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[Mud]

While there's more pressing things that have to be solved before magic becomes a priority, it's still worth thinking about. While there's definitely a place for magic in DF, it shouldn't be any more overwhelming in its import than it needs to be. At the same time, you should be able to do very unique and interesting things with magic if you're focused on it.

I think the greatest pitfall facing DF (and any RPG really) is being too traditional. Magic should fill roles that are outside of the normal scope of human (or dwarven) action, not simply provide an alternate path to the same goals all the time. If most magic-users have some sort of "magic/fire/ether bolt" spell, they're really just a fancy Marksman, and while obviously some magic should be direct-damage, using magic to do things in more unique and subtle ways is usually more preferable. Similarly, spells that just increase a target's attack or defensive ability are just miraculous substitutes for weapons and armor. Again, something like this should exist, but it shouldn't be any more important or useful than any other type of magical effect. These kind of spells, in a sense, represent the "cheap" side of magic: focusing on magic mathematically, as in how it increase your damage per turn, stats, ect. There's just so much you can potentially do with magic, that it's just a waste to focus too much on statistics. Having a stat like "Magic/mana points" is along the same lines: you're losing the abstract wonder and mystery magic can convey and trading it for a convenient and useful balance for magical power. It's possible to convey both magical power and limit the ability of a caster to constantly cast spells in a more elegant ways than that, just like the current health system is so much deeper than a typical HP system. That being said, I've read most of the dev pages about magic and I think Toady definitely has developed a great approach towards making magic unique and interesting.

Secondly, I think that magic could suffer heavily from being too linear. Honestly, I think that learning magic from spellbooks, at least if it's the only method, is a really poor system. There should be more than one path to magical power, and it shouldn't just be the usual priest/mage dichotomy either. Magic-users should develop their spellcasting abilities in a variety of ways and to varying degrees, depending on the role and purpose of their casting, the nature of their magic, and their status. A simple priest tending the flock should never become an almightily demi-god with experience, but a warrior-shaman fighting for the glory of the Blood God should. However, no one who tries to fill either of those roles should follow the exact same path in magical progression to get there. Similarly, it shouldn't be guaranteed that anyone who sets out to become a powerful magic-user will ever become one, {even assuming they don't get killed,) and there shouldn't be tons of magic-users running around everywhere.

I also noticed something in the dev pages about having magic not being focused so much on spell-slinging adventurer, and I think this is a good thing. Taking that a step further, I think most of the truly powerful spells shouldn't be available to adventurers who run around doing quests and looting ruins all the time. Those types of people don't have the time to sit studying in isolated towers for years to learn the intricacies of magic use, and rather focus on practical, intrinsic magical incantations, charms and invocations that a more research-oriented magic-user would regard as common parlor tricks. I know there's a long-term dev goal of allowing the player to start a wizard's tower, and I'd think that'd be the best time to implement the more earth shattering and exotic varieties of spells. However, there's also definitely a place for magic in Dwarf mode in various forms, and that should be fleshed out around the same time, or even before, any sort of magic gets added to Adventure mode.

A final caution I'd have about implementing magic is simply to avoid cliches. Everyone loves the traditional earth/wind/fire/water(heart?) elemental system, but everyone's seen that a million times. It makes sense and it makes things easy, but it's been done a whole lot, and where DF excels is in innovation. Of course, that doesn't mean there can't be an elemental system, I just think it shouldn't be a less over-used system and have more interesting dynamics between elements than just "fire hurts water creatures" stuff.

Take, for example, the Chinese Elements:

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped

[ October 09, 2006: Message edited by: Mud ]

[Mud]

Wood thaumaturgists would be able to shape and influence nature. These would be a good candidate for the people growing the elven treehouses, and they'd have influence over the growth of other plants as well. They could grow vines to conceal doors, grow trees to massive size before they're chopped down for extra wood, improve the general growing quality of certain areas and farms and obvious create magic-shaped wooden items.

Now, to make sure these guys aren't just "better than ledgendary" versions of the crafts they can work, they'd have to be balanced. I'd say the best option is to make their work go slower than that of a normal crafter at the same skill level, but having them producing a better product. Also, they shouldn't start being able to do every single thing they'll eventually be able to do, or at least not very well. And of course, there probably wouldn't be a whole lot of these guys running around, and if you wanted more than one each at a fortress you'd definitely have to jump through some hoops lure one there.

