parts of many people's lives, and people would be insulted if they were mishandled. Religions should stay procedural, though it would be great to see more detail.

Absolutely.  For this reason, I'm opposed to importing specific aspects of specific real-life religions, particularly watered-down Hollywood versions.  Even "occult" systems.

Fortunately, starting with the tools already available in fortress mode may well produce systems that feel natural, but not derivative.

For instance, specific rituals that, if made possible in ones fort, would result in a happy thought. I do not think dwarves from other religions should have an unhappy thought from this, nor should there be any penalty for differing religions in a fort, as religious bigotry simply does not need its own simulator.

The bit about too high a concentration of a single religion causing unhappiness may well be better left off the table.  It's hard to simulate properly, and might come too close to bad experiences from players' lives.

Turning that on its head, it could be that dwarves find it easier to make friends when they perform the rituals together.  A bigger group could also make the happy thought even happier.

That said, it would be amusing to see a procedurally generated ritual. I'd laugh to see Urist have a happy thought because he Dissected a Trout on a Black Bronze Chair covered in Whale Fat in December. All hail Sarek, Deity of Trout and Caves! It would also be fun to see Urist turned into a Weretrout for sacrificing a carp.   

Very amusing.  I hadn't been thinking nearly that detailed.  Single-step rituals like eating a rock nut, taking a bath, going to an altar, or looking at the sun would be easily done for fortress-mode dwarves.  On the other hand, the more complicated rituals would be appropriate for invoking more potent blessings, or for annual duties of a high priest.

Monthly or seasonal: These rituals should be noticable in fortress mode; in the example above, several dwarves would line up at the local river or well three times a season.  Devout worshippers should get a negative thought if they cannot participate due to combat, burrows, or interruptions.

If they do get a negative thought, it should be minor. What about a ritual that requires water, but the dwarves have embarked in a desert (or other similar situation etc)? It wouldn't do to have a fort fail due to lack of sacrificial trout 

Good point.  Only the first failure (and only after a success) should be a significant hit, perhaps double the positive hit of performing a ritual, and only if the failure is from circumstances outside of the dwarf's control.  (Less devout dwarves may choose not to participate.)  After that, subsequent failures might be lumped into "hasn't been able to perform their religious obligations for a while" until it too fades.  At that point, the dwarf's devoutness might well decrease.

Under no circumstances should negative thoughts from religion be something that can't be cured by great living conditions.

To sum it up: I think that magic / religion certainly have a prospective place in DF, so long as it doesn't run wild, and does not become a forced gameplay element.

Well said.  This is a fantasy world generator, and there have been plenty of fantasy worlds with little to no magic.  A world gen setting for high, medium, low, and none for magic and/or religion would not be out of place.

[Babylon]

There are gnomes in-game, but they're not really civilized (probably due to lacking any language) and aren't planned to either afaik. They only appear in good/evil mountain areas and only show up to steal your booze if possible.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Mountain_gnome

The idea of them using magic is kind of awesome though.

[Babylon]

Another question about magic is how the dwarves would choose to use it.  As we have seen with the Genesis mod, dwarves that produce fire can be disastrous.

[Deboche]

As written, I proposed a system that would benefit a fort to the extent of producing a little more food, or fighting a little harder, or working a little faster, or being a little happier, but not by more than perhaps ten percent.  It wouldn't be deadly to neglect such rituals, any more than it is deadly to not have them in the current game.  On the other hand, I see where you may be coming from about opting out of magic being death; to ancient Egyptians, the priests who had mastered the calendar of the Nile may well have seemed like magicians.  In other times and places, metalwork felt like magic.

I don't think having magic to make "a little" effect on anything would be beneficial, certainly not 10%. That's not what this thread is about.

As for ancient Egypt, a lot of occultism nowadays has its roots or borrows something from ancient egyptian occultism. And it's not at all about the currents of the Nile or working metal.

Indeed.  It should be possible to procedurally generate a wearable item that can be produced by the civilization, at least.  Granted, not every fort will have the kaolinite required for my porcelain earring example, even if it did come from a real item in Razorpacked.

Of course, a people would never have a requirement for a ritual that wouldn't be based on wherever they are at the moment. To take your example, it wouldn't make sense for Egyptians to need a narwhal horn to make a ritual. Procedurally generated religions would necessarily take the surroundings into account.

