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[Chase]

With great magic power comes great responsbility... for Toady to makes it balanced. I believe that it will be quite a challenge for him - if few characters have too much power then they will most likely dominate the world too easily, and if it is too common than death toll will be huge as a powerful wizard will be able to burn whole towns easily if he had the power to command fire.

Fire magic is what I am most afraid of. In casual RPGs like Skyrim for that matter you can cast fireballs without much thought, but in DF one fireball can set grass on fire, and then burn quite a large territory - last time I had fire it burned the grass on the whole map and its spread is unrealistic too - it takes roughly the same time to spread in every direction forming a huge circle. In adv mode I believe it will have to spread more realistically and over a finite distance, but still, thinking realistically, one fireball has the potential to burn the whole forest with all civs that call it home.

Why is that a problem?  DF is intended to be able to generate and simulate a huge range of types of fantasy worlds (including some that aren't very fantastic).  In some of them, it might well be the case that fire magic is easy and/or powerful.  Important structures and items will be made of stone or metal.  Living underground will be popular.  Shields will be important. Managing line of sight will be tactically relevant.  Ways to survive without extensive surface farms will be logistically crucial.  Various secondary technologies based on ready availability of high heat levels will be practical.   Sounds... pretty dwarfy, really; in fact, one could argue that a significant part of what we think of as the "default" mythos of DF is actually pretty compatible to a world with too much fire in it. 

Worlds don't have to be "balanced".  In fact, overly balanced worlds seem fake and artificial, because reality isn't balanced.  Frankly, I'd be more worried about death magic or meta-magic than fire magic; either has the possibility to destroy a world far more firmly than just setting the surface greenery on fire.  (Any magic that affects the effectiveness of other magic has the potential to spiral out of control in a feedback or feed-forward loop, and that's the sort of thing that a computer will have difficulty spotting until it happens.) 

(At this point, I've stopped really addressing the poster I was replying to, and am responding to the thread as a whole.)

It regularly baffles me why people seem to have extremely narrow expectations or desires for something as powerful as DF.  It's like getting three wishes from an immensely powerful genie, and asking for $1,000, a Honda Civic, and a ham sandwich.  Sure, there's nothing wrong with any of those things, but they are all things you could probably get in other ways, and don't even begin to explore the vast space of possibilities available to you. 

For a more mundane comparison, it's like going to a huge, high-quality, all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and just getting a slice of pizza and some french fries from that bit on the end of one row put there for picky kids.  It's arguably not the best pizza, a specialized pizza place would probably do better, but you know you like pizza so why try any of the other hundreds of items?  Why, there's a risk you might not like something!  Ignoring, of course, that if you don't like something, it didn't cost you anything directly, and very little in opportunity cost, and can just move on to try something else. 

The likelihood that my "favorite" type of magic system is one that hasn't *ever been written before* is statistically quite high. How will I know until I try a whole bunch of them?  Humanity has probably only generated a few tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of well-fleshed-out mythos and magic systems (*); DF players may end up generating that many in an afternoon.  Sure, Sturgeon (and Kipling before him) was an optimist; but there's little cost and no reason to linger amongst the dross of bad rolls; pick out the glittering, never-before-seen gems and enjoy the wonder. 

(*) I'm making the simplifying assumption that many crappy fantasy game and novel settings, particularly the sort sometimes referred to as "sword and sorcery", reduce to a much smaller set of functionally similar world settings, just with different names.

All this aside, by the time we finally do get magic either OP will change his mind or will have likely lost interest in DF. He made a claim knowing it would cause a shitstorm, and I'm (sincerely) sorry to see you spend so much of your time addressing something like these opinions.

[Ekaton]

I believe that the most important thing for the game is to be highly customizable as we all seem to have a different idea how the magic should work. I think the player should even decide which kinds of magic and spells he wishes to have in his game.

Too powerful magic in a very advanced and realistic world simulation can easily lead to it being overpowered, and that's what I said - you can easily imagine that the first wizard to master powerful magic years before others will be able to win battle after battle solely with his magic, or burn whole towns to the ground in no time. Not everyone would like it. If, on the other hand, powerful magic was common, the destruction would have been enormous as creatures would ordinarily destroy everything around them with magic. I don't like that either.

Basically, I was always under the impression that magic is always the weak point of fantasy worlds - if it is so common and so powerful, how come it has not led to the destruction of the world yet? If it is rare and still powerful, how come it was not used to take over the world by those who have mastered it?