Other types of thaumaturgists could include alchemists, who could go beyond simply create potions to doing things like turning lead into gold, creating homonculuses and other assorted beasties. Rune-carvers who impart magical properties to items could fall in this category, but at the same time I'd like to allow hedge and high magicians to carve runes sometimes too. There's probably more types of magical professions that could qualify as thaumaturgists, and if anyone has any ideas let's hear 'em.

High magic is the real powerful stuff. Where hedge magic is like alpha testing, teasing something great out of an imperfect yet mysterious system, high magic is like programming: communing with vast, unknowable forces and spending hours upon hours staring at arcane languages that can drive an ordinary moral mad.

High magicians don't really go out adventuring much. These are the guys that spend all their time building either their worldly or otherworldly power. They've often studies under a mentor or at a school for decades, and they've attained the benefit of it. They draw their power from the same source as hedge wizards and thaumaturgists, but they've fully learned to commune with and command with the source of their power. While they sometimes may make deals with demons or gods for power, they only use that power to channel more power from an elemental source.

As stated, high wizards are extremely powerful, and as a consequence they rarely serve anyone. You're unlikely to ever have a high wizard come to live at your base, though one might attack, or visit to provide services. At the same time, if you're playing a high wizard, you're pretty much going to have to be building a tower or other community rather than looting tombs. While a high magician would definitely participate on the world stage and might even swear alliance or service to nations, they're fairly independant entities that serve their own interests, whatever that may be.

I'm not really going to get much into what high wizards would do in "wizard tower" mode, because I know that's a long way off. But presumably they'd be able to create their own magical servants and attract other servants, as well as cast spells, ala Dungeon Keeper.

Random magic thoughts

Magic should be somewhat sparse. While these things are pretty cool, it shouldn't overwhelm gameplay. It might even be a good idea to prevent players from micromanaging exactly what their magic-users do, except for thaumaturgists who have such a specific economic purpose. There also shouldn't be mages running everwhere all the time demanding your attention.

When they cast spells, magic-users should face a risk of physical or mental harm, as should their targets. Using magic should cause the caster to become tired, hungry and thirsty, and spells that require the target’s body to do something, (such as a cure wounds spell or polymorphing,) should as well. Casting too much without eating, drinking and sleeping should lead to death, if side-effects don’t kill you first.

Laypeople should gain some skill in religious magic if they participate in it frequently. Occasionally, a deity may bless or curse a follower, or grant them great magical powers. Divine/Infernal magic should be fairly unpredictable, as should natural, animal and ghost spirits.

Things like necromancy should be contained mostly in religious magic, though there could be specific cases where a skeleton could be animated without specifically using unholy energy, or however undead are made.

I definitely didn't address everything, even in a post this long. I also probably missed quite a few spelling and grammatical errors. Forgive me.

Toady, you've made a really amazing game and I'm really looking forward to the future. I've been having a great time testing.

[rylen]

Interesting article.  Your use of the Chinese elements got me thinking about how the Dwarves relate to the world.  Would the dwarves only have one entry for Earth in their system.  I see their cosmology either expanding Earth into a major subcycle or having a cycle featuring several Earths.

A quick take:  Dwarves have this 5 cycle world.  Fire-Igneous-Water-Sediment-Metamorphic-Fire.

Air is seen as the absence of elements.
Dwarves, at least officially, don't care about emphereral plants.

I'm going to think a bit about what each of these would represent.

Rylen

[Mud]

Unfortunately most of that post got cut off  

What's there is only about 1/3 of the original thing I wrote up. That sucks.

[Toady One]

Yeah, I seem to remember that happening to me before...  I think this forum, in addition to its other issues, has some kind of post length limit -- a limit is necessary, but it should really stop you from typing any more than it's going to display.

I don't remember all of the ramblings on the dev pages, and that's just a portion of all this stuff laying around in a stained mess on the floor, but the main thing is to allow the system enough room to sort itself out...  ideally, the game should be able to randomly generate magic systems given a randomly generated metaphysical system for the world and various building blocks.  There are lots of balance/cookie-cutter issues with that, but it's something to reach for.  It's sort of like the stories Threetoe writes -- if you write down a magic system, it can be picked apart into pieces and those can be incorporated into the process.  At least, that's the idea...  it helps the sense of wonder when you don't even know what to expect anyway, as long as it's coherent.

[Mud]

Well to sum up the idea of what I was saying very quickly:

Magic can be derived from animal/natural/ancestor spirits or gods if they exist. Spirits would have impredicatabilty in additude and powers, but commanding a river spirit should usually allow you to do the same sort of things all the time (i.e. flooding when you want, protection for dwarves in danger of drowing, ect.) Gods would offer a wide variety of powers that could manifest themselves in almost any way, and that type of magic would probably offer the most variability. Powers that came from gods wouldn't neccessarily be "priestly," and demons would be just as good of a source of power as a god. Sometimes, the lines between who's a god and who's a demon might be blurry.

