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Magic

44 (19%)

Magitek

38 (16.5%)

Steampunk

65 (28.1%)

WE DON'T NEED NO WEAK CONTRAPTIONS! (Normal)

28 (12.1%)

All of the Above (Moddable)

56 (24.2%)

Total Members Voted: 231

[Andeerz]

Now, you could do some randomness in this regard; Since I'm sure it'd make Andeerz squee, we could have some procedurally generated "alchemy levels" that represent what sorts of alchemical knowledge players have access to, and players can be forced to make do with what plants grow or animals live in the specific biomes they live in, excepting trade with elves.  This would be the sort of "card game randomness" that you are given a different situation each game, but where the actual effects of your actions are always known to you.  A medical poultice always increases healing rates, although I suppose doctor skill could have some dice game randomness effect on just how much it heals the patient dwarf.

Making dwarven alchemists means that the "magic" IS an industry, and not a bunch of "dwarven wizards".

Again, by making a claim that "magic shouldn't be an industry", you are proposing a change to one of the fundamental aspects of DF, where everything is an industry, and the burden of proof's on you to prove that you have explored all the consequences of such a decision, and how that will affect play, and why such a change gives the player more to enjoy than not making that change. 

That DOES make me squee.

And I agree that things in this game, as much as possible, shouldn't be random.  Perhaps they could be practically random, but I think everything as much as possible should be procedurally generated.  In this way, the player can have some effect on the procedure that generates something, whether direct or indirect, and it would model things with a modicum of verisimilitude.  Magic with completely random effects seems pointless to me.  Whatever magic there ends up being in the game should, in as many facets as possible, be procedurally generated in meaningful ways (i.e. a magic sword that is created wouldn't have a completely random effect; the wizard or whatever imbuing entity that has a hand in making it should choose a meaningful effect to put on it that reflects the purpose of the weapon).

Also, think about it this way: "Technology vs. magic" is sort of a false dichotomy.  Magic is a technology.  Magic is used to (or intended to) do work and make improvements (all relative to the entities using it, of course) just like any other technology.  Look at the history of magic and you'll see that magic and science were once considered one and the same.  And there were historically sort of "industries" based on "magic".  Apothecaries of old, medieval alchemists, and shamans/wizards/prophets/priests throughout history made a living off of the trade of magic.  There is no reason it wouldn't be the same in DF.  The only difference here is that magic would have a more direct and observable effect in the world, as the properties of nature necessary for it be that way would actually exist.  The presence of such a technology as magic would(should), depending on how it works, have actual effects on how the denizens of a DF generated world interact with each other and how other technologies affect society, just like any other technology.  Think about how iron working likely drastically changed bronze-age societies, or refrigeration revolutionized modern living as examples. 

That leads me to another thing: If there's one thing I hate about a lot of fantasy games is that they have magic in the game, but magic has either no or a very unconvincing effect on societies represented in the game (think about ANY Final Fantasy game for some good examples).  This game would ideally be able to model (in a procedurally generated fashion) how the presence of supernatural things like magic would influence the development of civilizations.   

[jmancube]

I usually think of the dwarves from Warhammer when I think of most dwarves. I feel that while there should be magic in the game, the dwarves should generally stick to industry and mechanics. I don't think dwarves should have machine guns and steam powered tanks, but a bit more sophisticated machinery then they do now. However, if dwarves do end up using magic, I feel that the alchemy system described earlier sounds the best. A bunch of dwarves walking around the fortress throwing fireballs would be awful.... just think of all that lost booze  Plus dwarven mages just seems undwarfy to me, but then again, that's my opinion.

[NW_Kohaku]

Andeerz: I think what you want, then, Andeerz, is the "Magitek" option.  I'm kind of fond of it, myself. 

The major reasons many forms of fantasy ignore the ramifications of magical knowledge (other than author laziness) is that they try to make it simply too rare or too limited in supply to be used very often... theoretically.  I think you can look at Dragon Age, and their mining lyrium and limited number of mages, and think that the game is generally supposed to give the impression that most of the world has little magic... (It just happens to always collect anywhere you happen to go, that's all.  Magic swords are rare, honest!  They just become more common than water wherever you go, that's all.)

