Yes, insta-game-over is not really fun to most people. The game Mage had a fantastic mechanic called Paradox, and I think a deep list of effects related to each Sphere could do the job of a mediocre GM. But it would also need the infrastructure of assigning Sphere associations to every creature, plant, item, etc. in the game (side-effects can be based on the target). Basically, a crap-ton of work that only makes sense if almost every one of the building blocks is useful to some other facet of the game. Sphere effects could make FB syndromes more thematic, creature/plant associations can get us away from the Good/Evil/Calm/Savage grids, and so on... but the bits and pieces will need to come organically from DF development. It's a bit silly to insist that Toady make some ginormous Magic System™ that sits completely apart from everything else in the simulation.
(we should definetly avoid turning this into a suggestions thread)
We already have spheres and magic associated to spheres, so it seems the potential is already there (wasn't that the intention) .
There is a great table in the d&d user manual that talks about creating settings with chaotic magic, its less "immediate destruction lol" and more a "be careful, because you are messing with a force you dont fully understand, something that can be unpredictable in the wrong hands," its not instant death, its more like moderated death and toady has talked about how he wants to avoid "the industrialization of magic", so a chaotic magic setting would have magic, and that magic would by nature have far reaching effects and could be reliable most of the time but only very very specific people could "harness that" without bad things happening otherwise, you are inviting horrible things to happen. It could still be common in its raw form in this situation aswell. It could be as simple as making miscasts much more common aswell.
I think it fits the nature of DF quite well tbh, but I still think we should have a slider, because sometimes you want a hard world, with crazy things happening, and sometimes you dont. Sometimes you want magic to be really dangerous but powerful. Sometimes you don't.
Very few people would want a world without dwarves in dwarf fortress, but the myth generator has that at magic settings 0-1 so why not have chaotic magic slider with similar desirablity. Yeah its more work, but I think it would be worth it.
The current myth generator leans more towards magic has a cost, but it is reliable, and while that works for certain settings, it doesnt work for all settings, and I hope that df will eventually be able to generate more varied settings.
better explanation:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4E22DL0XscIMDM0MmUyOTktZDc2MS00NzU3LWE3MDYtMTUwYTY5NDgwYTUx/viewfunny thing is DF actually leans towards "magic is rare and magic is chaotic" right now, we have evil regions that turn you into thralls, and do other horrifying things , powerful dangerous necromancers, and powers that have a huge cost (you want to see people through walls, you need to be a vampire and you need blood)
RE "Chaotic" magic: It seems to me that the most feasible implementation of this would be a sort of a magical quality system. An Archmage with unlimited regents could always cast ☼masterwork☼ spells, while an apprentice with a paucity of supplies would be quite prone to misfires. This way, while your fortress wouldn't go up in flame without warning, it could still do so, if you're not careful enough.
EDIT: The logical extension of this would be a magical ease-slider, allowing anything from a world with no chance of spells failing to one where the chance of success is never more than a coin-flip.
This I like
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perhaps we should avoid the hijacking of the thread here.
The GDC myth-generator video shows that randomized races are in the pipeline. Will users be able to influence the random elements, and if so, by how much?
What does the SUPERNATURAL tag do? The wiki claims that it gives a creature access to all secrets of a corresponding sphere, yet it doesn't seem to do that in 42.xx.
I have seen demons with the death sphere that know like 24 versions of necromancy in the legends viewer in this version (you know SECRET_01, SECRET_02) what it calls the necromancer secrets, so it does work, at least for them.