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[Ekaton]

I'm not entirely sure if this wasn't already suggested, but wouldn't it be great to be able to start as a person of a certain profession, that has to do that profession for a living? For example, you can start as a judge in a town of your choice, and you would already be able to do your job as a judge, conducting trials and sentencing criminals. Or alternatively, you could start as a general and command your king's army in the field. Or be the owner of one of the procedurally-generated taverns.

Perhaps the player could have even more power over his character:
- To set his age
- To set his family (including creating his spouse and children just like you are creating your character now)
- To set the initial wealth and choose a house you would like to own from several tiers (slum shack, simple village shack, poor village house, poor town house, poor town insula etc. up to rich, filthy rich and royal)
- Titles - aristocratic, patrician, professional etc.
- Character traits, preferences, prejudices, likings etc.

Upon those settings, character's history and ancestry could be generated, along with relationships with other characters in the town (based on their wealth, position, race etc.). Game could even take the relevant character's traits, history and character into question - if player's character trait is him being evil, good characters would certainly not like him. Or if he is an elf and another character in town is dwarf with a prejudice towards elves, they wouldn't like either.

This would allow the player to jump right into the world from different perspectives and much of it could be generated anyway, in line with generating the world - for instance player's character could replace an already existing character of similar wealth and position, killing the old one. If there was already a judge or general, the game would kill them and assign their position and home to our character. Even more - if the player's character is a general, the game could generate his history up to him being lieutenant or captain so that the character's advancement to the post of general wouldn't seem odd or rushed.

The game could then introduce the player into his life with things such as local laws, details of the character's religion, town's history, character's friends and enemies and the schedule demanded from the player - such as conduct meeting at noon visit your troops in the morning etc. It could use the schedule of an NPC that held the post before the player as a basis.

[Cormack]

That's great!

But for it to make sense, the world around the player must be richer, and I hope that Toady One will concentrate on the world, its rules, laws, religions, relationships between characters who play an important role in it, and so on, so on.

I don't really care about playing it as a normal, boring roguelike, fighting and all. I want to be someone in the game. Just as you mentioned being a judge. I want to be the judge, to hear cases, to order punishments and executions, I want to build, to create, to produce, to sell. To have a family and friends, too. I'd rather be a merchant, a writer, a philosopher, a town's councilman, a mayor, than another generic dragon-slayer, blah, blah, blah. I really want it to be the ultimate simulation of the fantasy world and I pray that Toady One will go that way with the game's development. 

[Myth]

Epic suggestion :').

I think in the future, the game will take that path , and I think it is inevitable. Maybe not soon, but the day will come.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Great suggestion! The only problem is the retroactive placement of characters.

I propose a new mechanic wherein the player, at any point, has the option of inducing a vaguely player-controlled baby. It will grow up in the background as stuff happens (whether you play fort mode, adv mode, or let history run for a while), occasionally giving you the option to make important decisions or determine what aptitude the incubating-adventurer has for certain skills or what attributes they have.

Then, at any point in their life, you can "jump into" them, and play like normal.

The only issue is restarting worldgen, but with a bit of abstracting, you should be able to speed up the fourteen-day process. Multithreading would fix that anyway.

Put it on the heap of things multithreading would fix. [notreallyserious]Anytime now, Toady.[/notreallyserious]

[Ekaton]

That's a good idea too, if it is not time-consuming and gives enough power for a player to determine his character.  My method would be somewhat intrusive and retroactive, yes, but at the same time pretty much instant for anyone who would want to play as soon as possible, and at the same time not that intrusive, as in many times it replaces a similar NPC with a PC.

Raising your character could be fun, a bit like in Crusader Kings II, where you are educating your children and influencing their future traits.

But perhaps there is a third way - to raise your character through events - therefore creating it as a seperate character in the game's world, then letting you play through those parts of the character's life which you want - letting you control him or her at any age you might choose, and later letting him go for a while until further notice - we're back with basic event-like choices for just the most important stuff, which you can ignore and let the game decide. Then you can play through those parts of your character's life which you find interesting, and then control him from the moment when you consider him "ready" - such as when he becomes a general or judge. That saves you a lot of time - you don't have to play Sims-like through the entire life of your character, and at the same time you can if you really want that.

Also, after playing your character for a while, you can leave him be for a while and manage your fort, or play another character, perhaps even interacting with your former character whose decisions you should be able to influence to some extent at least.

[Starver]

Yeah, maybe the general "...and what do your parents do?" and "...what profession did you want try, when you were a kid?"  See also the LCS chargen sequence, but more diverse and mature and (perhaps?) randomised into variable success (for any decision left to the game-engine to process for you, not actually played out by the fallible player) building up the form of your background, but with a bit of variation.

Although that could end up being a game in itself. c.f. https://www.playalterego.com or http://www.educationalsimulations.com (having failed to find the turn-of-the-Milleniumish online life-choices game that immediately came to mind...)