The other thing that would make sense is the sort of randomness theory of magic, where magic is simply so inherently unstable that you can't rely on it the way that "technology" can be relied upon. 

But I throw "technology" in quotes, because, frankly, to someone who doesn't understand the true nature of gravity, the way night and day cycles, or the planets and stars move across the sky are functionally magic.  I don't mean this in a "those silly, superstitious ancient people" way, I mean they understood what would happen, but had no friggin' clue why - it's functionally just magic that the sun always rises every day. 

You can really say the same thing about modern understanding of quantum mechanics. We know there's almost certainly some principle out there that makes all the crazy things in quantum physics start to make sense, but we have no idea what it is, we can just try to predict behaviors that happen just because of "magic".

I'd say look at the image that goes with the article here - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitletnnwhqnhdt9x?from=Main.ClarkesThirdLaw - "Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."

Basically, like I said before with the fireball rune trap and the gunpowder bomb, "magic" that has a sound principle behind it that you can understand and rely upon isn't so much "magic" as it is physics when you rewrite in some new rules.

If magic is non-random, even if you don't understand it, if you can reliably know that unsupported objects fall "down" at a predictable and reliable rate of speed, you can build technology that uses that function.  If magic is non-random, even if you don't understand it, you can know that sometimes air in enclosed spaces becomes bad for breathing, and you will die if you don't get air that is good for breathing, and it is possible to use warning signs like canaries in coal mines or fans to move air around.  If magic is non-random, even if you don't understand it, the divine power of the spheres can be harnessed to generate energy that is directable to certain tasks, like using the sphere of healing to mend bones and cure the infirm.

Therefore, we could create some kind of device for the hospital that, if power to it is somehow maintained, would heal the sick and wounded, whether it be a healing bed you sleep on, or a capsule full of bacta like in Star Wars, or simply a pond of magic spring water that completely restores HP/MP (but you're still hungry).   That's the basic premise of magitek.

[Kobold Troubadour]

Eep...so much info to read might as well throw some ideas and such...

Mmm, I think it would be nice if all of it is integrated to DF one way or another. But it would be interesting if magic and "tech" has certain factors like:

- How advance they are depends on what Age it currently is after worldgen & their civ's size & power.
- Each race specializes in one (Elves in magic, Dwarves in steampunk/ dorfy contraptions, Humans in hybrid magitek and/or alchemy, Goblins in dark arts & necromancy).
- Other civ's skills can be learned & acquired in different ways like: if their civ loses a war & is integrated by the victors or by having you pay or "rent" travelling specialists of certain civ's long enough to learn the basic skills.

Would really be interesting to see sieging Elves throwing magic missiles, Goblins riding undead Elks, or Humans using Golems to knock on your gates while your Dorfs fire exploding ballistas at 'em while their steam powered-drill equipped warriors prepare for a breach (ok, too much rule-of-cool toppings but you get the idea). Can't really think much about the "how's" though...not my field...sorry if most of this has been said already.

[Jayce]

No steampunk mega terminator dwarfs please,it will ruin the atmosphere,and as for magic i picture a dangerous workshop where the results of magic can be more dangerous than usefull.

[Vercingetorix]

No steampunk mega terminator dwarfs please,it will ruin the atmosphere,and as for magic i picture a dangerous workshop where the results of magic can be more dangerous than usefull.

Especially if skill levels affect success and risk.  Throwing an unskilled peasant in to the workshop could turn your fortress in to the world's largest deposit of trinitite.

[Jayce]

No steampunk mega terminator dwarfs please,it will ruin the atmosphere,and as for magic i picture a dangerous workshop where the results of magic can be more dangerous than usefull.

Especially if skill levels affect success and risk.  Throwing an unskilled peasant in to the workshop could turn your fortress in to the world's largest deposit of trinitite.

Yeah stuff like that or your wizard turning into a fluffy warbler,would be hilarious.

[Rasta69]

To sum up in a tl;dr format.
How would you feel about magic being an area density deal?

