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[Rowanas]

eurgh. You sounds like a hippy druid. Symbolism, contagion, contact and sympathetic magic can be for the elves and anyone else with a cotton mind.

[Vester]

It does tie in to limiting magic to cultural upbringing, so it would make sense for elves to use it that way.

[blah28722]

Giving elves magic that causes fire, explosions, and other methods of deforestation would be deliciously ironic.

[Neonivek]

Giving elves magic that causes fire, explosions, and other methods of deforestation would be deliciously ironic.

Yes but fire that causes deforestation exists within nature. Lightning, Volcanos, and Heat Waves all can cause Forest Fires. Also Forests that are burnt down recover rather quickly depending on where it happened.

So it isn't so much Ironic as an understanding of the many aspects of nature. (Fire was one of the Planeteers remember)

[blah28722]

I live in southern california, I know all about forest fires. There's one going on right now.

That said, I still think giving elves magic they abhor will be interesting.

[Vester]

Elf Wizard: EVERYTHING I TOUCH DIES.

[Rowanas]

Having it culture based will be kinda crap, because I'll just alter the raws to give me the magic I want, while ruining the culture I also want. I think magic should be chaos and unpredictable, but also unbound from anything else.

[Bricks]

So after reading through the various threads, I've determined that we need to clarify what we mean by "chaos" in a magic system.  We obviously don't want magic to be a "randomize every number in the game" button (unless, of course, you are using chaos magic).  Here's my perspective(s).

In fortress mode, there will be two sources of magic: magic-using NPC nobles, like wizard and priests (or whatever you want to call them; things like "magus" and "druid" seem culturally specific); and environmental magic, something always present and affecting things in small ways.  The wizards/priests will (for the most part) independently determine their actions; if they are well treated, you get a good outcome.  If not, they could start tantruming in a mean way.  Sure, spells won't always turn out PERFECT, but for the most part a magic-user should be a boon to the fort.  It's not really fair to a player if their wizard starts randomly summoning demons and letting them tear up your fort; those sort of consequences should be a result of player actions.  In the latter case (environmental magic), the player should have to "play the game."  If you are in a haunted forest, you might think twice before cutting down trees, or killing that silver-horned stag.  Rarely should the rules in a region suddenly change; it would be an enormous burden on the player, something that should happen so rarely that you would need to inhabit the region for decades.  In this case, the rationale is that you don't learn anything when the local river suddenly becomes territorial and decides to flow directly into your fort, or when a happy meadow is teleported into the center of a volcano.  Losing stops being fun, and starts being an unpredictable nuisance.

For adventurer or the purported "wizard tower" modes, magic should be dangerous and obscured, but not random.  If you can't predict the affect of a certain spell (whatever the casting mechanism may be), it is because you don't understand the magic well enough.  Proper planning and careful experimentation should overcome disaster; hasty, sloppy, panicked actions should beckon disaster.

[Nivim]

 Bricks described exactly what I meant, I have no clue how people got "nature" or "elves" from my post. Nor do I know why I was insulted. Every magic used in literature and games that I know of is based on symbolism and emotion, every single one! I also never used the words "contagion, contact and sympathetic magic", nor did my post include anything for a "cotton mind", Rowan. If it was in relation to the elements, those include just about everything. Dwarves are of earth and fire. Elves have a bit of everything but fire. Humans seem to have some fire and earth, but are mostly water (a pun!). Goblins are mostly fire.
 Anyway, using that tangent to get back on subject, culture is one of the main determining factors for magic. Different cultures will have different approaches for control and cause, and will more easily use different parts of it. In Dwarf Fortress, we can settle for having the differences just between races instead of between every culture, although I would like to have it that way. And Rowan, you could just edit the raws, the magic tags will probably be separate, but be pre-set to make sense. Also, as a Dwarf Fortress player, you should know you don't just give yourself everything you want (unless it's more things to kill you), you take what the game hands you and adapt. Besides, even if Toady ignored everything we write, I still think he would come up with something good.

[Time Kitten]

Consequences, people, consequences.

A dwarf I've found to throw fireballs?

In my forteses that means locking him in a muddy stone vault, 100# surrounded in stone, fed through a U bend, and encase the vault 100# in waterfals, and NEVER EVER let that dwarf see the glorious vastness if my booze gardens again.

Dwarf summoning demons?

Sure I locked him in a high tower, or a labyrinth full of traps, but all those adventureers he's attracting know how to do is rush into my meeting haul and non-discriminate against any soap maker they can find.

Floaty stone towers that fey mason is constructing?

Bloodthirsty gryphens just love to roost in those.

Magicien summoning bunny wamblers for the amusement of all the travelers in the fortress inn?

He's draining the life out of children of the fortress of their life to create those.

[Grek]

Magic should be sphere based. Materials, objects, creatures, plants, images and words should all have sphere tags in their RAW files. Gods and some artifacts also get spheres when they are generated. Signifigant events should have sphere relations. This means that silver daggers, special magically signifigant herbs, and highly specific sacrifices/offerings are used for doing magic.