[Cormack]

That's a good idea too, if it is not time-consuming and gives enough power for a player to determine his character.  My method would be somewhat intrusive and retroactive, yes, but at the same time pretty much instant for anyone who would want to play as soon as possible, and at the same time not that intrusive, as in many times it replaces a similar NPC with a PC.

Raising your character could be fun, a bit like in Crusader Kings II, where you are educating your children and influencing their future traits.

But perhaps there is a third way - to raise your character through events - therefore creating it as a seperate character in the game's world, then letting you play through those parts of the character's life which you want - letting you control him or her at any age you might choose, and later letting him go for a while until further notice - we're back with basic event-like choices for just the most important stuff, which you can ignore and let the game decide. Then you can play through those parts of your character's life which you find interesting, and then control him from the moment when you consider him "ready" - such as when he becomes a general or judge. That saves you a lot of time - you don't have to play Sims-like through the entire life of your character, and at the same time you can if you really want that.

Also, after playing your character for a while, you can leave him be for a while and manage your fort, or play another character, perhaps even interacting with your former character whose decisions you should be able to influence to some extent at least.

That third idea seems fine, I don't think that there would be anybody who would like to play through the whole life of a person and wouldn't like to take a break once in a while, to play as someone else or build another fortresss, and then play his old pal again.

The questions is: how much choices should the game leave to the player? Every important decision in his life, or his decisions in his job? For example, should the game asks us about every decision that our general has to make in his job - how to supply his troops, who to talk to, what to tell the king, what tactic to utilize, when to march and when to stop. There are a lot of decisions to be made during the campaign and the game would just have to keep asking you all the time about everything. Could be somewhat annoying.

[Ekaton]

I'd say that if you want to retire your character for a while, the whole point of doing so is to stop making those decisions by yourself. Especially the simple, everyday ones. You should still be able to make crucial decisions yourself, but shouldn't have to do anything that you don't want to. I can't imagine the game being playable if you'd have to keep babysitting your character when creating a fort or having another character.

I believe that AI will be more than capable of making the decisions for you, based of course on your character's personal traits, prejudices and of course, to some extent at least, rolling the dice.

There is, of course, the question of defining what is a crucial decision. For general many decisions during campaign could be crucial - if he makes mistake and moves his soldiers in the wrong direction and potentially lose the war, but then again - you chose to retire this character. That is the risk involved. For me crucial decisions are those that in itself will change your character's life significantly - marry, accept a job, decline a job, fight to the death or try to run, etc. But then again, I believe that it would be hard to create a system that would allow to distinguish correctly what is crucial and what is not. That's why there's always risk involved in retiring your character.

[Untrustedlife]

You can already set the characters personality/Character traits by choosing full customization in the "your personality" screen when creating a character in verison 42.

The problem with generating ancestry etc, is the fact that world gen already happened, so just saying "oh yeah these are this guys parents" and then you have to generate the parents, and you have to make sure they dont do something that didnt actually happen in worldgen to prevent inconsistencies, toady has talked about this in the past in df talks It probably wont happen until he figures out a way to speed up post worldgen history generation (so that when creating an adventurer he can actually pass, say, the 18 years it takes your character to grow up and actually create a history that isn't just thrown in on top of worldgen and causing problems.

[Ekaton]

You can already set the characters personality/Character traits by choosing full customization in the "your personality" screen when creating a character in verison 42.

The problem with generating ancestry etc, is the fact that world gen already happened, so just saying "oh yeah these are this guys parents" and then you have to generate the parents, and you have to make sure they dont do something that didnt actually happen in worldgen to prevent inconsistencies, toady has talked about this in the past in df talks It probably wont happen until he figures out a way to speed up post worldgen history generation (so that when creating an adventurer he can actually pass, say, the 18 years it takes your character to grow up and actually create a history that isn't just thrown in on top of worldgen and causing problems.

The point of retroactive generation of ancestors is to make them as insignificant as possible, so that they wouldn't meddle with the world around them. They just exist, never did a thing that influenced the world or characters around them in any way. As far as the rest of the generated world is concerned, they just existed. This is not needed though, just something cosmetical to avoid characters "popping out from nowhere".

[Starver]

The alternative take on the insignificant parentage is to have (choices of) a certain type of parentage that does match (recent) history.

Compare and contrast the inbuilt site-searching utility: search for a non-aquifer location (many possible ones, it sets your cursor on one of the spots), re-reun with the addition of many deep metals, it finds less and your presented spot may well be elsewhere, now try for high rainfall and high temperature and low elevation (another spot, perhaps, and a chance by now that it isn't a full match because the world doesn't have that full combination) and if you think you can get away with a specific amount of savagery or evil... You only get the one site (and it may not match a wish to have flux or deep soils or...) and if you're disapointed with the mismatch you might re-find without the rainfall choice, in order to get the ore-probabilities that you want.  But there's options of all kinds out there.

What if you specified "human son of a potter and a carpenter, from a large town with plenty of trade..." (by character-selection menus of some kind), if that's what you're lookinv for... Somewhere in the populations there should be the possibility of matching those exacting requirements, without forcing much (if any) of the history to change to accomodate you...  Indeed, multiple possible choices will probably exist, and you get shown one...  Even if it says "can't do you carpenter... But another woodworker profession, perhaps?"