Ahem. I may be entering into a fiery cauldron of debate but, what the heck. There seems to be a general disagreement on how magic would work fundamentally so I'll stay away from that, but how about the idea of different levels of regional magic? Very much like we have now with heat and cold, good and evil and a whole mountain load of rock layers, there could be different levels of magical intensity. Basically regardless of whether it is random or well ordered I belive there is a general consensus that there would be magical material, or perhaps simply magical creatures. Regardless these creatures or materials would be integral to any magic system introduced. An interesting idea would perhaps have the magic of the world concentrate along ley lines ie: as in thousands of fantasy novels you may care to name. This might mitigate the danger of random, or the simply the danger. As previously pointed out people will put their dwarves in a terrifying glacier, cut off from dwarven civilisation and surrounded by goblin fortresses for the sheer thril of adventure. This might however also be something people find desireable, depending on how its implemented. Perhaps a large amount of magic in the area is the only way to summon a particuarly powerful demon. Mithril may only be found in areas with a high enough density of magic.

[NW_Kohaku]

Rasta, what you're describing is largely the sphere-based surroundings system that is supposed to be replacing the "Good"/"Evil"/"Savage" surroundings we have now as a placeholder. 

One thing to consider when talking about magical surroundings, however, is, if "ambient magic" changes from area to area, then it raises questions of what using that power does to the power supply.  I see three possible things hapnneing:

1.  Magic is like an aquifer in the real world - magic gets added to a local "resevoir" of magic power, and the exact flavor of magic you get depends upon where you are.  Using that magic up, like pumping water out of wells in excess of the rates at which water can seep back underground (or worse, paving over the areas where water seeps into the ground, cutting off the ability to replinish the water supply), will eventually lead to failures of magic caused by simply over-tapping the resource.  This may mean that something generates the fields of magic, which can be destroyed or rebuilt to alter the rate at which magic enters the system.  A "war" sphere, for example, may be replinished by killing things, while a "birth" sphere can be replinished by creatures giving birth.  Other sources may be a "depravity" or "nightmares" sphere powered by the HFS, which requires dwarves to handle the waves of clowns, venture into the HFS, and destroy the source of the sphere/magic that is contaminating their fortress.  This sort of system of magic would mean that magic is a depletable renewable resource (like trees are now), that has to be conserved, or all the crap you set up based upon magic will simply run out of juice, and start malfunctioning.  This goes well with Magitek in general, as it makes for a more reliable magic that, nonetheless, you can't overrely upon.

2.  Spheres, and relative magic levels, apply to fortresses the way that "Evil" does now - it is an unchanging aspect of the land.  Not as much to say about this...

3. Magic is something that comes from "elsewhere", through holes in reality, and by calling on magic, you widen the holes in reality, like the water coming through a hole in a dam will widen the crack.  This makes the most sense when talking about something like the divine magic I mentioned earlier, or physical gods.  The more sun worship and sun magic you perform in a given area, the more that the sun sphere dominates the area.  The more it is used, the more powerful it becomes, until it becomes dangerous and unpredictable (hi, KillerClowns!) and can potentially cause negative backlashes against the people living there.  (You thought Cave Adaptation was bad normally?  Wait till you see a hyper-powered sun sphere amplifying a solar flare into blasting everything on the surface to ash like they were all vampires!)  This would be better for a more pure-magic system, where people could avoid magic, and its ill effects, or they could bring down ruin upon themselves if they tried to rely upon it.  It also makes for a good explanation for why not to have magitek - how can you build an industry off of magic, when any concentration of magic causes reality to fall apart in that area?

