I can identify as an attack helicopter, but that doesn't make me one, does it?
I mean, you could identify as a god in Adv mode, but unless you're playing as an actual avatar of a god, you're just an adventurer.
The game does not know what you are by default. That is why when you declaim yourself to be something for the first time, you have to declare what you actually are, because otherwise it cannot attach your fake profile (if your lying) to anything. If you declare yourself to be an attack helicopter but are really a jeep, the game models your future relationship to your followers as a jeep pretending to be an attack helicopter; but if you simply say I'm an attack helicopter the game has no way of knowing if you aren't actually an attack helicopter.
It's all retrospective. If you declare yourself to really be something, all your previous significant actions as the player are added to the (potentially new) profile that you now are. This is what allows people familiar enough with your pawns to detect your presence even when you don't reveal your identity. This is also why the question of the afterlife matters.
If your real identity is a mortal human and you die, that's it for you the player isn't it?
That line is a joke, BTW.
So when it says that your character was "guided by unknown forces as the vanguard of destiny", that's a joke too. It doesn't matter, if you never declare yourself as an object of worship, none of the mechanics I was talking about apply.
I'm pretty sure that a lack of the supernatural would also imply the lack of Sci-Fantasy tech or "god-like" technology. Besides, that's one thing i wouldn't be okay with in DF: Advanced technology, especially when the world is supposed to be "realistic". In magic-rich worlds, magitech is fine.
Nothing you said there makes any sense. Advanced technology is not unrealistic, nor is it magical or supernatural; you are just a mortal being using mind-control technology. It is an option that allows the player to create a cargo-cult in the world devoid of the supernatural and potentially introduce the concept of the supernatural into the world in the process, this is you are not being honest about the source of your powers.
If you are honest, folks will instead bombard you with requests for scientific and technological knowledge.
I actually like the idea of players getting to play as a god, but as a mode separate from any of the other modes, like Fortress or Adventure. But with the effects of playing god being felt in other modes. It'd actually be pretty awesome seeing a bunch of dwarves in fort mode starting to worship a deity due to the player's action as that deity.
But again, the stuff should be kept separate: Fortress mode should be about the fortress, Adventurer mode should be about adventuring, God mode should be about being a god.
Even if you play as an giant spirit tree that just so "happens" to be in the middle of a fortress, you can't directly control the fortress. If you're playing the fortress, you don't get to use god powers just because that tree sits on the same map, at that point you're not that tree.
Consider it like this: Right now you can have a retired adventurer living in a fortress you've built, but they just act like another citizen and you only have as much control over them as fortress mode affords. And that's how it should stay; you are what you're playing as, no more and no less.
As for god avatars and other fun stuff; all gods whether player-controlled or not, should get them.
Your status as a god is not seperate from your in-game actions. This means that a seperate god mode is redundant, your actions as a player are taken to be divine acts by your followers. If you are (actually) a god you can do other stuff like answer prayers as a kind of mini game, otherwise the game will automatically do your god stuff for you according to the Spheres you chose. If you are pretending to be a god, the prayers will always be 'answered' automatically, since they just imagining things; but maybe something close to a god like a demon could answer prayers using a fake deity persona.
But the game does end permanently... for that character. It just so happens that you can create a new one whenever you want, and it doesn't make you a god.
Just think of it like theater; The player is playing a character, should the character die, it just means that character's role in the story is over.
If you the player literally *are* that character, then logically your game is over as well. If you have an afterlife however, you can influence people from beyond the grave, so you can play a series of characters.
WTF LOL
I'm pretty sure
What is so confusing. If you can truthfully be a collective consciousness like a fortress site-government, this creates the same problem we have with individual creatures in a non afterlife world. If the fortress is wiped out, so are you.
Was just saying that when you're playing a fortress, you're just the fortress' administrator or some guy behind the scenes who gets to make all the decisions.
not that when you're controlling a fortress, you actually are every dwarf that lives in that fortress...
Not that the player has any presence within the gameworld but at least that's a reasonable explanation if you want one.
You get to pick what you are.
Currently, the only secret the adventurer is able to learn is Necromancy. When others, linked to other spheres such as Thaumaturgy, will be added, could we see adventurers using their gifts to pass themselves as gods? Bonus points if the secret is linked to a sphere worshiped by the targets.
The player's actions and powers enhance their god-status, so yes. For the same reason that if you kill 100 megabeasts people are more likely to believe in you as an object of worship, being a powerful necromancer could do likewise. The really interesting part here is that if you are actually a god of the right spheres, you could actually create your own flavor of necromancy in the world. If you are pretending, you could pass some other god's necromancy off as your own.
Probably, especially to primitive civilizations.
Primitive does not mean stupid. In a world full of necromancers, nobody is going to worship simply if you raise a few zombies here and there, but in a world with no other necromancers then it is a possibility. It is the things that set you as the player apart from AI controlled NPCs that allow you to set yourself up as an object of worship.
In effect the NPCs are worshiping you because you are the player; it is this that makes you enigmatic and powerful to the NPCs; hence godlike. Just doing what everyone else does to the same level of competence, undermines your claims.