Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NW_Kohaku]

It's an irregular die that has the dots be "mountains" rather than "valleys"...  Are you sure they aren't walking along the INSIDE of the die?  Dig too greedy and too deep, and they find themselves on the outside!  (Sort of like a Fushigiboshi no Futagohime world/inside of a Dyson Sphere world...)

[TheFlame52]

Actually, the dots aren't immediately visible most of the time. The two-spot side is an exception. The dots are formed by clouds when Armok is using the die. I made that up just now.

[NW_Kohaku]

No, it's where the candy spires are below the surface! You just need gamma-ray vision to see the dots through the layers of stone and lead that would stop mere x-ray vision.  Oh, and candy is radioactive, apparently.

[TheFlame52]

1. Not a bad idea
2. It doesn't have to be radioactive, just magic
3. I suppose the dots would be made of the smaller dots of the adamantine tubes?

What about hell and demons? What's at the center of the cube? The Creator? A ball of molten rock? Raw magic?

[NW_Kohaku]

If it's DF, then the HFS is just a portal to another dimension, and Toady is planning on adding connections to more dimensions soon.  If it's just to make a magic six-sider, then presumably Armok made a world with portals to HFS in it just for the giggles because he didn't care or even realize anyone lived there in much the same way we don't care if microscopic organisms are on ours until we get the sniffles from an infection.

With that in mind, most of the rock around the tubes of candy could just be magma or semi-molten rock, or you might just find that a large axis of the die is actually made of solid lead because Armok loaded his die, the cheating git.

[Untrustedlife]

snip

Also, just keep in mind that Dwarf Fortress lets you have "outsiders" - the "world" is not a world, it's just a continent or an island. (The largest map size is roughly the size of Ireland.) This is personally why I take out the demand for poles on the world map, and generally let it be either all-tropical or all-temperate, because it's really only meant to be a small slice of a bigger world.

This used to be the case, and yes we can still do outsiders, in previous versions you would get migrants sometimes from other "regions" (with generated "foreign" entity definitions) and we still have the 2 spawned migrant waves, but they are treated as your civ now instead of getting "foreign" entities like used to be the case, which is also why you can now have 2 poles.

In other words, toady is now perfectly okay with your generated world being the entire world. (so it is no longer reflected in the code that your region is just "A" region) and it is therefore not cannon.

And toady has only moved more towards your world being the only world since the df talk he mentioned this in happened, since we now have the whole "you can have two poles" thing and such.

[NW_Kohaku]

This used to be the case, and yes we can still do outsiders, in previous versions you would get migrants sometimes from other "regions" (with generated "foreign" entity definitions) and we still have the 2 spawned migrant waves, but they are treated as your civ now instead of getting "foreign" entities like used to be the case, which is also why you can now have 2 poles.

In other words, toady is now perfectly okay with your generated world being the entire world. (so it is no longer reflected in the code that your region is just "A" region) and it is therefore not cannon.

And toady has only moved more towards your world being the only world since the df talk he mentioned this in happened, since we now have the whole "you can have two poles" thing and such.

I suspect the dual poles was more out of a desire for simulation and the fact that people generally presumed that when you punched the "create world" button, you were creating a whole world, not just a continent. 

It's also, you know, an option to do these things, not "cannon", or, for that matter, even canon.

Considering as the whole point is that the story is totally different every time, going so far as to now have a procedural generator for the creation myth of the world and outright having an option I know for a fact you're looking very much forward to, I'm not even sure you can claim that DF has a "canon" when it comes to worldgen parameters.  Some worlds have wereboars, and some don't, but do have weresheep. Likewise, some worlds have giant regions that apparently can dominate all inhabitable land worth talking about, but others are tiny islands in the tropics.  It's not like modding where you can totally screw with things and make elves playable but also flying 20-ton creatures made of slade.

And frankly, it's been a couple years since I've read that DF Talk, so if you can quote whatever it is in there you think is supporting you in this, that would be helpful, because my memory may be vague, but my understanding of how outsiders work is based in part on that DF Talk.  Unless you're only arguing is "we have the option two poles now, so it's clearly the entire world and all other options are now invalid!" I don't recall what it is you're trying to get at.

[Untrustedlife]

And frankly, it's been a couple years since I've read that DF Talk, so if you can quote whatever it is in there you think is supporting you in this, that would be helpful, because my memory may be vague, but my understanding of how outsiders work is based in part on that DF Talk.  Unless you're only arguing is "we have the option two poles now, so it's clearly the entire world and all other options are now invalid!" I don't recall what it is you're trying to get at.

