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[Karlito]

First off, Mud, great article.  I'm disappointed that most of it got cut off.  It really was very interesting.

quote:Originally posted by Ancient_Sleeping_Dude_Reinc:
<STRONG>Something I've always found lacking with the basic Fire-Earth-Water-Air is that it doesn't really allow for holy and unholy. </STRONG>

The problem that I see with "holy" and "unholy" is that they have some ties to deities and much like "good" and "evil" they are relative.  Say for example we have two Gods: Bob, God of Light and Peace, and Cecil, God of Darkness and War and Blood and Whatnot.  The followers of Bob are what we would normally think of as "good": nice peaceful folk who live in towns and cities and go about their normal lives.  The followers of Cecil are what we think of as "evil": monsters and cultists and the sort of thing that adventurers usually kill.  
Then, lets say that Bob gives his people a magical handkerchief of awesomeness.    To the followers of Bob, this is considered a "holy" object, but to the followers of Cecil this is the most vile thing they have every seen.  To them it is "unholy".  Now so far so good, but the problem I have with your visualization is that its too confining.  I see things less as "holy" and "unholy" but more as "divine" and "mundane".  "Divine" objects could be aligned to certain factions, but I think we can't let magic fall into such black and white categories as "holy" or "unholy".  A broader system is needed.
Plus I'm having trouble visualizing your concept of "holy chaos".

[puffs]

goblin siegers should come with shamans that can force dwarves to (unwillingly) pick up !!flaming!! objects.

[puffs]

Ok, now that the pithy one-liner reply is over, I'd like to delve a little deeper and bring up some of my thoughts about magic.

If we are using the term "magic" loosely, as something that can't be explained by normal occurence or is something incredibly rare or counterintuitive and defies common sense, then we can escape the traditional wizard/sorcerer fireball-lightning-throwing machines.

The problem with this approach is that, when it boils down to it, true magic defies simulation. And since DF is taking the "simulate everything as much as possible" approach, magic is very hard to implement in a flexible manner. In fact, I'd argue that it's impossible to simulate magic in a game. You can simulate wizards, but at some point you need to define their abilities. These abilities will have to come from a set table or matrix, simply because there is no way for the game to create "new magic"/unexpected behavior on the fly. The amount of possible interactions is limited by the number of attributes and data you can manipulate.

That being said, there's a lot of room for creative magic. For example, you could hire a professional miner to dig out a cavern to check for certain ore, or you could hire a traveling rock-diviner to map the cavern for you without touching a single stone(with certain inacurracies due to the limits of dwarven communication, of course). A farmer tantruming because his wife died to wild animals? A priest will help him contact her soul and give him peace of mind (as well as blame her for all his troubles to her face). Want light in your mountain hall without having to leave regularly spaced piles of your !!XclothingX!!? Your neighboring civ has a pyromancer who makes ever-lit torches, only f1123 each! That possessed dwarf who made an artifact warhammer? Rumor has it that anyone who wields it develops a strange attraction to purring maggots after a while.

Often, the presentation of magic can make-or-break its perception. Magic should be unexpected, uncommon, and have effects that are unusual. Otherwise, it becomse a stale same-old and not very magical. The effects can range from useful to annoying, amusing to disastrous, but any magical abilities that controllable dwarves possess should be freak occurences (possessions/moods).

From there, you can designate what individuals and or environments possess magical properties or abilities. Maybe an enchanted forest biome has certain areas that make any dwarf entering it cancel his task: caught in an illusion with his dead father and the giant plump helmet that killed him, etc.
You can specify under what conditions they can use it - perhaps a traveling sorcerer wants money, items, or food... or in fact he just wants to see a guy who likes cats for their aloofness. Maybe there's a chasm which bridges itself for dwarves who handle stress well. Or a spirit that makes the river turn into a violent whirlpool every spring until you sacrifice a mule to it.

In any case, the basic thrust of this post is that however creative you decide to make magic, the most important way to set it apart from normal dwarf interactions is to make it non-micro-able.

[SquashMonster]

Magic in computer games tends to be a matter of casting a spell, handling its effects, and being done with it.  That has never seemed right to me.  Magic should be rare, hard to control, weird, mysterious, and full of consequences.  How many games do you know that meet more than one of those criteria?

