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[Quietust]

Let me tell 'ee th' tale o' Urist McOneleg, crutch-walker o' legend...

This demands experimentation. Will a legendary crutch-walker become immune to the Dwarven economy?

[Silverionmox]

I suppose even musicians.

Speaking of which, DF has instruments, but where are the musicians ? Imagine a dorf folk festival or an underground ( pardon the pun ) punk scene.

I found it very amusing when the trade liaison asked for "rock instruments"

[orbcontrolled]

Maybe the long-term goal should be to separate the word "legendary" from skill points and implement it as a generic concept. That is: Give dwarves the ability to tell stories, and then having enough stories told about you within a certain group makes you legendary within that group.
Dwarves at the highest skill level could be called something else, legendary would be reserved for actually becoming legendary.

Also, I'm now imagining some day in the far future, being able to click on your inexplicably legendary pump operator or fish dissector and get a story like Pickled Tink's, generated from the world history, to explain the outlandish series of events leading to his fame.

[Pickled Tink]

Quite the opposite. I don't think any change is needed, and I was pointing this out by showing that a "legend" doesn't need to be the great heroic epic as some people here seem think they should be.

You didn't point out anything of the sort, and even if you had, you completely failed to show why something called "legendary" wouldn't be the stuff of legends. Other than some bullheaded determination to have your way with the vernacular.

In fact, you specifically pointed out that a dwarf could have tales told of him even if he isn't masterful in the task he's famed for. That if anything is an argument against having "legendary" as a skill rank.

Of course you are going to completely miss the point if you don't bother to process what you read. However, for your benefit I will break the concepts down.

Legends don't need to be world spanning epic. There are legends of differing magnitudes.

You get the great well known legends like the epic of gilgamesh, and of King Arthur. That kind of legend is certainly not the kind of legend a dwarf will achieve (Rare exceptions exist, such as Morul and Ironblood).

But you can also have national, regional, and local legends as well. The most basic is the typical legend of the old woman who lived in the burnt house on top of the hill, or outside town. Admittedly in the information age these distinctions have been breaking down, but in a fantasy world without an internet, where tales spread by word of mouth or letter, you can reasonably and justifiably claim that these distinctions still exist.

It is at this level that legendary skills would operate. These dwarves would serve as the foundation for local folk tales that reaffirm the commonly held values of the dwarves. Persistence, Industry, and the desire to contribute to community. Mastering any skill to the "Legendary" level serves this function. "I want to grow up to be like Vucar Gatetrailed, who was so dedicated to his craft that when needed he could work a pump for a month without a break" is just as valid as "I want to be as skilled as Catten Rungportals, who's skill with stone was so great that she could turn almost any piece of stone given to her into a work of marvelous beauty".

You are incorrectly assuming only the greatest of legends need apply, and ignoring the least, which is where almost all the skills lie.

[Silverionmox]

If you inflate the definition of legendary so that every fortress has a bunch of them, how do you distinguish the truly legendary from the normally legendary (not to mention the slightly legendary, the almost legendary, and the better-than-averagely-legendary-legendary)?

Mind you, this is all a discussion about semantics. So let's make a clear distinction between skill level and fame level, and chill on the naming convention until they're in the raws and we can try them out.

[Ultimate Carl]

You didn't point out anything of the sort, and even if you had, you completely failed to show why something called "legendary" wouldn't be the stuff of legends. Other than some bullheaded determination to have your way with the vernacular.

In fact, you specifically pointed out that a dwarf could have tales told of him even if he isn't masterful in the task he's famed for. That if anything is an argument against having "legendary" as a skill rank.

Wow, you're kind of a legendary grouch, aren't you?


I think the other problem is everything works on the same scale.  For pump operating especially this makes no sense, as the actual ACTION of operating a pump is simple and doesn't allow for a gradient of skills, instead your success at the action would realistically be entirely dependent on your strength and stamina.  I suppose you could have at most three "levels" of skill with it, one "completely untrained" for if you'd never done it before or only once, one "trained" for when you've done it more than once, and one "well trained" for if you've been doing it long enough that muscle memory takes over and you don't even think about what you're doing anymore.

Still, to fit with the goofy and fun atmosphere of DF I'm fine if it all stays the way it is.  "This dwarf walks on a crutch LIKE A CHAMP!"

[Ilmoran]

Let me tell 'ee th' tale o' Urist McOneleg, crutch-walker o' legend...

Actually, he showed up at one of my forts.  Not kidding, a goddamned legendary crutch walker with two perfectly good working legs showed up as an immigrant.  I was strongly considering a 5 floor drop to fix his legs and give his skill some meaning.

[Draco18s]

Let me tell 'ee th' tale o' Urist McOneleg, crutch-walker o' legend...

Actually, he showed up at one of my forts.  Not kidding, a goddamned legendary crutch walker with two perfectly good working legs showed up as an immigrant.  I was strongly considering a 5 floor drop to fix his legs and give his skill some meaning.