I'm just saying that it isnt always just a region anymore, which I thought was pretty clear, which is why i said it isn't always "canon" and you are right about that, nothing is canon, including the concept of each df world being "not the entire world" as you stated.

Since it doesnt HAVE to be just a part of  a larger world , (but it used to be), you specifically said it was (supposed to be) a local region instead of a whole world but that isnt always the case anymore and that specifically is what i'm arguing against, i'm not claiming all others are invalid, I never said that, though you did seem to imply that the OP's d&d world had to just be a local region eg you said it isn't "supposed" to be an entire world , which isn't technically the case.

Players can choose specifically whether or not it is an entire world.

Forgive me/Feel free to point it out if I misunderstood what you were saying/it was out of context.

Nothing comes in right now, there used to be migrants that were generated on the edges and they would get these foreign culture entities, which would be much like the entities that are within the world except they just have different selections of items and things. And that's the idea right now because when we hit wards there are going to be potential depopulation problems and all kinds of other trouble, and one of the possible solutions of that is just to allow things to come in from the sides. Now I know some people are going to dislike that because if things come in from the sides then the effects that you're having on the world are very local and you might not feel that you have as much control as you want to have over the situation, so certainly an init thing or a world parameter thing most likely that you can just check and be like 'nah, my edges are not permeable'. Then in that case we could even do something like have them always be water, or have them drop off into space. Doing things like having the world be a torus, meaning that the left edge and right edge wrap, or have it be ... I'm not sure what happens if you go in through the top and come out through the top on another side, like if you're actually trying to create a sphere you're probably actually creating some weird projected space, just some mess. The left and right edges wrapping is more like one face of an annulus and then having the top wrapped to the bottom would be very weird, especially if it was from the pole to the desert, that would be a torus but that's ... you know. But any kind of option it just has to be supported by the pathfinding routine, which is easy enough, you just give it a few extra rules; I mean the world pathfinding routine not the dwarf mode pathfinding routine. Although, does that mean that you'd be able to settle a site half on one edge and half on the other, and then you'd have to be able to load those blocks correctly. There are certain annoyances that you get there, like when the adventurer walks through the edge it has to know how to load the blocks correctly. It's not a huge problem but it's a little issue....

Ever since this hes moved more towards self contained (eg allowing two poles), instead of the other way, like was the original idea.


As you pointed out, its moving there even more now that we have the myth gen stuff.

That is all I wanted to say.

[BlackBronze]

I have several questions!!

first off, will you (The Almighty DM) include both Dragons and Cave Dragons in your world? If so, are you going to give the Dragons wings and grant them the ability to fly, or will you take away the cave dragon's useless wings and slap fire-breathing on and have them just be giant reptiles of destruction?

When your players run into an animal-humanoid race, will they be able to recruit them? Are you going to include all of the messy size differences between all animal-humanoids and their respective armor? Will you include possible skirmishes between multiple animal-humanoid tribes?

Are you going to include a small human "cult" located in some far-flung city devoted to putting an end to the "mistreatment" of Kobolds? Will you include the ability to adopt a pet, or have an animal (such as a cat) adopt the player? Are you planning on inserting a "tongue-in-cheek" use for Gremlin Tears?

[TheFlame52]

first off, will you (The Almighty DM) include both Dragons and Cave Dragons in your world? If so, are you going to give the Dragons wings and grant them the ability to fly, or will you take away the cave dragon's useless wings and slap fire-breathing on and have them just be giant reptiles of destruction?

Yes. Dragons will be able to fly, cave dragons will still have useless wings. However, both will be exceedingly rare.

When your players run into an animal-humanoid race, will they be able to recruit them? Are you going to include all of the messy size differences between all animal-humanoids and their respective armor? Will you include possible skirmishes between multiple animal-humanoid tribes?

Probably not. I'm a bit scared of including animal people, but I still want them to be there. So a tigerman will probably be a tiger that walks on its hind legs and is as smart as you are, but still an animal. There might be a few civilized animal people in elven lands, and there's a gorlak necromancer.

But yes, I will be including size differences in combat. I expect the players to take advantage of the fact that humans are bigger than everyone else. Charge-stunning FTW!

Are you going to include a small human "cult" located in some far-flung city devoted to putting an end to the "mistreatment" of Kobolds?

Probably not.

Will you include the ability to adopt a pet, or have an animal (such as a cat) adopt the player?

Probably, but players aren't dwarves that get mind-controlled into caring for said animal - they don't have to adopt it. Though I could see my players adopting a pet cat. They're good people.