[NW_Kohaku]

** When I was writing the last post I made, it pretty much transformed into a brainstorming session.  As such, it's not an argument for or against anything per se, the way that I was arguing for certain kinds of magic systems and against others earlier in this thread, but more of a "throw stuff at the wall, and see what sticks" post.  I cut this part off from the previous post because it started really going someplace different the more I thought things out.  I'm pretty much just trying to explore a concept to its logical end, and writing it down as I go. **

Let me make reference to another game's "magic" system, since I think it highlights some different ways of thinking about "magic versus technology".  Sakura Taisen is a series of console games, only the last one of which got released in the US, which is ostensibly "Steampunk":  It has an alternate version of the early 20th century built around "steam power", but if you scratch the veneer of steampunk, you find it's actually all just magitek.  Even though they TALK a lot about steam powering everything, it isn't actually a steam engine that powers the machines, it's something called "Pnuema", which is basically magic steam generated by people (especially relationships, which is an important part of the game mechanics), and as such, all the games take place fighting over large, populous cities because, since the holy grail of energy in this game world is generated by people, the more people you crowd into a closer space, the more energy you get from them.  (And again, it's especially generated by relationships, so you have to spend most of your time boosting "Friendship Levels" because it gives you more pnuema, which gives your pnuema-powered-mechs all sorts of stat bonuses for all the extra frienship power you get from your teammates.)

This gets back to the sorts of things I was talking about regarding the difference between "technology" and "magic" - as long as magic has comprehensible rules that it follows, "magic" is just physics when you change one of the fundemental laws of nature.  One of the things that came up when talking about Improved Farming when we were talking about photosynthesis underground, and a guy proposed cosmic rays as a source of underground photosynthesis.  This is functional magic (and I pretty much said so in response), as it's just rewriting physics to suit the needs of the narrative. 

Scientists theorize that 3/4ths of the universe's mass is "Dark Energy" (not even dark matter, that's something else, which also outweighs the known universe, but not by as much).  We have no idea what it is, or how it works, but apparently there's a whole lot of SOMETHING out there, and we can tell because it has a strong influence on gravity.  The world is flooded with neutrinos, a harmless particle that bombards us billions of times every second, but which are virtually undetectable because they have virtually no impact upon any of the fundamental forces of physics.  In the game already, we have "souls", which have attributes, can occupy bodies, and can possibly leave bodies or have multiple souls in one body.  So, just re-write a few things, and suddenly, dark energy or neutrinos become some sort of water in which souls can be considered fish - a medium for souls, which certain kinds of souls can influence to bring about actual physical changes in the world.  Just like a fish needs scales to protect itself from the outside world, and keep its insides all in order, a soul generally needs a body to protect it from the currents of dark energy/magical energy around it from tugging its inner workings away.  But like a fish, a soul could push some of the dark energy/magical energy around it in ways that it has adapted to survive, so as to breathe or swim.

(Going forward, because I'm talking about a metaphysical soul in quasi-physical terms, I'm dubbing this a "Souls As Organisms" concept.  Souls, in this case, are functionally like living organisms, and may be "immaterial" by the way that we reckon physical things, which mostly means reacting to gravity and electromagnetism, but are "material" to other soul-like things, possibly because of a new force of nature that is unlike our current forces of nature, which only sometimes interacts with "physical" objects.)

We could, in fact, have magic be a matter of souls.  A temporary magic effect is a flexing of spiritual muscle.  Most creatures could simply do this as a matter of course - dragons breathe flames because they are developed to have a "soul muscle" that can turn magical energy into either direct heat, or some sort of unstable, easily combustable matter.  Certain types of magic, then, would be like a bird flying: You're either born with wings and the muscular structure that lets you fly, or you aren't.  If you are born to a race with magical powers, the powers are probably pre-defined, but repeatable for as long as your spiritual stamina holds out.  A "rare sorcerer" would be something of a mutation where they have the ability to move a "muscle" in a way that others of their species do. (Not altogether unlike an X-Men mutation, where having "mutant genes" somehow gives Storm the power to call lightning bolts from nowhere.)

A wizard, if any exist, would then have to have the ability to reshape their own souls upon command.  If we are talking Vancian Magic, maybe they know a trick to alter their own souls, or place some kind of artificially constructed spiritual implant to their soul-organism-body, which is designed to be triggered by flexing or unclenching some rarely-used muscle, a sort of spiritual equivalent of putting a gadget on your body where chomping your teeth down or clapping your hand on a button would trigger the gadget.  This would require some sort of amorphous nature to one's soul to do... I guess going insane from using magic is a matter of carelessly molding one's own soul in ways that alter their ability to percieve the world.  A fun thing to think about... 

