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[Kilo24]

This is the problem of these arbitrarily selected spheres: trying to make them fit into DF is like putting a square peg into a round hole - either you have to carve a new hole, or you have to shave off parts of the peg until one thing makes an ugly, but potentially serviceable fit.  Rather than trying to find some way to ram this arbitrary set of spheres into a purpose, we should be determining what the purpose of spheres will be, then making spheres that will serve that purpose.  That is to say, find the peg that fits the hole, instead of forcing the hole to accept whatever peg you had lying around.

I partially agree with you.  Looking at the domains of all the gods in history, it will be difficult to create a sphere out of each one.  Looking at just the Greek pantheon for example, Hephaestus would be easy (god of fire and forging) whereas Hestia (goddess of home and the hearth) would be rather problematic.  What exactly would would the home and hearth spheres do?  How would they be effectively distinguished from each-other, and what would the lands with them as traits be like?

What I'm sure that comes to no surprise to most people, is that it will need to be simplified if the spheres are to be kept distinct and diverse.  Maybe lump the hearth/home spheres into a hospitality sphere; the sun, deserts and volcanoes into a fire sphere; metal, forging, metal and gems into an earth sphere; marriage, family, and agriculture into a fertility sphere.  Maybe allow a sphere for a deity or land to have specializations into a more specific domain, and tie some effects specifically to that so you can make them more pronounced (but still keep them tied to the primary sphere.)

That way, if you get an artifact blessed by a god of marriage, it'll not just screw around with marriage probabilities or the happy thought that marriage gives.  It could make hardtack biscuits into sumptuous feasts, birth rates double, or it always to be summer in your fortress so that crops grow year-round.  And when spheres get tied to magic, dedication to that goddess could let you do spells with similar effects rather than just causing divorces for your enemies.

I'm mostly worried about having a list of 500 spheres that can only find 3 effects each on half of them, thus making land with that sphere and any artifacts inspired by gods of them boring and predictable as well as turning your pantheon into a pure crapshoot for each setting you create.  Want to honor the god of lightning, so that his blessed artifact might electrify your moat?  Or venerate the god of war so that sparring goes much more smoothly?  Too bad, you've only got the gods of marriage and fluffy wamblers,  pregnancy, hearths, sea urchins, and biscuits and hairdos to in your pantheon.  Sucks to be you (well, until King Urist the 8th starts wanting divorces.  Then the holy fluffy wambler will make the King happy.)

[Silverionmox]

That's why spheres ought to be dynamic. Sacrifice to the god of lightning, and his sphere will become dominant there, as a simple example. You can also do neat things with that, like exaggerating in the raws how much a death strengthens the sphere of death: the whole world would gradually turn into a realm of death, for example.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, I think the problem of trying to make DF have effects that fit arbitrarily selected spheres is putting the cart before the horse:  We should be agreeing on what sort of effects we want out of spheres, and then making globally dominant spheres that fit those design specs.

After all, there is plenty of reason for there to have been deities of pregnancy and childbirth in the ancient world - pregnancy was a very dangerous thing, and one's entire family line was at stake if wives proved infertile.  Those who practiced "magic" in the real ancient world most often sold spells and potions and charms relating to safe childbirth, avoiding robbery, success in business, and other, fairly mundane forms of sorcery...

From the perspective of a Communist Overlord/Deity, where pregnancy is represented as your female dwarves occasionally plopping a new dwarf out of their mystical spore sac, (an act which they can perform while asleep or in the middle of combat,) building a magic system around having a sphere dedicated to making childbirth easier when it is already on total autopilot makes little sense. 

This is why I have a problem with "Defining a Marriage Sphere as a union between One Groundhog Man and One Groundhog Woman, to mate for life and produce offspring whose organs can be harvested until such a time as one of the two die, and the other becomes useless for population growth purposes."

If Good and Evil biomes are a placeholder, why can't we consider current spheres a placeholder as well, and just determine what sort of effects we want taking place over our world, and how that would translate into giving us spheres that affect worlds. 

Toady actually seems to take this approach, himself, as he seems to have written out how he basically wants spheres to have effects like "making forests that sing" or some such.  (Which I disagree with on the basis of nobody's going to notice if the trees are singing or not.  The most that would amount to is a little sign that pops up and says, "By the way, these trees are singing... Just trust us on this.")

