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[Bogdanov]

I dunno if this has been suggested before, i just came up with the idea, made a quick search and didnt find anything like it so here goes...

You know how in the middle ages, monks were responsible, among other things, of keeping track of all the events that were happening in a kingdom, being pretty much the only people who could write.. It's something you hear about a lot in the Arthur legends for example..

I was thinking maybe there could be a skill based on this : the dwarf would work in an office, sort of like the bookkeeper, sometimes meet other dwarves, talk with them, and write down in a sort of "fortress diary" every big event that happened to them, and maybe, in the "z" menu, you could read and browse this diary for any events such as :

Has this guy ever had a fey mood? Has this other guy ever killed an enemy? lost a friend? Discovered precious ores or gems? etc.. You can figure a whole lot more of those, i guess

I'm thinking the dwarves who would meet this "diary keeper" (sorry for the crappy name, english isnt my mother tongue.. hopefully, someone can come up with a better name) would get a happy thought for telling their tale to someone, and it would also help you track what happened to your fortress and your dwarves among the years.. sort of like a classic RPG game diary or questlog (i have Morrowind on top of my head)

So, what do you think?

[Dame de la Licorne]

A lot of the stuff you mention you can see in the announcements screen. Perhaps that screen could receive a search option to make it easier to find whether or not an event occured, and/or what type of event?

[Bogdanov]

Well yeah, but you have to admit it's a huge pain to browse the announcement screen, plus it doesnt give many infos, on many subjects

Sure, it tells about fey moods, but if your fortress is like mine, 7 years old, browsing manually through 7 years of "Tekkud has made a masterful engraving" x28 or "Zon has canceled a job : item misplaced" x 12, it might get a little annoying...

And it doesnt say much : it doesnt say who fought, who killed enemies, who tamed animals, etc...

The bookkeeper also just rearranges and makes more readible stuff you always knew (more or less precisely)

[penguinofhonor]

And he could be incorporated into libraries! He writes a certain number of things in a book (25? 50? 100? Depends on book quality?) and then sticks it in a bookshelf in your library. Dwarves who talked to him often might gain a small amount of skill in reading, then they would teach themselves. Helpful dwarves could teach others to read after they learned.

[YojimboUsaka]

And then your dwarf adventurer could be sent on a quest to recover the lost books of Antioch which chronicle the last years of the might fortress.

That would be a very good hook for later games and would be a nice history of your fort.

The 'monk' should be configurable.  You can pick how much detail, verbosity, which types of events should be recorded etc...

I think this is a very good idea.  Well done.

Yoj

[Greiger]

Fortress historians (or monks, or librarians, whatever)would indeed be awesome.  

He should also jot down your civ and fortress symbol in the book and have it say what they are so you don't have to backup, abandon, forget where the place was, jump into reclaim mode for a second to find it, go back into adventure mode, walk to the fortress, get killed by a crocodile 2 feet from the wall, restart adventure mode, walk to the fortress, "Oh so the dwarf surrounded by giant cave spiders is the fortress symbol...awesome", delete file, load backup.  

It just kinda seems like the kinda thing he would jot down in those books.

[Furious Fish]

This is a great idea, and I second the notion that it should be incorporated with libraries. Then a centuries-old-fort could have a huge, ancient library filled with the heroic exploits of long-dead dwarven champions, and newborn dwarven children could read about their ancestors, and gain happy thoughts and improved personalities ("She has a great deal of respect for history and tradition" etc).

edit: I vote for the noble to be named the "Chronicler".

[ January 25, 2008: Message edited by: Furious Fish ]

[Xotes]

That would be awesome, especially if there are vandals about who might try to scrawl stuff on ancient books of history. Imagine the chaos if a vandal wrote over an ancient book from ages past, destroying the traditions on it and rendering it unintelligable. Dwarves would form an organized* mob and hunt down the poor sod who defaced the book and beat him severely, and then exile him. Assuming he SURVIVED the beating, of course. It'd be extremely bloody if the dwarf in question had any military skills and would hack at the mob, which would make them go from walk to kill speed.

Of course, your crafty dwarves would be a step ahead by writing a couple copies of it. But then a fire would break out in the library. Much death would ensue after that.

*Nothing is organized with dwarves.

[ January 25, 2008: Message edited by: Xotes ]

[John Johnston]

I love this idea.  Perhaps a tome for each dwarf, compiled during their life and finished when they die?

Fikod Postaldwarf, Champion, has gone berserk!
Fikod Postaldwarf, Champion, has been struck down.
Bomrek Doobrywhatsit, House Rash, cancels sleep: compiling tome.

[McDoomhammer]

Very beardy and dwarven  

For the name, how about "Archivist"?

[Fishersalwaysdie]

I like the idea of dwarves engraving their history on their walls better.
I think it makes more diversity from the actual medieval humans.
It would be the best if you could manually place squares for engravers(or chronicler) to engrave history in.

[Neskiairti]

mm archiveist writes it down in books.. engravers write it from books on the walls..
change engraving from what it is now (which is kinda annoying looking, i cant find anything on the floors and walls which i engraved!)

[McDoomhammer]

Hmmmm.
OTOH, Fishers has a point.

[firecrystal]

Honestly, the history of the dwarves doesn't get engraved enough. It only happens every once in a great while, when an engrsver person has a fey mood, and it sends rather useless info down in history. Wow, the dwarves traded with some elves. So what happened to that blacksmith who fell 20 stories into a cluster of batmen again? That doesn't appear anywhere at all.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

The point is, that it should appear.
Just because it doesn't appear now doesn't mean we have to introduce a completely unneeded, it will be there with time.