Everything takes work, even the features you want added, such as multi-tile creatures, which i think wont be worth the effort.
Also, what do you mean by "activist" version? How would that differ from performing a role normally?
Because the role is not being performed in order simply to succeed (to advance as that role) but in order to challenge the unjust Status Quo even though it is beyond your personal ability to change it on your own. One of the problems is that societal oppression is adds nothing in a realism sense (unlike multi-tile creatures), since a more oppressive society is not more realistic than a less oppressive one.
The only 'winning' in Dwarf Fortress is enjoying the game. You only lose if you no longer enjoy playing. Your fort getting destroyed is not losing, neither is getting your adventurer killed. Nor would be anything that would be possible with these systems(which again, do not solely consist of civ wide oppression). If you don't want to play as a part of or work with an oppressive society then... Don't! (i will be really impressed if someone manages to generate a whole world consisting of nothing but oppressive shitholes.)
And let those who do want to play with these systems, because that's winning in this game: Playing however you want and getting enjoyment out of it. I for one am going to enjoy getting my adventurer enslaved, or raiding villages and dragging back slaves to my civ, in collar and leash or buying slaves(' freedom) or killing the slavers or just not giving a crap, because i might be playing a character with other motives. An extreme example but it highlights a tiny part what will be possible in the game, that can be improved by a system of discrimination, prejudice and oppression.
Yes, that is the value of the idea; it adds more diversity in scenarios. The problem is that if it is implemented cheaply then it will actually *reduce* the realism of the game, the only way to implement it realistically is to do so at a very high cost and that comes at the expense of other additions that actually add to the game's realism, unlike this idea.
Sometimes there is no right way. Think about it this way: That same dragon, if you don't kill it, will by itself kill hundreds, maybe even thousands, both guilty and innocent. Maybe if your moral sensibilities do not let you go slave-hunting in exchange for the artifact, someone else with more balls than you will. In essence, you've still not improved the world in any way by wiping your hands clean and claiming superiority.
This is to me what stories are about: conflict, struggle, hard choices and their consequences. that's what i enjoy. And if you wanna prance around la-la teletubby land where nothing happens, that's your choice.
(Or you could just steal the fucking amulet...)
Yet you have improved the world by sitting on your hands. By not helping the bad people you made them weaker, if enough people do that it makes the Status Quo untenable. That is actually how things change, the society finds that all the people that it needs to flourish are refusing to cooperate and hence it is forced to change in order to survive.
unintended consequences, quite a shocking twist huh? But i suppose the question in this case is, does the player care? Does the character played by the player care? After all, their hands are clean and they can claim moral superiority, if they're the sort. Also, this is something we must discuss: The adventurer played by the player is not the player themselves nor are they the player's avatar. They can be, but most people not only are capable of a little roleplay but actually like roleplaying their characters. Most people can empathize with a character with (even radically) differing viewpoints from their own. You can too, right?
Yes, the player does not care; which is the problem. The player cares about winning, not about the ethical price; exactly what I was saying.
Mentally sane people can separate fiction from reality and do not take "lessons" from entertainment.
Fiction works as entertainment because people cannot truly do that. Maybe they can at a shallow conscious level, but at a deeper level not the case.
If people actually knew at all levels of their mind that fiction was fictional, they would not feel anything in relation to fictional media. Playing games would not be fun, because we would know that nothing was actually happening and nothing was actually lost or won.
No. opinions.
So it is just an opinion that Toady One does not have limitless resources?
I would argue the opposite instead, the best implementations of ideas are frequently deceptively simple and not overcomplicated.
we'll also be far better off without multi-tile creatures if they're poorly implemented.
In which case we are better off *not* implementing this idea; it cannot be implemented in a simple way without misrepresenting things.
You can already take over sites with your own group in adv mode, so the "activist role" is already included in the game and has been since 2014.
As described already, a single ruler does not have the ability to successfully change society. Changing society is beyond the ability of an individual, as explained already in a wall-of-text.
@GoblinCookie:
If you keep persistently disrupting the "crypto-ideological consensus" with derails, you will eventually get banned by Toady (who has already noticed you) rather than actually disrupt the consensus. Keep that in mind.
And I would happily sacrifice the quality of some other features for bigotry.
That is actually related to what I was saying before. In effect it is the problem with running fortresses from oppressive societies, regardless of our opinions on the matter we end up suppressing any attempts to change society because that will disrupt the order of our fortress and hence weaken it.
If the oppressed challenge their oppressors then we will end up siding with the oppressors even if we sympathise with the oppressed, because the oppressors have a far greater ability to disrupt order than the oppressed do and are far harder to suppress.
Sorry if I am a bit too passive-aggressive at times, but mild snarkiness is my usual arguing style, with GC or otherwise.
And while this particular case is not exactly a derail, GC has derailed threads in the past.
Threads were derailed when I was around, but to say I alone did it is just scapegoating.
Can you phrase it like "It would be bad to do X in Dwarf Fortress. This idea would force/allow X."?
The closest I can get with what you have here is:
It would be bad to violate modern moral standards in Dwarf Fortress. This idea may force someone to violate modern moral standards in order for them to achieve their goals.
Is this accurate?
Pretty much. That is why we need the activist role to exist in the game if we want to have an oppressive society, without such a role there really is no choice but to violate moral standards since the player is forced to play by the rules of the system.
I'm just going to leave this at: I reject the premise. There are just way more options than you are presenting and not every story should have some kind of positive lesson or happy ending. Especially not in DF. Also, leaving the dragon to, presumably, continue on its rampage is not a morally good decision either.
Having all moral decisions be bad, does not weaken my argument but makes it even stronger.
By my ethical system however, leaving the dragon alone to rampage is not wrong. That is because you did not cause the dragon to exist, nor did you cause it to rampage, therefore if the dragon burns stuff down you are not implicated in it's crimes. The dragon is responsible, not you for not stopping it; this is a very important principle in my opinion.
Again I reject the premise. The best solution is not necessarily the most complicated. "Best" is left intentionally vague because it needs to encompass so many variables, one of them being development time.
The real danger is that this idea will be implemented simply. I don't want a situation where a single individual can simply wish away all the world's fundamental social evils simply because he is a big enough winner.
Something alone the lines of the
"I must be the one to slay the dragon" is almost the secret weapon of oppressive systems in general. The individual seeks to
"make the world a better place" and the individual thinks he would be able to do this if only he had enough power. Once he has that elusive thing, power then he will able to sit on his throne and decree the abolition of all the world's many evils.
This does not work. The reason it doesn't work is the society creates a set of rules by which the would-be ruler has to follow in order to get the power he needs. In order to gain and hold power, he learns those rules and the moment he does not follow the rules he finds his power undermined. In order to gain the power to change the society, the rules dictate that the society not be challenged and changing the society requires that the society be challenged.
In the end what we have is a situation where
"I could use my power to change society, but if I did so society would take away my power to change it,". That is why all the societal evils prove so resilient despite the great preponderance of despotic rulers throughout history; they can't all of have been card-carrying villains can they? The trick is that the oppression *is* part of the society itself and even if the society should give an individual absolute power in theory, in practice it always has the power because it is it that made the ruler's power absolute.
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Topic: Add to the creatures thoughts about sex and be able to customize their values (Read 25994 times)