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[Fleeting Frames]

A previous issue with worldgen demons is that while they might dream of ruling the world, they already were ruler of a demon kingdom, and thus not very likely to plot to become king of human town rather than using a minion for that.

With new temple dice rolls, summons and more varied curses, there's a way to include them, now:

A very unusual dice roll (or something more sacrilegous) should be able to, if the spheres match, have a god pull a named demon in the underworld and plop them in front of the roller - or possibly an angel.

In cases of unlucky roll, they'd have to contend with that. In combat or socially...Should they fail, the demon is now free to plot to become the king.

In cases of lucky roll, maybe they might get a companion - an angel, possibly.

While it shouldn't happen in every town, overall one in ten sounds about right ratio. Maybe occurring in ones with heavy goblin presence or with large shrine for god of death/deformity/war.

[Detoxicated]

I Like it

[DG]

Maybe I'm not the only one who thought the divination dice recently mentioned in the devblog sounded silly. A dice roll being a mechanism for summoning demons into the world sounds silly to me, too, especially if these are dice available to anyone at any curbside shrine. Still, fun and silliness is subjective, so I just hope there are comprehensive options available for disallowing it in game, deleting via raws being enough for me.

[Nordlicht]

This is not something Toady made up, dices were used in divination in reality too. They didn't summon demons, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astragalomancy

Also shouldn't dice have a uniform distribution over time? How could you have a so unusual outcome with 3d6 that it justifies summoning a demon?

[Fleeting Frames]

Well, you'd need a temple, which aren't built initially, so not quite uniform.

But the dice are really an opening for the god to do whatever dice gods do, if you don't believe in magical numbers. Gods summon demons and build sites in a time before time, and no dice involved there; so I'd guess they can do them when dice are involved as well.

(Whether rolling bad juju should give them enough additional motivation to curse the player with one, that's YMMV.)

[DG]

This is not something Toady made up, dices were used in divination in reality too.

I know. I don't have a problem with divination being put in the game, whether it's dice rolls or poking around in bird guts. I do feel that attaching polymorph and bonus item effects to something as simple, free and repeatable as a dice roll is silly. To my mind it'd be a cheap high, like sniffing glue and playing a slot machine in one, only better. Turning into a bird for a while and being able to fly is a bad roll? Sign me up. I'd expect long lines out front of the temple all day long. If you have to put a gamey daily limit on something it's always a sign. If demons were the result of a bad roll, I'd expect every set of dice to be locked up behind the most powerful defenses the world could muster if they couldn't be destroyed, or for the world to be over, whichever came first.

Toady is big on thinking about what it would mean for a world to have a type of magic in place, as his comments on magical teleportation in interviews attest. When I think of what the divination thing described could mean it sounds silly to me, but that's ok. It's okay because I don't think this is about putting in divination. They are always experimenting with things to see how they play. We've just come to the end of a very long bogeyman experiment, and it was largely about in game atmosphere. It wasn't about annoying players, which may be a surprise to some. Just because bogeymen have been taken out and players are cheering doesn't mean the experiment was a failure. I'm seeing the divination thing as more of the same. Experimentation with magical effects, building on top of necromancy and other things in preparation for the myth and magic arc. I guess if I had any suggestion it'd be to not call it divination unless it turns out that information gathering is a huge part of it (because you get pedants like me piping up). It'd be like if necromancers had been implemented with only the tower building but no ability to raise the dead. If you did that, I'd suggest not calling them necromancers until raising dead was in.

How much useful information is there that an adventure can seek in adventure mode?
- where is this creature
- how do I reach this secret place
- who killed/robbed/defaced etc this person/place/object etc
- where is the lost artifact
- what is the weakness of this werebeast/demon/titan etc

Those are what I can think of off the top of my head that would be ready to implement, and just the above would be a lot of work. Upcoming villain plots could add more. In such a short time, and because it wasn't mentioned, I doubt it's in (hope to be pleasantly surprised). There's also the looking for omens/seeking knowledge of future events type of divination, but that's several orders of magnitude harder to implement than the direct question type.

[Fleeting Frames]

I wouldn't expect it to be so common that it'd end the world; there's a demon placed for every four civs at worldgen start yet worlds persist.