Absolutely.  For this reason, I'm opposed to importing specific aspects of specific real-life religions, particularly watered-down Hollywood versions.  Even "occult" systems.

Importing elements from existing occult systems is what this suggestion is all about, whether it ends up being everything or taking some elements and making the rest procedurally generated.

Another question about magic is how the dwarves would choose to use it.  As we have seen with the Genesis mod, dwarves that produce fire can be disastrous.

this is a good point. You might have to end up arresting protestants(same religion, different organization) and heretics(different religion) if they use magic.

And you would be able to give orders to the highest member of the orthodox religion, like for example order him to do a ritual to protect your dwarves from miasma.

There would be a profession, say monk, wizard, priest, etc(or procedurally gened) of dwarves who spend their time meditating/praying and do rituals when you require them to.

They might use magic on their own to protect, heal or entertain themselves and others. It shouldn't be very hazardous though.

I think making a ritual a big deal where you have to gather the objects required and have your dwarves do this or that is better than, for example, assigning a job like healer or war mage or whatever and then have the dwarf be that.

[Neonivek]

Perhaps the greatest strength of Dwarf Fortress is that there are so many ways to skin a cat.  We do not need an I Win button that obsoletes everything else and that you can't simply ignore if you don't like it.  That is anathema.  It is boredom, stagnation, and ruin.

Where did you get that from? As well you are wrong, the only way to skin a cat is to skin the cat.

In spoilers because it is completely unrelated to this topic.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

DF has always and always will have things that are outright better and outright more useful, but that is neither here nor there. My point was more that the game shouldn't be so concerned with making magic fall into this imaginary percieved balance the game has to the extent that not having it becomes more of a personal choice then one of metagaming. Especially since the balance of magic should be handling magic well and not handling it badly (For example if there is a Fireball spell, make it a fireball. You can block a fireball, dodge a fireball, and a fireball isn't going to hurt you that much anyway relative to a good dagger to the sides).

I'm confused.  How does this relate to what I wrote?  Are you arguing a) against or for religious rituals because b) they're too optional or not optional enough?

Been so long since I wrote that I barely remember but I believe I was inferencing from the fact that you were comming up with ways to balance rituals or something along those lines.

I think I was just informing you at the time that people want rituals to be completely optional and not required or advantageous over not using them.

So you may want to think of mechanics that makes a ritual that makes it rain something you wouldn't want to do. For example if it required a sacrifice of several cows that wasn't guarenteed to work.

Or, a favorite of the board, the spell backfiring and killing several people.

This is done to both keep magic balanced relative to never using magic AND to keep it magical because you can never predict its effects.

Which keeps in with "religious magic" because simply speaking the diety involved could just get angry with you for being needy. Similar to what games like Nethack and IVAN have done. Plus in fiction often failing a small part of a ritual causes mass destruction or death, so making sure you can perform the ritual without mistake or else it will go badly can also be a way to balance it.

[Deboche]

There are gnomes in-game, but they're not really civilized (probably due to lacking any language) and aren't planned to either afaik. They only appear in good/evil mountain areas and only show up to steal your booze if possible.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Mountain_gnome

The idea of them using magic is kind of awesome though.

having thought about it, I agree. And they kind of remind me of fairies in that they stay away from human(dwarf) affairs mostly and are tricksters. Maybe some Irish fairy lore would give a few examples of what spells gnomes might cast

[NW_Kohaku]

If you talk in a lot of topics Breadman there is this strong sense that magic should be completely optional. That it has such strong disadvantages that "Not having magic" is perfectly viable.

My oppinion is as such: There is no reason why you wouldn't want magic in the same way there is no reason why you wouldn't want armor or you wouldn't want weapons or you wouldn't want food. It is a layer of the games strategy when introduced and if introduced.

Many cultures didn't opt out of magic because you couldn't. Doing so was death.

This is pretty much bad ideas in every possible way.

First off, no, most people don't want a magic system that they won't use. 

There is a vocal minority of people who don't want magic, but there was a vocal minority of people who didn't want the re-introduction of mineral scarcity, as well, because they wanted every single embark they had to have enough gold to (seriously) make a solid gold pyramid in each embark.

People don't want magic because we don't have magic now, and there's always going to be someone afraid of change, no matter how much it might be for the better - simply saying there's someone who won't like a change would quickly ensure that there's basically nothing ever done.  (Some people even protest the fixing of some of the bugs...)

