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[dreiche2]

Making racial limitations like that does in my opinion more harm than good. Make it a mod (or possibility to do such a mod) or something, but not into my vanilla DF, please.

Uhm what? Elves using only wood *is* vanilla DF already.

Apart from that, I agree that preferably things should come about 'naturally' or emergent instead of being arbitrary, hard limitations. For example, the higher-skill-due-to-immortality thing would be more of an emergent phenomenon. I guess the limitation to wood can at least be attributed to some underlying racial philosophy or way of living, instead of binging just an arbitrary imposed limitation.

At some point everything will be randomisable, but if remember correctly Today has stated that he wants to keep vanilla DF to follow general fantasy tropes, at least to a certain extent. That implies some sort of hard-coded differences in between the races. Ideally, and this is what the above paragraph refers to, one would want to see a lot of the behaviour to emerge from some underlying causes, but the latter would be hard-coded nevertheless.

[shiruba]

Making racial limitations like that does in my opinion more harm than good. Make it a mod (or possibility to do such a mod) or something, but not into my vanilla DF, please.

Uhm what? Elves using only wood *is* vanilla DF already.

Apart from that, I agree that preferably things should come about 'naturally' or emergent instead of being arbitrary, hard limitations. For example, the higher-skill-due-to-immortality thing would be more of an emergent phenomenon. I guess the limitation to wood can at least be attributed to some underlying racial philosophy or way of living, instead of binging just an arbitrary imposed limitation.

At some point everything will be randomisable, but if remember correctly Today has stated that he wants to keep vanilla DF to follow general fantasy tropes, at least to a certain extent. That implies some sort of hard-coded differences in between the races. Ideally, and this is what the above paragraph refers to, one would want to see a lot of the behaviour to emerge from some underlying causes, but the latter would be hard-coded nevertheless.

seriously,
There is no "general fantasy tropes". there is Tolkien-ish, d&d-ish,J-rpg, anime-ish fantasy and etc. sure, most of them overlap.

Cannibal elves, evil carp, magma, gemstones and golbins allied with clownic fun forces of happiness make sure that Dwarf Fortress's fantasy trope is original. OF COURSE it made from the same pieces than the D&D trope is made and the same pieces that tolkien's trope is made, but THAT configuration that is DF is original.

Thats exactly why I support Jungle dorfs, desert dorfs, blowgun dorfs, steam and whatever the community suggests. if DF is gonna make its own trope it could very well be the DORFIEST URIST MCBADASSERYNESS trope ever!

=* thanks for reading =*

[G-Flex]

Making racial limitations like that does in my opinion more harm than good. Make it a mod (or possibility to do such a mod) or something, but not into my vanilla DF, please.

Uhm what? Elves using only wood *is* vanilla DF already.

Apart from that, I agree that preferably things should come about 'naturally' or emergent instead of being arbitrary, hard limitations. For example, the higher-skill-due-to-immortality thing would be more of an emergent phenomenon. I guess the limitation to wood can at least be attributed to some underlying racial philosophy or way of living, instead of binging just an arbitrary imposed limitation.

At some point everything will be randomisable, but if remember correctly Today has stated that he wants to keep vanilla DF to follow general fantasy tropes, at least to a certain extent. That implies some sort of hard-coded differences in between the races. Ideally, and this is what the above paragraph refers to, one would want to see a lot of the behaviour to emerge from some underlying causes, but the latter would be hard-coded nevertheless.

seriously,
There is no "general fantasy tropes". there is Tolkien-ish, d&d-ish,J-rpg, anime-ish fantasy and etc. sure, most of them overlap.

Cannibal elves, evil carp, magma, gemstones and golbins allied with clownic fun forces of happiness make sure that Dwarf Fortress's fantasy trope is original. OF COURSE it made from the same pieces than the D&D trope is made and the same pieces that tolkien's trope is made, but THAT configuration that is DF is original.

Thats exactly why I support Jungle dorfs, desert dorfs, blowgun dorfs, steam and whatever the community suggests. if DF is gonna make its own trope it could very well be the DORFIEST URIST MCBADASSERYNESS trope ever!

=* thanks for reading =*

You support anything the community suggests? So... you want the game to be as tacky and watered-down as possible?

I'm also not sure you know what a trope is.

[PermanentInk]

There is no "general fantasy tropes". there is Tolkien-ish, d&d-ish,J-rpg, anime-ish fantasy and etc. sure, most of them overlap.

Cannibal elves, evil carp, magma, gemstones and golbins allied with clownic fun forces of happiness make sure that Dwarf Fortress's fantasy trope is original. OF COURSE it made from the same pieces than the D&D trope is made and the same pieces that tolkien's trope is made, but THAT configuration that is DF is original.

I don't think you're using the term "trope" here in the same way.  A trope is not an entire setting; it is a creative device or convention that is likely to be familiar to an audience because it appears in other, similar works.  Elves liking trees is a trope.  Dwarves having beards is a trope.

