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[nenjin]

Can't please everyone. *shrug* Some people are totally hung up on rune-wizardry. Some people are hung up on dwarves with pointy hats. Ideally it's a blend of both and something else. I am somewhat tired of the "it ain't dwarfy" reasoning. Toady has already indicated he wants variety.

Guys with horned helmets banging runes into things is arguably just as cliched as master of the elements though.

[Voltaggia]

I'd say go for something in-between - such as Discworld-style wizards. They don't cast stuff all the time, and they still need hell of a reagents to do spells. And, as it should be in DF, magic is usually fatal for them.

[BlazingDav]

Toady is in favor of procedurally generated magic as I recall, meaning different ways magic works as well as just different spells, ideally I think he aimed for one world runes could be the big thing and the next it would be typical rpg spellcasting. Honestly I don't see runes as dwarfy if you ask me, I don't even have much of an image of what is dwarfy really, other than being short and stout, strongest of livers and being some of the best craftsman and warriors ever. If anything dwarves should typically not use any magic and only an exceptional few would use it however magic was working out in that world.

What we have been discussing equally applies to other fort and town managements in general, as in the end of this games development (magic is a much later item post some important stage, I forget what it was though) won't always be about dwarves digging out a mountain home, it will be almost whatever you want if I recall correctly. Even if you do manage a dwarf fort then you could still end up facing a wizard and interacting with magic elements as you doing more than sitting in your fort, such as sending armies to attack other towns, you may even get a wizard as a prisoner and brainwash them into service. And wizards as nobles seems a natural element as well which has been mentioned

Also nobody has been suggesting that they are immortal in the slighest, I'd say wizards have been discussed as more vulnerable for using magic really what with insanity, demon summoning and the like, if its because of my random suggestion of an immortality spell that was just a joke actually 

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

The more dangerous, useless and unpredictable the magic, the better. In fact, I'd want more and more of these mentally unbalanced, spontaneously combusting wizards to have more fun.

[nenjin]

(magic is a much later item post some important stage, I forget what it was though)

I spent like three hours yesterday reading all of Toady's dev plans. IIRC, Wizard Tower mode is a power goal (meaning it's a scenario they'd like to see arise as an outcome of how Adventure mode is developed, rather than an entire Arc). Magic gets a mention in "far future goals" as well.

I take that two ways. One, that Magic isn't as interesting, or important to Toady right now, as 1/2 a dozen other things...and two that it's something he wants to spend a lot of time on eventually, but is incredibly wary of letting it sneak in ahead of its time.

[BlazingDav]

I think that magic is also supposed to have connections to alot of areas, so can't be developed till then, like you don't grow a vine without something for it to grow on. (magic wine?)

Also maggarg, sure magic shouldn't be capable of industrialising, but that also means it shouldn't be predictable, if you can expect things to go wrong more than half the time then it sort of fails to be mysterious, just as it can't go right all the time, we shouldn't even be able to guess how well or wrong it ought to go other than a traditional 50-50. Ironically I don't know why I mentioned this earlier, but magic being mysterious doesn't mean it should be particulary dangerous or safe, particularly useful or useless, particularly typical or mysterious (made me lol that one). So magic should have its climatic and anti-climatic moments, for some reason anti climatic moments seem more amusing to me though

Urist McWizard general: Now I shall cast the spell to renew the strength of our troops and march into the history books on the great effort of their shoulders!

*Urist McWizard casts spell, it is of the greatest wizarddwarfsmanship and wipes out the enemy army, it is adorned with spikes of anticlimatic*

Urist McWizard: Well that works too...

Sure its anticlimatic, but taking away the glory from them seems amusing sometimes, admittedly my sense of humor should not be worth consideration >.>

[Dvergar]

If you can predict magic is going to fail in some random fashion the majority of the time, then it is still unpredictable for out intents and purposes.  I am with Maggarg. 

To add to the frustrastion (and the wonder) of magic, the A.I. should be the only party triggering the magic.  For example you might have a completely useless dwarf who doesn't do jack, and then all of a sudden he gets ambushed by a party of elves, he enters a martial stance, and unleashes lightning on all the elves (and consequntly lights the surrounding trees on fire).  You can't try and extract any use from the dwarf, but he will randomly save your fort every once in a while (or condem it).

