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[Shonai_Dweller]

What about if we just have a syndrome tag that makes you able to eat people?

There is a tag which allows you to eat people already. It's the ethics tag. Just happens to be broken right now. It's intended to allow anyone playing from a civ which eats people to do so. Last comment on the matter from Toady was that he doesn't know why it stopped working (DFhack people seem to know technically what's going wrong).

You either make people able to eat other people, or don't. But new rules for adventurers (besides outsiders), is just going against the simulation. And sure, along with that, it should be perfectly possible for anyone in the game to throw themselves off a cliff and randomly stab people too (actually pretty sure I've seen both, so moot point maybe).

[UristMcVampire]

What about if we just have a syndrome tag that makes you able to eat people?

There is a tag which allows you to eat people already. It's the ethics tag. Just happens to be broken right now. It's intended to allow anyone playing from a civ which eats people to do so. Last comment on the matter from Toady was that he doesn't know why it stopped working (DFhack people seem to know technically what's going wrong).

You either make people able to eat other people, or don't. But new rules for adventurers (besides outsiders), is just going against the simulation. And sure, along with that, it should be perfectly possible for anyone in the game to throw themselves off a cliff and randomly stab people too (actually pretty sure I've seen both, so moot point maybe).

The ethics tag can't be changed by a syndrome :/

[Bumber]

Night trolls should be able to eat sentients, so something could be done there syndrome-wise.

[Putnam]

night trolls were added before and therefore independent of syndromes

[betaking]

there should be a taboo, sometimes so strong that the character refuses, (but this breaks down if your character has been starving/very-very-very-very-hungry).

though that taboo should be civilization and "class"/"caste"/"ethnicity" dependent. (depending on how detailed the societies get, even medieval Europe had cases of poor and desperate people cannibalizing executed criminals, though I think they're largely exaggerated

[GoblinCookie]

there should be a taboo, sometimes so strong that the character refuses, (but this breaks down if your character has been starving/very-very-very-very-hungry).

though that taboo should be civilization and "class"/"caste"/"ethnicity" dependent. (depending on how detailed the societies get, even medieval Europe had cases of poor and desperate people cannibalizing executed criminals, though I think they're largely exaggerated

Cannibalising isn't very hygienic, which is part of why it's so taboo.  Really you should be able to catch certain diseases from cannibalism, so eating people who died of plague is a lot worse than eating someone who died violently.  Then again disease is not a major part of the game yet anyway.

[Putnam]

Prions are right fucked up, lemme say

[therahedwig]

night trolls were added before and therefore independent of syndromes

Night trolls came after syndromes, but yes, use a different framework.

[Putnam]

yeah, whoops, I meant interactions

[IndigoFenix]

The "can't do this because it's against your ethics" stopped making sense once the distraction system was implemented. Adventurers should be able to do whatever they want, but breaking character gives you a stat debuff due to distraction. I'm fine with that.

The game knows when attacking a creature would be against your character's ethics. It gives you a warning and then allows you to do it if you want.

There's no logical reason why a player should be able to massacre their entire home village in cold blood, but be stopped dead if they try to cut up a corpse.

[UristMcVampire]

The "can't do this because it's against your ethics" stopped making sense once the distraction system was implemented. Adventurers should be able to do whatever they want, but breaking character gives you a stat debuff due to distraction. I'm fine with that.

The game knows when attacking a creature would be against your character's ethics. It gives you a warning and then allows you to do it if you want.

There's no logical reason why a player should be able to massacre their entire home village in cold blood, but be stopped dead if they try to cut up a corpse.

See? This guy gets it.

[Shonai_Dweller]

The "can't do this because it's against your ethics" stopped making sense once the distraction system was implemented. Adventurers should be able to do whatever they want, but breaking character gives you a stat debuff due to distraction. I'm fine with that.

The game knows when attacking a creature would be against your character's ethics. It gives you a warning and then allows you to do it if you want.

There's no logical reason why a player should be able to massacre their entire home village in cold blood, but be stopped dead if they try to cut up a corpse.

See? This guy gets it.

Making adventurers special is not the answer.

If an NPC chooses to attack others, the system knows how to cope with it, he gets killed by everyone else in the town. If an NPC jumps off a tree (as is common in forest retreats for some highly amusing unknown reason) the system smashes their legs.

If an NPC is hungry, regardless of mode, they should be able to eat their dead friends and suffer the consequences (social, health, etc). At that point, adventurers will be able to follow along and eat dead people just fine. And with less social restrictions once the Ethics bug is fixed.

Adventurer should because Player is God is just short-cutting the simulation, fine if there's a pressing gameplay need, but really, there isn't right now. It doesn't solve any problems in itself except to appease players who want to play cannibal.

[IndigoFenix]

Adventurers are already "special" because a player is controlling their actions.  NPCs are controlled by their (fairly simplistic) programming and it's a fine line to say whether an NPC is unable to do something or simply won't do it because they aren't programmed to.  You aren't going to force a player to perfectly imitate the behaviors of an NPC, are you?

The distraction system was implemented as a compromise.  An NPC who likes new clothes will go out and find them, and wear them if possible, because this is what they are programmed to do.  The player is not forced to do so, but if they don't they get a distraction debuff.  A peaceful NPC will never randomly murder an innocent bystander for no reason, because they aren't programmed to.  The player is allowed to but will be warned first and experience appropriate consequences if they do so.  As the player, you can do whatever you want within the bounds of the game's physics engine, but stray too far from doing what your character would do, and you suffer penalties.  This is how the game works in all respects except for cannibalism.

There's no logical reason why mass murder should be only discouraged with a warning, while cannibalism should be completely forbidden.  If you think otherwise feel free to say why.

As for the argument that it "doesn't solve any problems", consider the following: If I'm out in the tundra with the corpse of a recently-killed cyclops, and I'm not quite starving yet but I'm hungry and several days away from civilization or other reliable food sources, then I have the following choices: drag the corpse with me for miles, slowing me down until the game decides I'm starving enough to eat sapients, wait around until I'm starving, or just eat the body now and deal with the distraction consequences for going against my character's moral code.  Inventory/weight management is a pretty big part of DF adventuring, so this is a choice that can come up on a fairly regular basis.

Interestingly the game doesn't actually stop you from eating sapient meat, it stops you from butchering the corpses and using their parts as regents. (If you find sapient meat in a night creature lair you can eat it).  This also has some pretty silly gameplay ramifications - if you want to prove that you've killed someone you can show people a part of their corpse, but if you killed them without chopping off something small like a head or a hand your only option is to drag the whole corpse with you, weighing you down.  If it's a sapient monster like a cyclops or a giant, this becomes ridiculous.

[Superdorf]

Interestingly the game doesn't actually stop you from eating sapient meat, it stops you from butchering the corpses and using their parts as regents. (If you find sapient meat in a night creature lair you can eat it).

Wait what? I'll have to test the night creature thing, but I'm pretty sure you've got that exactly backwards. Lemme just go double-check...



Yup, you've got that backwards.

[DerMeister]

I need cannibalism option for all adventurers and for goblin fortress.