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Really?.. Elves..

No.x1000

[Sellka]

I call it the last bastion. I know toady has brought up the idea of scenerios in the past and they are further down the line, anyways on to your impending doom.

Goblins have pretty much taken over the entire world, you must survive the endless onslaught of goblin attacks. Your given 30 dwarfs, 30 men, and 30 elves, all equal gender split. You have a year to prepare with the last remnants of three civilizations. Will you survive long enough to expand? Or will these races perish into fading memory and tales.

[NW_Kohaku]

I don't think that's what starting scenarios are supposed to mean.

Starting scenarios mean that, instead of just going out to start a new fortress because that's just what you do, you're given a mission, like "you are being sent into a forest, so chop down and send back to the mountainhomes at least 50 wood per year with the Autumn caravan!"

A scenario where goblins are taking over basically means not having a procedurally generated world history, which goes against what Toady intends for the game to be. 

[Sellka]

I don't think that's what starting scenarios are supposed to mean.

Starting scenarios mean that, instead of just going out to start a new fortress because that's just what you do, you're given a mission, like "you are being sent into a forest, so chop down and send back to the mountainhomes at least 50 wood per year with the Autumn caravan!"

A scenario where goblins are taking over basically means not having a procedurally generated world history, which goes against what Toady intends for the game to be.

A scenerio from my understanding is a given background or situation, what your discussing is more of a quest then a starting scenerio.

A scenerio could be a large group of dwarfs have left the mountain home making there way to a site only to run out of supplies along the way, forcing them to stop and set up at there current location. Which could land you somewhere random on the same landmass as your civ.

[NW_Kohaku]

A scenerio from my understanding is a given background or situation, what your discussing is more of a quest then a starting scenerio.

Starting scenarios
Framework
Expand framework of law, custom, rights, property and status as needed to provide a variety of scenarios
Foundation of laws, both natural and supernatural
Explicit standing of different citizens vs. civilization authorities
Possible expansion of religious and family concepts to provide sufficient scenarios

Starting scenarios
Various possiblities that guide or govern fortress activity: frontier settlement, religious site, prison colony, mining company, military citadel, roadside inn, secondary/future palace of the monarch
Drastic changes to migrants based on starting scenario
Caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario
Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
Generalize starting scenario relationships to every site foundation

These are not pre-genned worlds.  These are simply saying that your fort is meant to be a roadside tavern fort or a military fort, and therefore your migrants match your fort's purpose. 

[Sellka]

A scenerio from my understanding is a given background or situation, what your discussing is more of a quest then a starting scenerio.

Starting scenarios
Framework
Expand framework of law, custom, rights, property and status as needed to provide a variety of scenarios
Foundation of laws, both natural and supernatural
Explicit standing of different citizens vs. civilization authorities
Possible expansion of religious and family concepts to provide sufficient scenarios

Starting scenarios
Various possiblities that guide or govern fortress activity: frontier settlement, religious site, prison colony, mining company, military citadel, roadside inn, secondary/future palace of the monarch
Drastic changes to migrants based on starting scenario
Caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario
Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
Generalize starting scenario relationships to every site foundation

These are not pre-genned worlds.  These are simply saying that your fort is meant to be a roadside tavern fort or a military fort, and therefore your migrants match your fort's purpose.

Who says you have to pre-gen these worlds? Editing some of the Raws could accomplish the same task. mind you, it would be a chore poking around to create these scenerios. Also, It would not be a suggestion if it was not meant to add to the main idea of the scenerios.

[NW_Kohaku]

Who says you have to pre-gen these worlds? Editing some of the Raws could accomplish the same task. mind you, it would be a chore poking around to create these scenerios. Also, It would not be a suggestion if it was not meant to add to the main idea of the scenerios.

That quote was because you appear to be confused as to what the "starting scenario" concept means.

Toady in general is not looking for constraints on the world generator to make pre-fabricated stories.  He's said as much in the past, that he "doesn't want to make a crappy fantasy story, he wants to make a crappy fantasy story generator."  The simulation is everything, so constraining it to force the same results every time works directly contrary to his overarching goals. 