There should also be magical methods to enchant an object/creature/material with magical power, or bless/curse it so that it gains spheres related to the blessing/curseing deity. This magical sphere info should be part of the "curses" system that will also be used to handle undead and were-animals. Beings with the [POWER] tag should sometimes make bargins with beings in exchange for one of these curses. These curses should also have some other, non-magical effects such as abnormal weaknesses, attribute changes, personality changes and apperance changes.

There should be special languages tied to Powers that have high sphere-to-word ratios, making them more magical. This means people chant in Draconic, Demonic or Titanic when they want to do magical stuff, but not when they don't want magical stuff going on. It also means that when the demon utters a curse in it's gutteral tongue at you, you feel frightened because who knows what it just said and what saying that is going to do to you.

Magic should cause thirst/hunger/tiredness/bad thoughts/wounds. It should also beneifit from a large number of knowledges, such as knowing (and being able to accurately and reliably pronounce) the Power languages. This means that players will want their multi-legendary, ultra-dwarvenly tough, highly educated superdwarfs to learn to do magic, and not Urist McThresher. It also means that specific sorts of magic that have a high "bad thoughts" cost also have a good chance to slowly drive the wizard in question insane if they cast too often or incorrectly. A beserking, ultra-legendary champion-dwarf decked out in artifacts and shouting random magical words at the top of it's lungs in Titanic would be a Bad Thing™ for the fortress.

Magic should be chaotic in the mathmatical sense, that is, being highly sensitive to initial conditions, but with little to no random elements. Words, materials, objects, creatures, positioning, timing, etc. should all be relevent If you have figured out a magical ritual that has a given effect, moving some component of the ritual, changing the timing, changing a single word (or saying it wrong), or altering the initial conditions in some other way should have a mathmatically chaotic butterfly effect on the outcome of the magic. If you preform the ritual exactly the same, however, down to the closest details, then it should have exactly the same effect.

This means that a magic user who has been signifigantly altered in some magical way (ie. granted sphere tags/magic powers by a Power) will see their magic changed and distorted by the changes that occured to them. As an example, if a magic user makes a deal with a demon to gain magical power, but, in doing so, they get the [SPHERE:SUFFERING] tag added to them, their spells will become more painful and/or cause intense suffering in those around them, even when they try to help. Malicious Powers could exploit this fact to further a sphere related agenda, or to satisfy their cruel thirst for irony.

Magic in a world should have a world gen number seperate from the history number and the geography number.  This number is used to proceedurally generate the specifics of all magical rituals/spells for that world. This allows people to maintain a consistant set of magical rule between worlds, share knowledge on the forums about it and make magic reletively predictable while still allowing them to gen a new world with a random magic gen number and have everything old be new again.

[Granite26]

Having it culture based will be kinda crap, because I'll just alter the raws to give me the magic I want, while ruining the culture I also want. I think magic should be chaos and unpredictable, but also unbound from anything else.

So magic needs to prevent you from cheating?

[Sergius]

Having it culture based will be kinda crap, because I'll just alter the raws to give me the magic I want, while ruining the culture I also want. I think magic should be chaos and unpredictable, but also unbound from anything else.

So magic needs to prevent you from cheating?

I think Rowanas needs to realize that we're not actually discussing using magic to program Dwarf Fortress.

[Davion]

As long as there is a way to implement Lovecraftian consquences to whatever magic system is implemented I will be happy:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The dwarves set up shop near a beach and don't have much luck at wealth or food. Urist the fisherdwarf discovers a small grotto while out fishing that that contains a small amulet hidden in a tidepool; being a dwarf he takes the treasure back to the fortress. The other dwarves begin to worry about him, as he remains locked in his room (maybe his cat got butchered). One night a squad of dwarves on patrol spies the fisherdwarf out on the beach, staring into the waves, completely naked save the amulet around his neck. Before they can stop him he wades out into the ocean and disappears. Figuring him for suicidal, and since they are thristy, the guards go about their business.To the surprise of everyone, the fisherdwarf returns sometime during the night, and though he appears haggard, he is in perfectly good condition.

The Mountainhomes receive word that the fortress, which up until now was deemed inhospitable and poor for trade, is booming with fish and other artifacts, seemingly overnight. Over the course of generations a constant stream of wealth pours out of the fortress, until one day it becomes but a trickle, and then finally stops. Assuming the fortress finally crumbled to its end the Mountainhomes send out a reclamation party.

No one knows for certain what all was found by the reclamation party, but bearded whispers say the empty fortress that was found was no longer dwarven: Living quarters that resembled tide pools full of salt water, engravings that depicted dwarves mingling with frog-like creatures, and of all things an obsession with the ocean and an odd looking amulet.

[Rowanas]

Lovecraftian magic would be awesome. Oops, I accidentally just sacrificed a goat to a deity beyond mortal reckoning...