For example, currently, "evil" means "Oh crap! Skeletal Fire Imps will eat my dwarves!" It also means trolls or grimelings or harpies can show up. We probably want that option to continue.  We could have an "undeath" sphere that produces skeletons and zombies.  We could have a seperate sphere(s) that produces the trolls and the grimelings and the harpies, and these two spheres may or may not overlap.  We could have similar, "fae" spheres that make the satyrs and the unicorns appear.

In this way, spheres continue the role that they are supposed to replace: making creatures appear that otherwise wouldn't, and having a real impact on play options.  If a harvest sphere's presence would enable the growth of a wider variety of crops, there's a reason to look for that sphere. 

So then, I say again, put the horse before the cart:  Let's look for what we want the spheres to do, then define the spheres as that which enables what we want... So, what do we want them to do?

[Kilo24]

Toady actually seems to take this approach, himself, as he seems to have written out how he basically wants spheres to have effects like "making forests that sing" or some such.  (Which I disagree with on the basis of nobody's going to notice if the trees are singing or not.  The most that would amount to is a little sign that pops up and says, "By the way, these trees are singing... Just trust us on this.")

"Today, the Ents go to choir."

Well, I think the problem of trying to make DF have effects that fit arbitrarily selected spheres is putting the cart before the horse:  We should be agreeing on what sort of effects we want out of spheres, and then making globally dominant spheres that fit those design specs...

...In this way, spheres continue the role that they are supposed to replace: making creatures appear that otherwise wouldn't, and having a real impact on play options.  If a harvest sphere's presence would enable the growth of a wider variety of crops, there's a reason to look for that sphere. 

So then, I say again, put the horse before the cart:  Let's look for what we want the spheres to do, then define the spheres as that which enables what we want... So, what do we want them to do?

What people want spheres to do is to classify effects in fantasy universes.  Said effects might be divine powers, artifact powers, powers that a land dominated by a sphere possesses, or magical powers.  They are grouped as thus because, while individually enumerating the abilities of gods or what a random artifact or what a land does can work, it'd lead to some rather unintuitive and contradictory things (a god that makes trees grow faster but can't affect crops, or the god of origami, murder and causing love.) 

Spheres also mean that you can lump crappy powers in with good ones, which means very good things for balance.  Otherwise, powers would have to be considered directly against eachother, which tends to result in telekinetic weaving being outclassed by magically sucking the life from an enemy.  This also means that you can tie cosmetic or mostly cosmetic effects to the sphere as powers.

As for what they actually do, well, that's dependent on the sphere.  I'd say that artifacts should be restricted to effects tied to the spheres of whatever party was responsible for the magic of it.  As far as spheres tied to the land, a wilderness sphere would attract more animals and increase their birth rates and the growth rates of plants (excluding crops/domesticated animals and dwarves), so that the wilderness would be more prevalent.  Earth spheres attached to the land would result in weird magical minerals as well as odd stone formations both above and below ground.  Fire would raise the ambient temperature, occasionally have glass deposits in sand, and tend to have magma around and favor igneous rock.  Air/Water would have dramatic, mercurial weather.  Hospitality might lay curses on people who violate it (like by you killing elven traders or invading thieves), or the land might entrap or mislead attacking armies while leaving respectful merchants safe.

Meh.  Sorry for the hijacking, OP.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ugh... I find a "four classic greek elements" idea for spheres very unpalletable.  All the blood has been squeezed out of that stone, and it would mean we would need an elemental magic system, etc.

It's actually one of those things I don't like about spheres that they have to be mixed up in both magic and in this terrain feature type of thing.  A sphere for undeath that creates zombies on the map and a magic sphere that allows necromancy is one thing, but many of these spheres either don't make much sense for magic or for a terrain feature or both.  (Longevity, Youth, Duty, Fame, Fate, Gambling, Freedom, Salt, Mist, Dusk, Dawn, Night, Day, Rainbows, Suicide, Birth AND Pregnancy AND Fertility AND Family as seperate spheres...)

I'd rather some spheres not apply to anything on the world gen, and other spheres not have any magical effect, except on the world or the like, so as to give a little more flexibility to what we can do with spheres.