Different tropes are widespread and familiar to different degrees among different audiences.  I take shiruba's label of "general fantasy tropes" to mean "a large set of tropes commonly seen/expected in works of 'traditional' fantasy fiction."  These would be the tropes that lie within the overlap you mentioned.  Taken with this intended meaning, shiruba's statement makes complete sense.

If you want to know more, I recommend wasting several hours of your life on TV Tropes.

Backing off from linguistic nitpicking, I do disagree with shiruba's assertion that for vanilla DF to be vanilla, racial differences must be "hard-coded."  If it's hard-coded, it's not moddable (since the source is not open), and anything like that is going to be the way it is in *any* version of DF, not just unmodded/vanilla.  If elves liking trees comes about in an emergent way based on racial sphere preferences or somesuch, that provides a mechanism that is an alternative to hard-coded behavior.  If the racial sphere preferences or whatever are moddable (in the RAWs), then the emergent behavior can be changed indirectly.

Of course, emergent behavior is tricky because you don't control it directly.  If the attempts to elicit the emergence of desired behavior fail, one can always fall back on some degree of hard-coding (and sacrifice flexibility).

Okay, maybe that's still linguistic nit-picking.  Sort of. 

[Footkerchief]

Backing off from linguistic nitpicking, I do disagree with shiruba's assertion that for vanilla DF to be vanilla, racial differences must be "hard-coded."  If it's hard-coded, it's not moddable (since the source is not open), and anything like that is going to be the way it is in *any* version of DF, not just unmodded/vanilla.  If elves liking trees comes about in an emergent way based on racial sphere preferences or somesuch, that provides a mechanism that is an alternative to hard-coded behavior.  If the racial sphere preferences or whatever are moddable (in the RAWs), then the emergent behavior can be changed indirectly.

I think you meant dreiche2's assertion, but I agree in any case, with the addition that there's a large gray area between hardcoding and moddability (modifiability?), due to "grainier" catchall raws options like many of the entity tags (SNATCHER, SKULKING etc).

[AbacusWizard]

While we're on the topic of TVTropes and wasting our lives away, I highly recommend the "Our Monsters Are Different" pages; in particular:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurElvesAreBetter

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurGoblinsAreDifferent

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllTrollsAreDifferent

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurDemonsAreDifferent

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurDragonsAreDifferent

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurGnomesAreWeirder

[PermanentInk]

I think you meant dreiche2's assertion, but I agree in any case, with the addition that there's a large gray area between hardcoding and moddability (modifiability?), due to "grainier" catchall raws options like many of the entity tags (SNATCHER, SKULKING etc).

Yes, thanks for correcting me.  And yeah, it's always a gray area.  I work as a game developer as well, and we strive to make our game "data-driven," but the data is only as flexible as the rules that process it.  Good design and generality increase bang for the bug -- for example, a small and well-axiomatized set of combinators can allow designers to do amazing things just by sticking simple pieces together.  But at some point you either stop adding flexibility or produce something so complex that it is or might as well be Turing-complete.

[zchris13]

On a large map, DF already is, I think.

[smjjames]

*Takes a stick and thwacks it at the TVTropes links* THWAKITY THWACK THWACKITY THWACK THWACK!.

Okay um....... no idea how to re-rail this....

[Nivim]

As for Elves and wood, it is a mystery how they get so much wood. They COULD have got it from already fallen trees or bundles of wood fallen off a tree but one persistant theory, beyond them being hypocrites, is that they use magical processes to extract wood from living trees.

Have you seen deadwood in a redwood forest? You can usually get many hundreds of normal logs from one of those.

[Eduren]

*Takes a stick and thwacks it at the TVTropes links* THWAKITY THWACK THWACKITY THWACK THWACK!.

Okay um....... no idea how to re-rail this....

I think that the discussion is pretty relevant. Maybe not immediately, but it should be talked about.

[smjjames]

*Takes a stick and thwacks it at the TVTropes links* THWAKITY THWACK THWACKITY THWACK THWACK!.

Okay um....... no idea how to re-rail this....

I think that the discussion is pretty relevant. Maybe not immediately, but it should be talked about.

Meh, I'm just bieng silly

It would be really cool to see the new caverns in a 3D program like Visual Fortress or 3D Dwarf.

[Footkerchief]

As for Elves and wood, it is a mystery how they get so much wood. They COULD have got it from already fallen trees or bundles of wood fallen off a tree but one persistant theory, beyond them being hypocrites, is that they use magical processes to extract wood from living trees.

Have you seen deadwood in a redwood forest? You can usually get many hundreds of normal logs from one of those.

Multi-tile trees, exhibit A:

[dreiche2]

I meant hard-coded as opposed to emergent, not hard-coded as in non-moddable. I guess 'default' would have been a better term.

Also, I wrote Today instead of Toady 

[CobaltKobold]

*Takes a stick and thwacks it at the TVTropes links* THWAKITY THWACK THWACKITY THWACK THWACK!.

Okay um....... no idea how to re-rail this....

I think that the discussion is pretty relevant. Maybe not immediately, but it should be talked about.

There's a thread for talking about races in GenDisc already, if you want to fork o'er there.