There'd be another type of magic that could exist independant of gods or spirits. Personally I like the Chinese Elemental system, but I'd assume that'd just be one in wide variety of non-diety related magic styles that could be generated, although making a unique system should always be a goal, and random generation can help that a lot. The people who practice this type of magic would be divided in to higher and lower categories, with the lower consituting of hedge wizards and spellcasting adventurers, and the higher consisting of those who can command great power and won't be implemented until there's a "wizard's tower" mode.

There should also be an economic magic system, that allows players to use magic to do things like create lava wells for magma buildings far away from the lava river, or even on maps without lava rivers. Magical energy could fertilize soil without creating potash, and wood could be combined with sand magically to create crystal glass without intermediary steps. Ore, stone or wood could be magically animated to bring itself to the stockpile. Alchemy, runecarving. I referred to this stuff as "thaumaturgy", and I think it shold be somewhat seperate, possibly even in a different "class" than the other types of magic, (though those things might be possible with the other types too,) and should remain relatively similar from world to world, so the player doesn't have to learn a new economic magic system every time she plays. There's certainly room for variation, but the general things that can be done shouldn't vary too widely, as where the other types of magics could be totally different from game to game.

Some worlds might have all of these systems, some might have one or two, or the power of the magical system might be dependant on belief. I think I talked about that, but it got cut out   . Still, giving magic some general sources, if not defining how it acts in practice, isn't a bad idea. To be able to ensure magic is balanced from game to game there should be some loose rules. I, personally, think the sources of magic should be spirits, gods, and "other." There could be several competing "other" sources of magic, and there'd almost certainly be competing spirits and gods, except in world with one god and no supernatural forces acting against him (i.e. no devil.) All the specific suggestions I've had are simply ideas for things that could be included.

[ October 09, 2006: Message edited by: Mud ]

[Explorer]

So if high magic is like programming, are there any plans on letting high magic using adventurers to construct their own spells? Maybe a simple assembly language like script. That would be awesome... and with pre made spells for those who don't wish to get that deep into things...

And in large cities there should be universities that the player could enroll in to learn magic. That also would be awesome  

[Mud]

That's exactly what I was thinking, actually, Explorer.

I'll admit I kind of borrowed that concept from the Black Company D&D campaign setting (a great game based on an even better book series.) Instead of having specific spells, magic-users have general things they can draw upon and various ways they can act upon it. Instead of just casting a fireball spell, a magic-user would put together certain commands to create fire and project it towards a target. Different types of spells have different variables you can set. However, instead of spells, you have commands like "create X fire moving in direction Y at speed Z with special properties P & Q".

Something along those lines might be interesting while playing a wizard, but I'd assume that's a long way off.

[Toady One]

Armok I had fairly messy spell editor that worked like that pretty much, from what I remember.  We had spells that were based on various effects and cursors and things -- I don't remember how far it got, but I do remember it had the "Teleport Bodypart" effect, and you could set things to happen in cones and lines and cursor points that moved around.  The "Heat Cone" crashed the game most of the time, but when it did melt people and catch them on fire it was kinda disgusting.

[Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Rei]

Something I've always found lacking with the basic Fire-Earth-Water-Air is that it doesn't really allow for holy and unholy. So I would like to see some type of mix of the lord of magic elements:
Fire  <-> Water
Earth <-> Air
Life  <-> Death
Order <-> Chaos

And then add 3 various states to each element. It can either be holy, normal and unholy. For example, fire. Holy fire is say, God almighty (well a good aligned god) decides to burn that heathen to ashes for defiling the altar. That fire would be holy. Then there is normal fire, like you see in fireplaces and whatnot. Then there is the unholy flames of hell or udun and whatnot.

Water (and frost) could be holy water that is clean to drink, great for cleaning wounds, and as an unholy being repellant. Normal water is well, normal water. Unholy water could be tainted water that tastes bad and is pretty much what holy water is for the holy people. Also in frost department, Unholy Frost makes me think of those niefelheimsomething giants. Evil frost giants.

You get the general idea. Another idea I've had for a magic system is to not make it one skill per element. You have 50 points in fire, and you are exactly as good as casting fireball as fireshield. That doesn't work. First take the element skill, 50, then add say a skill called combat magic (add fancy magic word for it, dominions calls it evocation) 50 points, and you have the fireball. But the caster might only have 20 in protection/enchantment, and can't cast that fireshield as well as the fireball.