Rare.  Making magic rare is really easy, thankfully.  The dev notes mention being able to change this at world generation, which is good enough for me.

Hard to Control.  Making magic hard to control in Fortress mode is very simple.  Dwarves are already somewhat hard to control, and Dwarves who get enough magical power can become semi-noble.  Their labors list changes to a bunch of magic-related ones, and they stop performing other labors.  However, they get weird moods very frequently, for any skill.  Your mage might commandeer  the carpenter's workshop, create a strange artifact, and leave without becoming a carpenter of any kind.  These artifacts have all the random attributes of normal artifacts, none of the quality, and only a small chance of having magical properties.  When magic users aren't busy being somewhat of a nuisance, they spend most of their time contemplating in whatever profound locations your fortress offers.  Occasionally, they go perform the task their labors tell them they should be doing.  Occasionally.

Weird.  You need side effects.  Tons of them.  One fun method of doing this is a subject/verb/object matrix.  Subjects and objects would be any objects in the game.  Verb would be things like "becomes" and "floats to" and "repels".  Each magic user has one random subject, verb, or object that is constant for them.  Each task for that magic user has another one of the three chosen randomly as constant.  Every time a magic user does something magical, the last of the three is chosen randomly, and the effect happens to the nearest two of the appropriate object.  Maybe you got a healer who got "Dwarf repels x".  Sometimes his patients start repelling arrows, and that's great.  Other times his patients start repelling water, and that's not so great.  If he starts casting some other kind of spell, all bets are off: is it "dwarf" or "repels" that's constant for him?

Mysterious.  Those side effects don't have to be instant.  They might have an onset delay of years.  If you use lots of magic, some side effects might happen for no apparent reason at all.

Consequences.  Generally, I'm an advocate of magic annoying some supernatural entity or another.  Maybe nature hates magic, and using too much will make the trees march to your fortress and try to tear it down.  Maybe demons think magic is theirs, and they'll climb out of hell to get to your magic users.  Or maybe the side effect system you use is bad enough on its own.

[ December 05, 2007: Message edited by: SquashMonster ]

[sphr]

A different take at outlook to magic (not directly related to implementation though, this is for "role-playing" part so as to speak.

Possible dwarvern outlook to magic:

(excerpt from a Dwarvern LoreMaster's words to his students)

 "Magic" and "Technology" 're the same thing.  "Magic" is what them surface folks, 'specially them humans, slab onto "Techonology" that they don't understand.  Every time me overheard them say "magic" it's like admitting that they don't understand what they do.. repeatedly.  Dunno 'bout them folks, but 'mong us dwarves, if we're stupid, we prefer to keep quiet about it.
 
 Elven spellweavers at least, softy as they are, knew roughly where they are heading and understand power enough to weave it to serve their ends, though the methods them pointy-ear folks used are too out of our tastes.. They don't call that magic. Dragons don't call it magic too.  They just grab power and use them like their hands and feet.  But humans... pah! they're the worsest.  Human "mages" they call it, don't even know what tis they do.  They just went through the whole "spell" thingy and try to get it close enough to de "working way" to make things work.  Kinda like a dwarf throwing mechanisms in the air hoping it drops into a working gear assembly.  Strangely enough, humans can be so single minded that they can train themselves to just do that.  We dwarves?  We just skip the "throwing into the air" part and assemble the mechanisms directly into gearworks.  squeaky clean.
 
 Now it's not that we don't call anything "Magic".  We of the Mountain Folks understand we do very well, so we don't use the word "magic" much.  But we DO have magic : the Will and Power of the Gods (who could presume to understand their workings?)   It be that it's the Gods' "Techonology" that we mortals cannot understand, and so they are the only thing rightly called so.  The Magic of our Gods, our Priests, our Holy Water (I kinda like the type brewed from Cave Wheat more), and the Memories of our Ancestors, our Ancient blood that sings to us and allows us to build wonderous artifacts so much invested with the epitome of our Techonology that they too can be rightly called magic, since they are of Greater Laws whose workings we can only catch a glimpse of.
 
