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[Misterstone]

So I saw that there are a few threads out there about holidays/festivals, but a lot of them seem kind of flawed to me, because most of the proposals seem to be for holidays / festivals keyed to events in the fortress rather than the civilization.

So here is how I think festivals should work:

1) Festivals should be keyed to either religious figures (a feast for a certain important god per year), major historical events that affect the fortress' civilization (Demonwhacked Festival to commemorate when XXX Slayed a God-Demon), or maybe just a general time of year (yule tide, harvest, spring, etc).  I am not saying that a festival should be created for every single event; at most maybe there should be two or three major festivals per year.

2)  Major festivals include certain customary activities: "dwarves of civ X customarily eat kitten tallow biscuits on Demonwhacked festival" or "dwarves of civ X wear leather kilts during Demonwhacked" or whatever.  Heavy drinking should probably be mandatory.  Maybe even gifts could be exchanged between pals?

3)  Festivals raise the morale of everyone in the fortress BUT ONLY IF they are able to celebrate properly.  If they are able to make enough kitten tallow biscuits in preparation for the festival, it will be a big success; everyone will be happier, inter-dwarf relations improve for a while, bad thoughts erased or mollified, etc. etc. 

A failure to properly celebrate a festival shouldn't result in immediate tantrum spiralling of course, but failing to celebrate properly for years ought to make the dwarves start to get mutinous.

4) Minor festivals can simply be cause for brief parties in the eating hall.  Maybe in the case of minor religious festivals, only those dwarves dedicated to a given deity take part.

5) Perhaps minor one-time holidays might result based on local events (enemies killed, important dwarf dies, super-valuable artifact made, etc), as per earlier suggestions.

And here I write the obligatory apology if this is all old hat...

[Pilsu]

Years are too short to accommodate much in the way of festivities. Personally I don't much care for randomly generated ones, they'd end up being pretty hollow and dime in a dozen

[Granite26]

Years are too short to accommodate much in the way of yearly festivities.

fix'd

and I agree

[lucusLoC]

Meh, i think we can handle one uber party a year. I would put up with it just to see my grand dining room filled with everyone eating at the same time. And maybe the ability for the player to call a fortess wide party at any well/statue garden would be cool as well, so you could celibrate your own milestones...

[Phantom]

This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Soldiers mindlessly partying,miners sitting around like rocks on a path,nobles making mandates wait that stuff already happens.

[Misterstone]

So basically you guys are saying "I don't want anything out of the ordinary to happen during the year, I just want to endlessly stockpile food and booze.  Nothing must interrupt me as I play Legos by building my fortress exactly according to plan.  Don't add anything to shake me out of my wealth-hoarding comfort zone!"

Come on, guys, it would be fun!  It adds detail and humor to the game!  It makes sense too, and gives all those historical events and deities an actual affect on fortress mode and game play.  Talk about empty- what is the point of having all these historical events if they affect anything beyond appearing on crafted objects?

Anyway, I didn't say this would have to make MORE parties, necessarily, just that it would change the nature of them a bit.

[Rowanas]

There's no problem with this idea, but having so many parties on would break any economy, and while losing might be IS Fun, you need to have something to lose. One or two parties per year would be cool, but more than that will make the entire thing unplayable. Think about how much Fun we have already. If you make it so that half your population isn't working every year then you're basically fucked from the starting seven.

[Misterstone]

Yeah, I guess Pilsu has a point about the years being too short.  I wonder if time is going to be recalibrated somehow in the future?  I guess in real life people celebrated Yule/Xmas/Saturnalia/whatever in the middle of winter when there wasn't a lot of work to be done, but in a Dwarf Fortress this does not play out in simulation very well.

[Sensei]

There's no reason you can't have "Rapeday is held once every four years to celebrate the killing of the tentacle demon", or something. And the amount of preparation should scale to how often it is- a celebration held every 6 months shouldn't take more than two months to prepare, a year for something every four years, etc.

And it might not be things that require items. For example, Rapeday could... um... require every dwarven couple to have a bed. Or maybe everybody spars on Demonwhacked.

[Pilsu]

Those are some spectacularly boring festivities. Not to mention nonsensical, unless you kill fucking Sauron you aren't going to have a lasting national holiday over it

Let's stick to stuff that's in the raws. Random annual parties will just be empty and meaningless.

[Misterstone]

Well, Jesus' birth wasn't a SUPER EPIC EXXTREEEEME event from a historical standpoint, but people celebrate it every year.  Also, just because the holiday isn't spectacular from your point of view doesn't mean the dwarves won't enjoy it.   

[Warlord255]

Yearly festivals are a-OK. Random generation, however, might have its share of problems, especially if it interferes with a trader caravan and there's no haulers... I think a universal new year's celebration would be OK.

More importantly, though, parties should be scalable. Not sure how this'd be accomplished, as I think eating/drinking takes a relative day in DFscale.

[Dvergar]

I disagree with randomly generated holidays but what about...

Fortress's aniversary
Hero's death aniversary (Only X most loved Champions)
Disaster remeberance (>10% population died)
King's Day (Day of King's arival/random)
Labor Day
Vetran's Day
Celebration of Partnership(When caravan comes and has passed set trader profit limit)

[Sensei]

BTW, they don't all have to be bad. Maybe if you can give everybody Ale on Alerain, for example, they do a ceremonial rain dance which causes (gasp) rain. You can choose to neglect this with no major penalties, but it could help you out, especially if you're in a warm or hot area with no infinite water source.

[Pilsu]

There's no logical reason why the dance would work or why they couldn't do it on a whim

Those don't really strike me as worth celebrating annually Dvergar. We're looking for things like harvest festivals. Our real calendar is filled with all kinds of stupid shit no one cares about and we certainly aren't partying. Years would have to go in real time to facilitate that much meaningless gunk