Again, if worlgen happened to make goblins encroaching dwarven lands a thing, then making a starting scenario be that you declare your fortress a military outpost to head off goblin incursions (and generate more military dwarves, more goblin sieges, and much less tavern-related tourism) would make sense.  But that's what's already part of the idea, as is letting players say they want a tavern-centric fortress in a more peaceful location. 

If you want to use worldgen tweaks to make goblins more expansive... you can already do that with worldgen parameters. 

Forcing worldgen to always create a world like that as part of vanilla from a push of a button, however, isn't likely to happen, nor should it really happen.

[SixOfSpades]

The key difference here lies in when in gameplay the player would choose the roleplaying scenario. For all the other, existing suggested "reasons" for your fort, you start with a normal worldgen, pick a normal civ, pick a reason for your fort, and choose your site (certain reasons for the fort may pick the site for you--for instance, a trading hub would have to be situated at a major crossroads, not out in the middle of nowhere). You may also choose to embark with no real "reason" for the fort at all, just like the game is now.

For the game to generate a "Holdout" fort, however, you would need to pick that theme before worldgen even started. That would force a worldgen with different enemy-behavior parameters, so that goblins & other beasties would attack, but never actually destroy, the last settlement of any civilization until the entire world is pretty much covered in Evil biomes. Once there's only one dwarf civ left, the beasties whittle its population down to just a handful, and then leave--and that's where worldgen stops, you can't set the ending year, and the only possible embark location is essentially a Reclaim of the existing "last stronghold". Now, there's nothing wrong with arranging a setup like this (here's where NW_Kohaku & I disagree), it's just very different from how the game is currently arranged, as well as the direction in which the game is currently moving. Now, Dwarf Fortress may one day come to encompass this sort of "flavored" worldgen, but that day won't be coming for many years yet. For now, you'd be far better off tweaking your own worldgens to find/create just such a scenario for yourself, and posting the savegame for others to use, and/or asking other Holdout aficionados to do the same thing.

[NW_Kohaku]

For the game to generate a "Holdout" fort, however, you would need to pick that theme before worldgen even started. That would force a worldgen with different enemy-behavior parameters, so that goblins & other beasties would attack, but never actually destroy, the last settlement of any civilization until the entire world is pretty much covered in Evil biomes. Once there's only one dwarf civ left, the beasties whittle its population down to just a handful, and then leave--and that's where worldgen stops, you can't set the ending year, and the only possible embark location is essentially a Reclaim of the existing "last stronghold". Now, there's nothing wrong with arranging a setup like this (here's where NW_Kohaku & I disagree), it's just very different from how the game is currently arranged, as well as the direction in which the game is currently moving. Now, Dwarf Fortress may one day come to encompass this sort of "flavored" worldgen, but that day won't be coming for many years yet. For now, you'd be far better off tweaking your own worldgens to find/create just such a scenario for yourself, and posting the savegame for others to use, and/or asking other Holdout aficionados to do the same thing.

A worldgen stop parameter of "when there are only ___ playable sites left" would make sense, and would be a much better suggestion than a forced or pre-set worldgen. 

And again, it's not so much that I'm against scenarios like that (and in fact, enjoy creating them with my own parameters) as it is that I recognize that Toady has spent a TON of time working on making worldgen and the simulation.  It's like going up to someone who spent the last 20 years of their life trying to rebuild a vintage WW2 P-51 Mustang with nothing but genuine refurbished WW2 parts, and asking them to add a jet engine to it.  You're asking someone to purposefully undermine something they worked hard to achieve. 

[Solarius Scorch]

Even if this idea was valid, honestly I don't think it's really a good one, I'm afraid. Sure, it generates a story - and actually a useful one, despite being so cliché - but it's not very narrative, because it's gamey. This particular setup is just not very likely to appear in a random world, and it's a big problem.

However, I'm all for military scenarios in war-torn lands.

Hmm, I wonder how your mountainhomes are going to reward you, or indeed measure your success ("send 50 trees a year" is easy to program; "defend the border as well as you can" is not).