Secondly, for someone who hates magic so much, it seems odd that you're so vocally going into other people's threads to tell them what their ideas actually are, when you clearly don't understand the original ideas.

It reeks of bad faith argument to say that you honestly want magic to fail at the same time that you want to tell people how they should want their magic system. 

Especially since you outright admit you don't even listen to anything you don't want to hear so you can interpret people's arguments however you want, it makes for a really poor reasoning for anyone to take you seriously at all:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I often don't read everything Kohaku says mostly because it isn't important to what I want to respond to.

So my suggestion when someone makes huge posts is that really not everything said is important and you don't have to respond to everything.

There's a reason I listed that list of questions the magic system has to answer... and your proposed idea fails basically all of those questions by both being too powerful (by design) so that there's no reason not to be a magic-and-armor-user, being useless (by design) by having ridiculous handicaps, not solving any problems, being purely about how you want magic to feel, instead of actually addressing what impacts the mechanics have upon play (and even dismissing the entire notion of thinking about the consequences of decisions made as being irrelevant because it is a simulation), and not playing to DF's strengths in any way. 

[fractalman]

I was recently inspired by the minecraft mod "thaumcraft"; it replaced taint with "flux", or turbulence in the magical field...which could then cause totally random stuff to happen.

Sloppy, amateurish magic generates LOTS of turbulence.  Taking ones time to procure just the right material may produce so little flux it can dissipate on is own.

Then add a brightness value to magic.  Intensely dark magic animates corpses, even if it's not particularly turbulent. Turbulent dark magic will occasionally spawn a full-blown bubble of evil a la "wheel of time", in which all your rock pots in a 5x5x5 cube come to life and try to kill you. adamant is immune, because it was made specfically to contain magic (in particular, clown magic) and not be affected by it. 

You can perfom rituals to try and encourage random events to happen to yourself, or to ward off bad luck (thereby causing most of the events to happen away from a dwarf), but the best long-term strategy in a biome with an obscenely chaotic magic field is to have half the fort busy at (say) an adamant+gem workshop, working on depleting the local field with no concern for just what spell they wind up casting. 
(I can see  6-9 variables describing the qualities of the local magic; if sphere of magic are then distributed on a color wheel (hypersphere or something?), you can either determine the effects from where the spheres land, or the sphere-spells from a combination of built-in spells and effects and where the sphere lands.  )
tlds: give magic color,d&d alignment, and field strength.  Split magic into vanancian magic, and wild magic, then blur the line between the two branches.   

...eh, there's more i'd like to say on this when i have access to a nice keyboard.

[Neonivek]

Off topic conversation in spoiler!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Secondly, for someone who hates magic so much

Ohh dear goodness no, I love magic.

even dismissing the entire notion of thinking about the consequences of decisions made as being irrelevant because it is a simulation

Well not really but people don't understand my point. It is mostly that I think balance should stem naturally from the nature of it being a simulation and not artificially imposed onto the simulation out of a sense of balance that may be ultimately unnessisary AND that people's idea of how the game is currently balanced and how magic works is also skewed and is thus making people try to balance the idea of magic they have in their head without ever realising that, that can be rewritten too to fit the setting better.

So when I hear people trying to make magic incompatible with armor it is just odd because of how outright artificial it is for many reasons. Which I'd continue but this isn't the topic for this.

they kind of remind me of fairies in that they stay away from human(dwarf) affairs mostly and are tricksters. Maybe some Irish fairy lore would give a few examples of what spells gnomes might cast

Nothing nice I can assure you. It was the renaisance that started the romanticised version of fairies and before that they could be outright malicious and often murderous!

Mind you Dwarf Fortress is clearly not using those fairies (sorta... Night Trolls can be interpreted as a member of the Fae if the Threetoe story is to believed) so you are safe.

Sloppy, amateurish magic generates LOTS of turbulence.

Well think of some religious rituals in real life that often take hours on end that are extremely taxing on your mind and body.

While television and books like to simplify rituals as lighting a few candles and saying a few magic words... real life rituals can involve mile long walks carrying large heavy objects or having words tatooed into your arm with a razorblade and hammer. Heck ever just been to a religious sermon? Even though you do nothing an hour in a hot building while a person drones on with music SPECIFICALLY made to be droning can take a lot out of you.