So that is why I would like magic to be highly customisable - I am not entirely anti-magic, I would like to see some kinds of it, but very hard to master, and some enchanted items, though again very rare, and not too overpowered. I like plausbile and I like realistic, what's wrong with that?

[Robsoie]

All i hope is that if you setup the fantasy/magic slider to its max when worldgen occurs it will be really to the max with everyone will be able to fireball everyone, would make fortress management a lot more fun when you have drunk dwarves starting to argue (and additionally extremely FUN! too )

[Miuramir]

Too powerful magic in a very advanced and realistic world simulation can easily lead to it being overpowered, and that's what I said - you can easily imagine that the first wizard to master powerful magic years before others will be able to win battle after battle solely with his magic, or burn whole towns to the ground in no time. Not everyone would like it. If, on the other hand, powerful magic was common, the destruction would have been enormous as creatures would ordinarily destroy everything around them with magic. I don't like that either.

Basically, I was always under the impression that magic is always the weak point of fantasy worlds - if it is so common and so powerful, how come it has not led to the destruction of the world yet? If it is rare and still powerful, how come it was not used to take over the world by those who have mastered it?

The great thing about a world that "lives" is that these things self-balance.  You run a world-fragment for the default 1,050 years, and that should give plenty of time for things to stabilize into a stable or at least meta-stable state.  Anything that isn't compatible with the rules of the world will either die out, adapt, or be rare rumors in forgotten vales and caves. 

If there's powerful fire magic around, successful settlements will be biased toward compartmentalized underground cities dug into bedrock with sophisticated plumbing; thriving creatures will be fire-resistant, heavily mobile, and tend toward r-selection, and the forests will be either trees that resist fire (Ponderosa Pine, Mountain Grey Gum) or that reseed rapidly after fire (Lodgepole Pine).  There's likely to be a fair amount of chaparral.  And none of this needs to be programmed or balanced if the world is done right; it just naturally evolves from things getting burnt regularly. 

Similarly, in a world with powerful air magic, buildings might either be light and easily replaceable, or heavy rounded domes.  Lots more streamlined creatures, and probably more prevalence of features we're accustomed to seeing in desert or marine animals, such as secondary eyelids, closable nostrils, and advanced breath-holding tricks.  Again, if the world is sufficiently "live", none of this has to be programmed explicitly; it just evolves naturally from the given conditions.  Creatures, plants, and entire civilizations will do poorly if they're not well adapted to the setting; and do well if they are. 

Taking another tack... what is to say that the magical Ragnarok hasn't already happened?  Many mythologies have vast cosmic powers battling it out for supremacy in the dawn of the world; mountains toppled, forests shriven, seas out of their beds, and so on.  In fact, in some mythologies, the world we live in is the direct result of such a titanic (literally) battle, growing out of the corpse of some primordial being. 

To put it in Tolkien terms, there's nothing wrong with wanting to play out a mid-Fourth Age campaign, where few elves remain this side of the sea, sad and hidden, and the past glory of Gondor is but a tale for children as the petty kingdoms of the West squabble among themselves to the benefit of the powerful Haradrim clans.  But some of us want the option to play in the Second Age, the Last Alliance... or even the First, the epic War of Wrath.  And would the Third Age be as much fun if it didn't have the rich history of the First and Second behind it? 

So that is why I would like magic to be highly customisable - I am not entirely anti-magic, I would like to see some kinds of it, but very hard to master, and some enchanted items, though again very rare, and not too overpowered. I like plausbile and I like realistic, what's wrong with that?

There's nothing terribly wrong with wanting something that is more along the lines of historical fiction or alternate history than actual fantasy.  Toady has explicitly said that the fantastic-o-meter will be able to be set all the way down to zero, or put very low.  That said... it's a minuscule, tremendously limited, and unimaginative subset of the vast wondrous domains available to us.  I know someone in RL who prefers things *very* plain; a hamburger meal is bun plus patty.  No cheese, no condiments or sauces, no vegetables, no toppings, no sides; two pieces of bread and one piece of meat, end statement.  If that's what they genuinely prefer, there's nothing *wrong* with it... but I'm always somewhat sorry for them that they're going through life missing out on all the wonderful sorts of burgers you can get or create, let alone the absence of all the joy one can get from the myriad cuisines of the world. 

[Urist McVoyager]

I'd love artifact based magic like in Warehouse Thirteen or the Librarian franchise. Think of it, a sword that reflects the degradation stat back at the weapon or shield that struck at it. A flute that turns listeners into hapless slaves of the player, without making them zombies. Stuff like that would be fun to see in action. Maybe even your own version of Warehouse Thirteen where you take these artifacts and keep them for safety's sake. And you have to ward off Kobolds and bandits who hear about it.