 So don't slap that "Magic" word on our Technology.. Our wonderous water and steam machines work to power our huge constructions.   It's no magic. Our alchemists and forgers can turn matter to different forms.   It's no magic. Our runes channel elemental power and influences the laws if nature on our weapons and armor.  It's no magic.  Now, the NEXT time I hear one of you youngsters who wants to learn to shoot fireballs, I'll tie them to the archery target and test me new cannon on it.

[Red Jackard]

Rather well-written post you have there.

Regarding worlds having differing levels of magic, it may help to take a few ideas from GURPS worldbuilding - it described a very generic setup that governed exactly that and could be improved upon.

   

quote:Originally posted by Mud:
<STRONG>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. </STRONG>

This point in particular I agree very strongly with - I despise the traditional Greek/Chinese elemental system of magic and most variations on them. (Said variations usually consisting of Light/Dark or somewhat stapled onto the end.)

Not only have they been used entirely too often, they pidgeonhole magic into very specific roles. It becomes limited. Seriously, people can come up with much better systems than those - provided they put forth some actual effort.

[ December 05, 2007: Message edited by: Red Jackard ]

[Red Jackard]

quote:Originally posted by SquashMonster:
<STRONG>Magic in computer games tends to be a matter of casting a spell, handling its effects, and being done with it.  That has never seemed right to me.  Magic should be rare, hard to control, weird, mysterious, and full of consequences.  How many games do you know that meet more than one of those criteria?</STRONG>

IVAN. It's another roguelike - I don't like the humor littered throughout it, but they did a really good job on the magic system.

quote:Originally posted by Red Jackard:
<STRONG>In IVAN, all magic is of the divine variety - you pray to a god of the desired portfolio, and will be either rewarded or punished depending upon your earlier behavior. The effects were powerful and unpredictable, just as magic should be - careless use often had devastating consequences...</STRONG>

[Tommy2U]

Wasn't non-divine magic planned for further along the route in IVAN? I think they just managed to put divine magic first before development halted. Following that route would require fleshing out gods/supernatural entities first and that's a different  development arc.

GURPS has some useful things to offer due to its generic nature, no/low/high mana zones and mana-dependent creatures and contraptions come to mind. I also liked ceremonial magic - lay participants contributing to massive spells cast during elaborate ceremonies. IIRC GURPS also has a rather nice and universal system for ghosts and related supernatural entities.

Another approach, which could be combined with varying mana levels a'la GURPS, would be magic-technology dichotomy, as seen in Arcanum.

[SquashMonster]

Actually, I have played IVAN.  I was a moderator of the IVAN forums for a while, too   .

IVAN's magic system was pretty good, but still too reliable for my tastes.  Magic always did what you wanted it to do and nothing more, unless one of your wands broke.  But that usually resulted in you being dead.  A bit too extreme, there.

IVAN gets it more right than most games though, you're right.

[ December 05, 2007: Message edited by: SquashMonster ]

[Asehujiko]

quote:Originally posted by SquashMonster:
<STRONG>Sometimes his patients start repelling arrows, and that's great.  Other times his patients start repelling water, and that's not so great.</STRONG>

Actualy it would be the other way arround. Undrowning workers will make Rapture projects much more manegable and they can still guzzle down alcohol because it's detached from water atm.

Having your marksdwarves stuck in a loop trying to pick up that single elusive bolt that keeps running away from them...

[Bricktop]

Just a quick idea (I'm tired so I can't think on it much):

A good way of limiting the amount of magic in the game would be to make your magician or whatever a Noble. By this I mean a proper noble, like the Dungeon Keeper etc, not an appointed person. You would still be able to give direct work orders to the magician, but they would also have requirements/mandates/demands etc (possibly the requirements could go up as they gain more "magic" skill?)

EDIT: Also, Migic should be unreliable (in other words, you can't quite be sure if your dwarf will enchant that sword, or catapult his brain out of his left ear.)

[ December 05, 2007: Message edited by: Bricktop ]

[WillNZ]

Magic is entirely too incomplex for my tastes in games. I'm a little turned off by most magic systems. They're usually far too "gamey." I'd split magic into two different parts.