Just riffing on the idea, there. Not sure how practical/sought after any implementation might be...

[Untrustedlife]

You can already set the characters personality/Character traits by choosing full customization in the "your personality" screen when creating a character in verison 42.

The problem with generating ancestry etc, is the fact that world gen already happened, so just saying "oh yeah these are this guys parents" and then you have to generate the parents, and you have to make sure they dont do something that didnt actually happen in worldgen to prevent inconsistencies, toady has talked about this in the past in df talks It probably wont happen until he figures out a way to speed up post worldgen history generation (so that when creating an adventurer he can actually pass, say, the 18 years it takes your character to grow up and actually create a history that isn't just thrown in on top of worldgen and causing problems.

The point of retroactive generation of ancestors is to make them as insignificant as possible, so that they wouldn't meddle with the world around them. They just exist, never did a thing that influenced the world or characters around them in any way. As far as the rest of the generated world is concerned, they just existed. This is not needed though, just something cosmetical to avoid characters "popping out from nowhere".

Your idea encompassed them being ROYAL and rich  though, especially royalty, which does impact the political landscape of the world.

Remember there is a ton of simulation packed into the world and cities and such already, (including all profession numbers being tacked and having an effect)
Why is your family rich? How did that happen..wait a second before world generation all the mansions in this location had patricians living in them..I guess we can retroactively add one, oh but the amount of carpenters in this location is already tracked... oh well, add one, oh wait the trade in this location now has more wood items, woops.....add more wood items to the trade list...oh wait *infinite hole*

Now, if you could choose historical parents from a list and such,. then there is less of  a problem, because you can respect the simulation.

(This issue doesn't pop up if you choose to start as poor though, as is a part of your suggestion because then it could just pull someone from the entity populations and create a new hist fig for it that way like it already does when you meet someone in a town (while respecting the simulation eg choosing based on what the town has available liek it does now, if they have alot of carpenters for example), but you have to think of everything and the effects)

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

That third option is just what I was thinking, Ekaton!

[Ekaton]

That third option is just what I was thinking, Ekaton!

I added the ability to control the character through events after it is created, to retain some control over it. If you meant that too, then we thing exactly alike 

[Ekaton]

You can already set the characters personality/Character traits by choosing full customization in the "your personality" screen when creating a character in verison 42.

The problem with generating ancestry etc, is the fact that world gen already happened, so just saying "oh yeah these are this guys parents" and then you have to generate the parents, and you have to make sure they dont do something that didnt actually happen in worldgen to prevent inconsistencies, toady has talked about this in the past in df talks It probably wont happen until he figures out a way to speed up post worldgen history generation (so that when creating an adventurer he can actually pass, say, the 18 years it takes your character to grow up and actually create a history that isn't just thrown in on top of worldgen and causing problems.

Your idea encompassed them being ROYAL and rich  though, especially royalty, which does impact the political landscape of the world.

Remember there is a ton of simulation packed into the world and cities and such already, (including all profession numbers being tacked and having an effect)
Why is your family rich? How did that happen..wait a second before world generation all the mansions in this location had patricians living in them..I guess we can retroactively add one, oh but the amount of carpenters in this location is already tracked... oh well, add one, oh wait the trade in this location now has more wood items, woops.....add more wood items to the trade list...oh wait *infinite hole*

Now, if you could choose historical parents from a list and such,. then there is less of  a problem, because you can respect the simulation.

(This issue doesn't pop up if you choose to start as poor though, as is a part of your suggestion because then it could just pull someone from the entity populations and create a new hist fig for it that way like it already does when you meet someone in a town (while respecting the simulation eg choosing based on what the town has available liek it does now, if they have alot of carpenters for example), but you have to think of everything and the effects)

A person can inherit the throne through his or her accomplishments and does not necessarily have to come from a very illustrious family, so we can assume that the character's ancestors were not even of noble status and our character is homo novus - the first person to hold a title in his lineage, or that they were some secluded nobles with no real significance. This is only the case with nobility, as rich merchants can make fortune by themselves and so if we want to play a rich merchant, we can assume that he is a self-made man. With virtually every other profession with the exception of hereditary priesthoods, anyone can rise through the ranks or through elevation by his king.

In case of houses - I proposed simply changing the owner - the old ones dying or moving. No need to create new ones.

Alternatively, in case of particular high professions - kings, high nobility, most powerful merchants from ancient patrician families, the character could simply be added as another child of existing characters. If you think that it is preferable to creating ancestors retroactively, it can certainly work that way. I think that both solutions make sense, though yours is somewhat less intrusive and might fit better.

Also, the crucial element for this system is eliminate a person who is already of that profession - for example if there can be only one judge or guildmaster in town, the game should kill off or retire existing one, so that there is a place for our character. This is intrusive, yes, but I believe that it is necessary.