[Ekaton]

Miuramir - if the world would adapt to the magic, it would be fine and perhaps necessary, as the world would have been destroyed otherwise.

What it will not fix are battles - it could be way too easy to win a battle with a wizard against an enemy who has no wizards, unless it will be nerfed quite a bit. In a fantasy simulation and not some casual RPG game things have more consequences, including the long-term ones. One wizard can easily burn the whole enemy army to the ground, potentially destroying a whole civ in the process, which is something that even FBs won't do now. And if there are too many wizards on both sides, I can imagine that the death toll of wars will be much higher.

It really doesn't work out too well for the elves either - they live in the trees, and that with the fire magic is just kindling.

It has to be seriously nerfed to be properly balanced, which I can imagine won't be an easy thing to do. Perhaps mana could be quite low or the spells not particularly powerful for it to work. And lastly, I don't want to make anyone prefer the world I would - if you want chaos and complete lack of stability of the world - that's fine, but I don't, and hope that it will be properly balanced.

[Putnam]

Interventionist gods could act pretty well as a check.

[Ekaton]

Interventionist gods could act pretty well as a check.

Well, that's a good idea, as in the Greek concept of heroes dying young, before being able to take over the world. They could also teach magic to some individuals from nearly defeated civs to give them a last chance. Even with player being the overpowered wizard, that could make the game more interesting as it won't be that easy.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Balance seems to be a key issue in most of the writng about magic so far. A Burning an entire army to dust could well be lethal, unleash hell and damage the wizard's civ development for years.

Just have to wait and see I suppose.

[Max™]

"We don't do balance, he he he." ~Guess Who

[Fleeting Frames]

It is a lot harder to burn down forests in df than you think, trust me, and no respectable beings would be caught dead living in them anyways.

Elves can plant soil and trees inside volcanoes, submerged in lava. That's pretty respectable to me.

But yeah, fire does have a bit of that ice-9 effect - that you might expect out of a massive freezing explosion.

Now, fire isn't inherently magical...But generating world with different laws for interaction behaviours like fire and gravity could be interesting too.

[vjmdhzgr]

I want magic, but I want it in a certain way. I want it rare. I want it powerful. I want it nigh on impossible to learn for any other then the most fortunate individuals. It needs to live on the fringes of myth and be spoken of as the stuff of great legends, and not dominate worlds always in the foreground. Think Gandalf like individuals with a finger on the scales rather than all permeating but underwhelming Elder Scrolls style mages. Magic will not be special if it is the norm. Encountering it should be a big deal.

Well Gandalf was basically an angel, and his magic is little more than being a very wise person very knowledgeable about the natural world. So I'd really prefer magic not be of the type Gandalf has, and that's also not really what you want either from the rest of your description. However, from what I've heard about the fantasy level options, it should be possible to get very close to what you want. Actually, we already have what you want. Necromancy. It's incredibly powerful (effortlessly create massive armies and lose most mortal needs), and it's very difficult to get (I was just playing in a world where probably at least 100 people were praying to gods of death to become immortal, but only two succeeded and in total they had 11 apprentices). Anyway, I like the idea of magic being like that, but I also like the idea of magic being common sometimes, so it'll be nice to be able to get both in different worlds.

Common like how? If people could casually cast fireballs and such the history of that area should be based around ancestor grand wizards and such, I dislike the idea of a peasent dwarf picking up a book and learning a spell to be quite honest.

I was talking about how there's going to be an option for the different levels of this kind of stuff, not that it is only going to be extremely common in every world or anything.

[Findulidas]

... for Toady to make it balanced.

You can say a lot of good things about dwarf fortress, but it is not balanced.

[Ekaton]

... for Toady to make it balanced.

You can say a lot of good things about dwarf fortress, but it is not balanced.

I imagine that the final goal of a fantasy world simulation is a possibility to create various worlds - both those balanced ones and chaotic ones. Though for a longer play I'd prefer the first one, both can be fun.

[Gwolfski]

... for Toady to make it balanced.

You can say a lot of good things about dwarf fortress, but it is not balanced.

I imagine that the final goal of a fantasy world simulation is a possibility to create various worlds - both those balanced ones and chaotic ones. Though for a longer play I'd prefer the first one, both can be fun.

I think the chaotic one will be more fun though.