Are you planning on inserting a "tongue-in-cheek" use for Gremlin Tears?

Maybe as an exotic alcohol, or as an ingredient to make an antidote for the FB poison turning one of the party members into rotten meat.

[TheFlame52]

I'm necroing this old topic of mine for an update and a question.

My game is going great! My players really love the world. They've become legendary heroes. They recently started a beast hunting guild in an abandoned goblin fortress, which is doing a number on the local monster population and raking in lots of cash selling the exotic meat. I try to keep them away from the guild most of the time, though, since micromanaging beast hunters makes for boring sessions.

My question is this: What do each of the races have to offer for trade?
Dwarves: metal goods, gems, subterranean life, blue dye
Elves: grown goods, exotic meat/fruit/veggies, furs, surface dyes, valley herb
Goblins: cheap labor, everyone else's stuff, sometimes black dye/evil products
Humans: wool/other cloth, cheap food, surface dyes, cheap metal goods, valley herb

[Nilbert]

So...  I haven't DM'd in a lot of years, and in those days it was mostly a question of Basic or Advanced D&D rules until some 'other options' came along.  You know, like Traveler, Car Wars, Twilight 2000, Battle Tech...  Interesting to see your discussion as we use to try to modify the rules for better realism.  We didn't have DF (or any other computer game for that matter) to base it on but rather tended to try to merge rules from different games to try to make something better.

In reading your post, what seems to be missing is hit location.  DF seems to determine location of a strike prior to damage and damage is dependent on what is located there.  There is a REALLY old RPG called "Fantasy Wargaming" that was never really quite finished but had a good partially complete rule book (with a similar magic system you describe).  What was neat was a 'location' role on a percentile basis instead of a 'to hit' role on d20 basis.  The higher you rolled, the better the location.  You then had modifiers on experience (no levels in Fantasy Wargaming, like DF) so you could get in the above hundred area.  Shields, dodging, parrying, etc. gave a negative to the role.  We also played it with a cascade on 96 to 100 to add some randomness.  Once location is determined, you could then determine what armor was covering that location and determine a modifier (sounds like DF...).  At that point, I can't remember the original Fantasy Wargaming rules for damage (this was well over 20 years ago), but I think we did a dice role and added bonuses for the weapon and minuses for the armor.  Positive difference meant wounds, lost HPs, etc., zero or negative nothing.  Later we added in the Role Master critical charts for gore, but that was a good ten years later...

As stated earlier in a post, fun is the most important rule though.  Not only for players but especially for DM's!  What usually ended a good game in my days was the DM got sick of the players squabbling over gold pieces, the player who spent hours discussing if and how he can go about making bread or find a general store and talk pointlessly with the merchant while the other players wanted to kill monsters, and, of course, the power gamer.  Ugh... cheating on dice roles for attributes?  Why? 

I found when I explained from the beginning that (1) don't get attached to your character because they are going to DIE, (2) no battle will take over 2 hours or your character will DIE, and (3) if one character is being annoying, he/she will DIE, it remedied most of the problems.  I did have to make every character that was ever rolled up and ventured into the world a few examples though...  That said, I eventually burned out on it from those exact problems and haven't played (or wanted to play) a RPG for a couple of decades.  Lesson, important to have fun yourself as the DM.  DM's put in the work (as you seem to have done), players just roll some dice and paint a miniature or two...

[TheBiggerFish]

'hem.

*roll, not role.

[TheFlame52]

That is very good advice, and I've already incorporated most of it into the game. However, my system is very, very rules-lite. I decide where you get hit, how badly is up to the dice.

My players are also my friends. They don't squabble, one party member holds on to all the money, everyone gets their fair share of loot. It's lots of fun for all of us.

The reason I asked the trade question is because my players are getting involved in trading. So the question is, what does each race have to offer the global market?

[pikachu17]

The dwarves probably have the best trade goods, with steel and other alloys, and various other mining things. They may occasionally have adamantium.
Remember though, humans and goblins also mine, just not as well as dwarves, and they don't have alloys or adamantium.
Goblins may trade slaves, though good heroes might actually liberate said slaves.
Elves may trade cheaper wooden objects, and are awesome at training monsters like giant owls and griffins.
Most of Flame's list work.
Personally, I think that humans are more general, you might more easily find something with them, but most anyone else should have it.
Does vanilla D&D have something to decide if you can find a market item you are looking for?
Kobolds, now that I think of it, would have all of the above to trade, and they also occasionally obtain divine metals from vaults. Of course, your adventurers would have to get rid of the language barrier first, and since kobolds are shy, also earn their trust.