This could be expanded further with skills for all parts of the magic process. A fireball uses many skills to cast, first fire for the element, destruction as the use for the spell, expansion for the explosiveness, quick casting for the casting time and finally magic-projectile speed for how fast the fireball travels. A godly wizard that has  gotten such high skills in all those that he could be called "maxxed out", although I wouldn't like a magic system with a top roof of skills, could cast fireballs as small and fast as bullets that level houses on impact. Although the power needed to do this would be pretty much near godly, something that would take a player weeks, maybe more, to achieve.

Also, silent/still casting vs vocal/gesturing. Let's for example look at the dishearten spell from a mud I played. Does alot of damage or kills the target by ripping their heart out and sending it to the casters hand. While I don't remember the casting sequence, it was something like wave hand, flick, turn into fist and *WAMMO* you tear their heart out. A mage with higher skills could maybe only do a yanking move and the heart is on its way, rather than doing alot of intricate gestures. The mage could also throw a fireball without really making a throwing gesture, just having it appear in front of him and flying at the target. And if the spell needs a word(s) of power, he might have a high silent casting skill and not having to speak.

This would be balanced by having it:
Fire magic: 100
Silent/Still casting: 50
Final effectivety of spell: 75
Or something like that, just some rough ideas.

Also, some enchantment ideas I had for construction, some are not original at all:
Floating ground, allows you place a flat rock in the air and have it hover there until disenchanted. It could be built upon.
Hollow walls: If say a raging ogre wants to break through a wall to get to the chewy tasty mage inside, instead of making a hole into the next room, he suddenly makes a hole into say a very thin area enchantment that might pour out lava or acid or poison gas into the room. Poor ogre. Having this enchantment on all the walls/floor/roof of a room means it would be very dangerous to try and break inside, but it would also make it very hard to edit the shape of the room, to add windows or doors and the like.
Hive Entrance: Based on the previous, why not create small portal to an uninhabited region of some plane, and have your creations live there, then you could just place the portal on a wall or in a room, and voila, you have your tower empty in peace, but can get it literally swarming with your creations if you're attacked, and not having to have pens/hives/houses on the same plane for the creations to live in.

Just some ideas, tell me what ya think

[Capntastic]

I very much agree that some worlds should have more magic than others; allowing one to play in a world where magic is rare, powerful, mysterious, and distrusted by common people would be nice.  

I don't have any real strong thoughts on how magic should work, but I am somewhat against the roguelike standard of "find a book, read it, learn the spell."  

If adventurers do get access to magic, it should be powerful, hard to pull off stuff; and require gathering proper components, or being in the right place during the right phase of the moon while reciting an ancient incantation, or even beseeching the assistance of devils.  The effects of course would be more appreciated, I believe, if there are numerous challenges and risks needed to be taken if you are to achieve that magical suit of armor, than if you just happened to find it on the floor of some dungeon.

[Zanfib]

Why does there have to be a system for magic at all? Just treat each spell as though it were a skill.

[ October 10, 2006: Message edited by: Zanfib ]

[karnot]

Mud, you pretty much described the Midkemia from Feist books. Magic is rare and scarce, and is distrusted. There are mages who are among the many advisors of the local noble, and are generally regarged as craftsmen, lighting fires, mending things, bewitching rains, and the likes.

And there are also those "high and mighty" mages, who walk between worlds, befriend demons, soar in the skies, manipulate time, and whatnot.

Just as there are numerous cults, who regard their magic as their respective God's gifts, and generally do not cross the paths of either mages with their abilities.

Good reading for a reference.

[ October 10, 2006: Message edited by: karnot ]

[Blargh]

Personally, I think that the coolest system of magic is the one Steven Erikson describes in his "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series. Of course, that is also actually based on a game, but I live decentralized, so I haven't ever gotten my greedy mitts on the rules.

But it does describe the inter-divine relationships and powers, as well as the risks and rewards of magic, in a VERY compelling way. If I could play as a mage from that universe, then my day would be made. If nobody knows what I'm talking about, go read his books. I'm dead serious, he's the best author I've read up to date.

Steven Erikson

[Grek]

I think there should be two sorts of "magic", one where they player is the one casting a spell to do something all by themselves. This should be randomly generated with the game world.

The other way is to ask a powerful being (a god, a demon, a mighty wizard, your ancestors, ect.) to do it for you, which uses diplomacy skills and how much that being likes you/what you give it in return. This should work about the same each version. You might need a way to contact the being in question, be with magic or by walking up to it and asking.