Though that is something. Magic Via Spiritual quest. Perhaps some magic should only initiate a quest a sort of compas towards the solution.

And that doesn't have to be weakened since obviously it is already balanced by whatever the solution is. For example if it leads you to a ancient and powerful sword in the gullet of a huge fire-breathing dragon.

But I digress

Failing a magic ritual that is based off a religious one is quite easy to understand because they require a lot of mental and physical preperation and may be outright impossible for an unfit person to do (or even dangerous irregardless as is the case of rituals that involve the maiming of the magician)

[Deboche]

There's a reason I listed that list of questions the magic system has to answer... and your proposed idea fails basically all of those questions by both being too powerful (by design) so that there's no reason not to be a magic-and-armor-user, being useless (by design) by having ridiculous handicaps, not solving any problems, being purely about how you want magic to feel, instead of actually addressing what impacts the mechanics have upon play (and even dismissing the entire notion of thinking about the consequences of decisions made as being irrelevant because it is a simulation), and not playing to DF's strengths in any way.

This is not very constructive and I disagree with all of it. If you provide reasonable arguments I may be able to refute them but I can't respond to vagueness, am I supposed to guess what you mean?

As for the questions they don't seem all that relevant. Where did they come from? And you say my idea fails all of them, I can't see how.

[Deboche]

they kind of remind me of fairies in that they stay away from human(dwarf) affairs mostly and are tricksters. Maybe some Irish fairy lore would give a few examples of what spells gnomes might cast

Nothing nice I can assure you. It was the renaisance that started the romanticised version of fairies and before that they could be outright malicious and often murderous!

I know. I have a book on fairies, it's like a kids' book with lots of pictures and it only describes one or two types of benevolent fairies. The others all want to kill you, get you lost, eat your food and so on. You wouldn't expect gnomes to be nice

[fractalman]

Sloppy, amateurish magic generates LOTS of turbulence.

innate wizards: mistakes include placing a gem in the wrong spot, and losing concentration. 
religious rituals: common mistakes include mispronouncing the gods name, and approaching the god with an unclean heart (or, to put it another way, with the wrong set of motives.  Plant gods will generally NOT tolerate you approaching them for the purposes of killing elves.  good luck implementing that correctly, though..)

Furthermore.
In areas of obscenely high magical saturation and intensity....a simple prayer is really all it would take to cast fireball, and an hour-long ritual is all it would take to set up a firestorm. But, if you PO the local volcano god, or spill your vial of imported, condensed water magic, you might only get one random event from it, but it could easily be a very intense event, such as the entire map turning into magma all at once. 


In areas with insanely thin magic...you might never even be able to contact a god, or cast a spell.  On the other hand, you can get away with setting up a temple to an elven god and defiling it with tons of charcoal.    Actually, if you DO want to cast any magic in a thin (but non-zero) magic world, your best bet is probably turning half the map into elf-god temples, followed by defiling them with dead trees, dead elves, and magma.   
OR..to discover a way to reliably turn physical energy into magical energy; you then need to deal with the waste products. 

So yeah.  My suggestion was mostly aimed at suggesting an end-user way of balancing the desire for randomness in magic, with the need to have Turing-complete rules so that Toady can actually program it. The rest kinda fell into place.

[Dunamisdeos]

There's a reason I listed that list of questions the magic system has to answer... and your proposed idea fails basically all of those questions by both being too powerful (by design) so that there's no reason not to be a magic-and-armor-user, being useless (by design) by having ridiculous handicaps, not solving any problems, being purely about how you want magic to feel, instead of actually addressing what impacts the mechanics have upon play (and even dismissing the entire notion of thinking about the consequences of decisions made as being irrelevant because it is a simulation), and not playing to DF's strengths in any way.

I agree with this fully and completely.  It seems like the other side of this debate is proposing adding features for the sake of adding features. If you don't properly consider exactly what you are adding and how it will affect the rest of the game, you will end up diluting the game, and therefore negatively impacting the game as a whole.

The whole trick with adding something like this to a game like dwarf fortress (a game that already has long-established mechanics). The things that Kotaku is listing are neccesary to building a good gameplay element. Ignore them to your own folly. A Magic or Detailed Religous system needs to be:

1:Inoffensive to everyone involved to the highest possible degree
2:Optional
3:Must not take away from established elements

Aside from these three essential elements, whether or not it is useful is a matter solely of opinion to the player.