5 floor drop probably would have killed him.  Hell, a 2 floor drop can kill dwarves.

[Pickled Tink]

If you inflate the definition of legendary so that every fortress has a bunch of them, how do you distinguish the truly legendary from the normally legendary (not to mention the slightly legendary, the almost legendary, and the better-than-averagely-legendary-legendary)?

Simple: Notable kills and artifact creation, with additional weighting being given to megabeasts and position holders when tabulating how epic a dwarf is for killing things. Both of those would logically result in word spreading beyond the borders of the fort and civilisation.

[Cheddarius]

Re: Econ/Crutchwalker: Certainly House apparently does a lot of illegal things; not like anyone calls him on it.

Re: Change mechanics to fit "legendary" and make it harder/have people talk about them/etc.:
Legendary: 1. of, relating to, or characteristic of legend or a legend
2. well-known, famous
But that's not the point. The point is whether legendary, in the context of the game, means "characteristic of a legend". And clearly it does not; legendary level does have some benefits, but it's just another level description. If I'm not mistaken (and I may be), engravers do not actually make depictions of legendary dwarves based on their legendariness. Saying "Legendary is too easy to get" or "Add a storytelling mechanic to account for it" is somewhat like saying "Hey, here's a typo that says 'dwarven flower' instead of 'dwarven flour'; Toady must implement an outdoors farming system that focuses on gardens with happiness bonuses to people with gardens in their dwellings in order to make it right!" Even if "legendary" is too strong a descriptor, just friggin' change it to "awesome" or something. No need to alter the game mechanics.

Basically, what I'm saying is this: Legendary is a word. Words are our servants, not our masters. If you think that there should be a very difficult-to-reach 16th level that grants huge bonuses, fine. That may be a good idea. But the word "legendary" has nothing to do with it. If you have a problem with it, we can always just change it to a different word.

[zarmazarma]

"Dorfs! Dorfs! Run for your burrows! A forgotten beast, Uglark Watertoes the Dripping Spring of Oceans has arrived! He is an awful humanoid made of water, beware his annoying push!"

Days passed and the beast mercilessly pushed the fine dwarven warriors. When no one was left, Urist stood alone, pump in hand, and entered a martial trance.
 
*Uglark Watertoes the Dripping Spring of Oceans had been struck down!*

[Pilsu]

Words are our servants, not our masters.

Yeah, let's erode language to the point ideas can no longer be coherently expressed because some damn teenagers couldn't be bothered to learn what words mean and didn't care. Fantastic. You sure showed us.

At least 'epic' conveys more than just vast fame.

[Cheddarius]

I'm not saying we should erode language. In fact, I'm fairly certain that have never said that we should change the meaning of legendary at all. I don't understand what you're trying to get at here.

[Coidzure Dreams]

Re: Change mechanics to fit "legendary" and make it harder/have people talk about them/etc.:
Legendary: 1. of, relating to, or characteristic of legend or a legend
2. well-known, famous
But that's not the point. The point is whether legendary, in the context of the game, means "characteristic of a legend". And clearly it does not; legendary level does have some benefits, but it's just another level description. If I'm not mistaken (and I may be), engravers do not actually make depictions of legendary dwarves based on their legendariness. Saying "Legendary is too easy to get" or "Add a storytelling mechanic to account for it" is somewhat like saying "Hey, here's a typo that says 'dwarven flower' instead of 'dwarven flour'; Toady must implement an outdoors farming system that focuses on gardens with happiness bonuses to people with gardens in their dwellings in order to make it right!" Even if "legendary" is too strong a descriptor, just friggin' change it to "awesome" or something. No need to alter the game mechanics.

I'd say it's more like noticing the discrepancy and thinking it'd be cool to add a bit of dwarven storytelling and lore after having to examine the fact that legendary actually has a meaning other than the connotation of "Kickass X" that it usually gets tossed around with.  Less demanding that something be put in in order to make restitution for some slight to the fanbase or language.  At least, that particular thoughtbubble of the idea of dwarven storytelling seemed to be more of a leapfrogging from this topic onto another with the related thread of legendary status's meaning. 

Seems like the sort of thing that'd go in along with music, actually.  But that might just be because I'd been thinking about bards earlier and the whole music-storytelling-oral history thing that always dredges up from the slime of my subconscious.[/silliness]
If anything, I think legendary was used as little bit of fun fluff since it usually gets tossed around in fantasy contexts fairly, let's say freely to be generous.

In regards to the idea of making it into a color-coded gradient to represent numeric progression of the skill, I can see the merits of it, but I do not believe it would be easily compatible with the benefits granted at discrete intervals by leveling the skill up through the discrete named ranks.  I also just like the little bit of fluff involved in having a tier of named ranks to describe a creature's mastery of a skill.

[Cheddarius]

Well, in that case, I'm fine with this. The new ideas seem a bit... superfluous, but after other more urgent things are finished (e.g. dwarves not melting randomly, smoothing the air, naming weapons every few seconds), they sound like excellent add-ons.