But it does raise the question of how often the dice are rolled. We have something similar with temples making bad things appear during wg right now in werebeasts and vampires, the first is a nuisance but the latter can bring civ to its knees if it gets lucky. 

Locking temples up behind a guard is pretty good suggestion based on that alone, even without any dice. Once somebody topples a statue, they'll immediatelly be taken down by fortress guard. Could even have plots to frame somebody for toppling one with sneaky assassins.

For dice, maybe they roll for five hundred years...And then one day demon appears. Would they lock up the die? Maybe. But they could also give god more worshippers and prayers (like how citizens start to worship megabeasts now). Or perhaps hold sacrificial rituals to appease the gods?

It can get involved when fully furnished, yeah.

My OP isn't really about that; it's just a mechanism to place demons who don't yet rule a civilization into world so that they might plot to do so.

[DG]

Yeah, it's a deep rabbit hole to get lost in, but very interesting. Real life myth is a great source for inclusions, but how good they are a tool for determining what would happen in a world where gods and magic actually exist is debatable.

My OP isn't really about that; it's just a mechanism to place demons who don't yet rule a civilization into world so that they might plot to do so.

And that sort of thing I support. *thumbs up*

[PlumpHelmetMan]

It's silly, but I'm still kinda looking forward to it. It'll be fun for a while, at least.

[Nordlicht]

There's also the looking for omens/seeking knowledge of future events type of divination, but that's several orders of magnitude harder to implement than the direct question type.

I could imagine foretelling the plan of a plot in an oracle like manner, so it has quite a good chance to work.

"The eagle planet foretells sorrow. The white duke will be troubled. The duchess of the sun will seduce the king of deceit."

https://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/pretentiousprophecy.htm

[Detoxicated]

The unicorn planet foretells prosperity. The eagle of the woman of the city will revive the town. The empress of justice will seduce the king of the night.

Thx for the Link. Hilarious

[PlumpHelmetMan]

I could easily see the alpha for DF's myth generator looking something like that.

[voliol]

I agree with DG that having all too powerful tools too easily available for the player (and only the player) might spoil the experience of an internally consistent world. If the player can summon demons with random dice rolls, then it becomes strange that there are not many more demons roaming around already, if it doesn't happen during world-gen/by non-player actors. Well, it might be fine to leave it like this for now, as it is bound to be changed when the Myths&Magics update comes along for real, and that is at least within a set time-frame.

The "dug too deep" demon civs should have demon lieutenants that do not start as civ leaders. Maybe they'll be interested in taking over other civs?

[FantasticDorf]

Im pretty sure he just wants to test out dice and pseudo magical outcomes in a easily contained and repeatable medium without tying it to any person or thing before its ready. You roll it, something happens, then he can iron out the faults and see the effects fed back to him, with games still on the table more into focus (probably requiring adding some rules/conventions and AI ofc to get it to work like dancing forms/types)

Good magical universes atleast have magic that is fragile and unpredictable, that works least 60% of the time without fault, if you cast a polymorph spell at someone else (as im sure someone will try to make a medusa gorgon monster/cockatrice interaction that stares and freezes dwarves temporarily into a statue monster) and it'll malfunction for a reason and RnG and hit you, or interpret the spell in a unpredictable manner.

Im not too concerned about it, i welcome it as a bit of flavor, should be interesting to use DFhack to park a fort atop the temple and then have dwarves use the illcit divination dice (without adventurers couriering it) to roll at macro-speed in their games. Maybe lay some eggs before turning back.

[Putnam]

I do feel that attaching polymorph and bonus item effects to something as simple, free and repeatable as a dice roll is silly.

So what's the deal with these magic divination dice? They certainly sound interesting, but the devlog was a bit vague on the specifics. Maybe you'd care to elaborate a bit on what they are and how they work? Unless it's a surprise, of course.

At the base it's just a random roll for fun-time effect, though we might still slip in a simple prayer-or-offering bit to tip the scales to favorable outcomes.  There are dice, in the shrines, associated to certain deities, and you can pick them up and roll them.  The face (or faces) you get is tied to a table of effects on a per-god basis, and you get one roll per deity per week generally, though the game gives additional information there when that isn't the case.  There are a few more random details in other responses.