I still heartily disagree with the idea of some semi-immortal dwarf wizard who turns out to be your most useful dwarf by a long shot.  Having a dwarf that will magically conjure food, defeat gobo seiges, trigger moods, dispel flood-water, and still be your best crafts-dwarf wouldn't be very fun.  The idea of the wizard being able to sense and control some invisible magic force that others are blind to raises the wizard to a level above other dwarves.

[nenjin]

But magic being mysterious doesn't mean it should be particulary dangerous or safe, particularly useful or useless, particularly typical or mysterious (made me lol that one). So magic should have its climatic and anti-climatic moments, for some reason anti climatic moments seem more amusing to me though

So magic should be like plain oatmeal then? Middling more often than not?

I get your sentiment, but your approach begs the question, why have magic if it's not going to be any of those things (particularly?)

Kind of like, why order "hot wings" if you ask for no sauce. Those are chicken wings.

For example you might have a completely useless dwarf who doesn't do jack, and then all of a sudden he gets ambushed by a party of elves, he enters a martial stance, and unleashes lightning on all the elves (and consequntly lights the surrounding trees on fire).  You can't try and extract any use from the dwarf, but he will randomly save your fort every once in a while (or condem it).

That makes it seem like Dwarves are inherently magic creatures...or (if everyone does this) that it's a property of the world that anyone under duress could start shooting lightning. That kind of sounds like Dragonball Z.

I think what I really want to know is Toady's philosophy on magic. Not just "What can and can't happen with Chapter 2 and magic" but what he personally prefers, what he dislikes about magic in other games or likes about them in some. This thread shows that what people will find fun, or cheesy, about magic is all over the board. There is truly very little in the posted development notes/ideas about magic, including fewer links between core ideas and their requirements. Perhaps that's the best indicator of Toady's overall stance on magic. Because I know I probably would have addressed it a lot sooner, because it's one of the more enjoyable parts of fantasy for me.

[Aquillion]

See my sig.  Or, if you want a direct link here, this post.

[BlazingDav]

I admit that is a point, I guess I've just spoke of extreme middling... I'm starting to think I was just having an odd 5 mins, it can have a predictable nature, just a question of how predictable a specific outcome is.

I know it sounds strange, but dwarves being inherently magical creatures sort of makes sense, what with their nature to spontaneously create artifacts and mine through rock like a hot knife through butter. It would be interesting if dwarves could gain simple abilities as a reward for dedicating their life to something.

[inteuniso]

I think it should be improbable, but for everything going wrong, every once in a while, an "artifact spell" should be made.

Some ideas for artifact spells could be:

Every dwarf on the map is healed
An entire siege "disappears" (teleported to the bottom of the ocean, into a nearby magma pipe, whatever)
Magically enchant a weapon


Anything else. I think it would be cool if the magedwarf starts asking for different stuff, like medical supplies, water, food, and then out of nowhere, an artifact spell. Of course, this lends a new meaning to fell moods. Imagine some of the eldritch dwarven abominations that will come out of depressed magedwarfs.




My big question to the OP is, could female dwarfs change flesh into wood?

[nenjin]

See my sig.  Or, if you want a direct link here, this post.

Yep, that pretty much settles it. Not really going to get my hopes up on deeply worked system. I'm sure whatever he comes up with will be fun, but "cheap fantasy universe generator" seems at odds with a really worked up magic system.

[Toastergargletop]

See my sig.  Or, if you want a direct link here, this post.

Yep, that pretty much settles it. Not really going to get my hopes up on deeply worked system. I'm sure whatever he comes up with will be fun, but "cheap fantasy universe generator" seems at odds with a really worked up magic system.

i disagree.  if there are a number of styles of magic, and have each style based on a linage (IE master teaches apprentice back to year 0),  your world could have lost magical arts, strong traditions of magic users, civilisations adopting certain styles of magic; i would see this as an enriching facet of such a generator.

[Aquillion]

Yep, that pretty much settles it. Not really going to get my hopes up on deeply worked system. I'm sure whatever he comes up with will be fun, but "cheap fantasy universe generator" seems at odds with a really worked up magic system.

I think the optimal ideal would be a generator capable of producing deeply-worked systems.

The important thing, though, is to avoid a system of magic that forces certain specific metaphysical assumptions on every world.

[BlazingDav]

But we assume gravity always works the same, as we would assume most laws of physics in dwarven worlds are common to each other, doesn't mean magic can't work the same way, just a question of how its exhibited more like as far as I'm concerned.