Thanks Toady
So mundane worlds won't have elves or goblins, but will they have dwarves? If not, will fortress mode even be playable, or will we be able to play as humans instead?
Dwarves as they presently exist are not based upon magic at all. Elves rely on magic extensively to make items and homes, goblins need magic because they do not need to eat or drink and have the whole relationship with demons thingy at the core of their society formation.
If you remove the eating restriction, it doesn't break goblins at all i find, in fortress play keep farming beak dogs / making prepared meals and it all balances out because goblins will consume alcohol they dont need to survive passively at the tavern for pleasure, they still need to sleep, get tired and emotionally distressed etc like any other being. So goblins can be made interchangably mortal very easily, its the elves who are really magic bigwigs with the whole grown stuff deal with the most to gain from magic or lose from a lack of it (though not to say the goblins high amount of negative spheres won't lend kinds of magic)
- In which case you could probably nerf goblin raws immensely and just let spheres like [LONGETIVITY] as a alternative to [DEATH] sort things out with gods blessing the entire applicable race with benefits. etc. and obviously if said gods & supernatural factors aren't there they are either going to die quickly or be handicapped compared to strong races who dont rely on magic = humans.
Remove the sphere alignment of war (set to 512) from civs and just put in some either custom pantheon religion spheres (Thralldom, Torture, War, Fortresses, Disease) from the negative categories and as implied by what toady's saying the civ's magic (and relevant demon lord) will be influenced by that.
- Goblins with blight or disease might be able to rot you via magic, given there is no generic opposite they might be able to heal their own kind (with natural high goblin disease resistances and recovery) etc. etc.
Levers are a little bit magic (no strings just a mechanism), as are strange moods like possessions. Just not directly magic. Humans can be spiced up with custom spheres but are mostly just generic war alignment tall goblins. (I like to use [AGRICULTURE] to imply that humans magicians might want to use their powers to water crops with related sphere of rain)
The 'sliders' mentioned so far are "fantasy" and "danger". Lack of 'fantasy' will result in human only worlds with no magic or existing Gods. Fantasy at max will result in a crazy mess of random beasties. Neither will feature dwarves.
Implying dwarves will be moved into the [SUPERNATRAL] category or whatever applicable tags / they'll be forcibly pushed into a non-supernatural scenario as slightly supernatural creatures or we'll have to play as another race (or observe glumly from legends)