There's "common" magic. The kind of magic every day people can use. Prayer is like this. You perform a ritual to try to please the spirits and get a good harvest, to avoid harm in battle, to cleanse yourself after killing an animal, etc. Unreal World had a great example of this kind of magic. They should have an effect, but it should be a subtle effect.

Then you've got your "magic" magic. You can go crazy on this. But these are my two cents: I love creepy rituals involving lots of components for subtle but powerful effects. Being able to shoot magic missiles is alright. Casting a "death" spell from the pinnacle of a dark tower and killing the mayor in a freak "accident" is awesome. I understand that tastes differ, but that's what I want.

Recommended reading? Unknown Armies. It's a PnP RPG, but it has the darkest and coolest magic system I have ever seen.

[Burnme]

I'm liking most of what's being suggested about magic being subtle, rare, and often unpredictable. I too would prefer to see any magic used as a direct weapon be too unreliable to solely depend on during combat (call a bolt of lightning from the sky after much chanting/weaving from one or many high skilled users, but it strikes randomly in a given area and can hit friendly units too), and too draining to use very often (the higher the magic, the more thirsty, hungry, tired, chance of being knocked unconscious, sustaining limb and internal damage from magical backlash, etc., and all chances increased when already fatigued).

As long as it's severely limited and makes use of already integrated fatigue and damage systems, it should work out just fine.

However...

quote: Things like necromancy should be contained mostly in religious magic

I strongly disagree with this particular statement.

As far as ruins exploding with populations of undead independent of mortal influence, and certain regions naturally containing the risen corpses of various critters, I am fine with that being the result of some sinister, evil force.

But the one thing I love above all in magic is the art of necromancy, and the only way it seems right to me is through the wizardry of an arcane student of no particular alignment.

In the world of Dwarf Fortress, I would like to see necromancy as the rarest of the rare when it comes to magic due to difficulty, personal danger in its use, and because the practice is simply considered very distasteful taboo amongst all of the races. Not because it is evil, but because the primary races normally revere their deceased's remains.

A necromancer who builds a dark (but not necessarily evil) tower on the efforts of his reanimated minions and defends it with an army of skeletal warriors may or may not be completely hated by his neighbors, depending on if he decides to use his forces and powers for good or ill, but if you trade with him, aid his efforts or receive his aid, your other allies and even your own dwarves should feel unsettled or begin to develop unhappy thoughts based on their dispositions.

Also, in keeping with the ideas for subtlety, a necromancer's abilities should differ with however magic will normally be done in that their magic manifests only as the raising of corpses as minions, or perhaps extending otherwise only to concealing and protecting themselves, whether by invoking fear in others, and/or strengthening their physical resilience at the cost of physical strength or vulnerability to specific things.

In any event, the least of any magic user's highest talents could be an extension of natural life so that they may keep affecting DF world history. I imagine necromancers would be best at this, of course.

I'm personally unconcerned with divine intervention, but I would really rather it had no part in necromancy as a magical art.

[Krash]

Very good posts here.

One thing that I really would like to see, are powerful rituals, with complex demands and the need of hard-to-find ingredients.  They would also be a nice addition to dwarf mode; something to strive for, that would take years just to prepare.  

Lets say this priest/noble/whatever dwarf wants to summon the dark spirit Goreguts the frilled spikes of...  well something to do his bidding.  First he has to actually know how to do it (recipe/trade/contact with a certain entity?) , then he must find the ingredients, not all of which can be found in just any ditch.  Lets say, dragon blood, 40 elf bones (easy to get   ) and loads of plants, minerals and the like.  Then, a ritual place has to be set up.  Finally the summoning takes place, lotsa sacrifices and all that.  But oops, the dwarf made a mistake, and Goreguts punishes him by turning him into a purring maggot. Or unleashes the forces of hell into the little fortress...  Or actually grants the dwarf mucho power and wealth.

Of course, doing this in adventure mode would be even more challenging.  

...

Well, spells in general (especially the powerful ones) should require something.

[Align]

Not enough reward for a huge amount of effort. If you have to get dragon blood for it you should practically have won the game when the ritual is done.