If magic is a matter of practicing a certain spell over and over again, until you learn how to reliably cast a particular spell, then it may be more of an ability to teach your soul-organism to either flex its muscles in a new way, or to restructure itself to develop a new muscle it can flex.  This would mean that every individual spell would almost be its own skill to learn - you need to make a new muscle for every individual type of flexing (spellcasting) you need to perform, and every muscle needs to be "exercised" to be kept "fit" individually, or they may atrophe back into non-existence, and you lose the spell.  The ability to actually develop these muscles, the self-awareness it takes to reshape one's own soul-organism-internal-structure without dealing damage to yourself, however, may be a set of skills that are common between spells, even if each individual spell would otherwise be its own individually trained and developed "muscle".

If this is the case, then magical items or other "permanent" effects that happen outside the body would need to have a "soul" in them, as well.  Dwarves forging artifacts or magical items may, for example, have to tear off a chunk of their own soul to put it into the magical item to give it the "structure" (a "simple organism") through which magic can pass, and power the magical effects of the item.  This means that a dwarf who was creating a magic sword that created fire continuously would have to shape a piece of his soul into a small, self-sustaining soul-organism that could inhabit a sword as a "body", and has the "muscle" developed to transform ambient magical energy into heat or unstable combustable materials, like a dragon's breath does. 

If a certain effect could take up a portion of soul, which is measured as a set of attributes, we need to have some kind of overall "soul size" function, but we could say that a certain spell might consume 50 points of spacial sense, and 100 points of musicality to "construct" the spirit organism that you will put into the magical item.  This would be "Cast from Hitpoints", in a manner of speaking, and you would be unable to get them back, except by gaining attribute experience.  (There might need to be some kind of task for wizards that could train all their soul attributes back up to work back off some of this price.)

This also means that magical effects could be Powered By a Forsaken Child.  Want a magic wand that shoots dragonfire?  Harvest the soul of a dragon, tear off the part you want, enslave it, and force it into a wand!  (May require some small part of your own soul as a "controlling mechanism" to enforce the slavery of another creature's soul, which would likely not be willing.  This would be like an additional parasitic organism living within another creature's soul.  Fun bits.)

Regeneratable/mutable souls could solve and create some interesting problems, here, too...  The more mutable a person's soul becomes, the easier it is to add on new parts that could potentially control more magic.  This also means that working over the soul continuously may introduce some measure of "corruption" - the more you work the soul over, the less it resembles the "human(oid) soul" that it originally was, and the more it becomes a scarrified, multi-limbed eldritch-horror-in-the-making.  You might even wind up having wizards turn from mortals to "Physical Gods" if they reshape themselves thoroughly enough to make their soul-organism form capable of surviving without bodies, or transferring between bodies, or controlling multiple bodies, or inhabiting entire landmasses as an alternate body, becoming "the god of the mountain". 

So yeah, this is the kind of crap I think up when I'm procrastinating on my schoolwork.

[Rasta69]

Rasta, what you're describing is largely the sphere-based surroundings system that is supposed to be replacing the "Good"/"Evil"/"Savage" surroundings we have now as a placeholder. 

XD sos. That will teach me to be more thorough in my reading of the dev notes.

[Ultimuh]

20 people are being boring.
I'm all for everything.

[Jayce]

20 people are being boring.
I'm all for everything.

Yeah lets add dwarf spaceships and miniguns.
You dont understand.

[ZebioLizard2]

Hmm, Dwarf fortress: Alpha Centauri! Wonderful idea Jayce! 

I'm rather surprised by the overwhelming support for steampunk within the vote, must be alot of lurkers hiding to vote for such as it.

But as stated, I prefer everything being moddable, between any of the three, so that really everything can be done as one wills it within mod settings. Steam powered golem with socketed jewels within its eyes that shoot lightning and drops a 5x5 area magma fart every once in a while.

[NW_Kohaku]

Currently, "steampunk" has 25.7% of the vote.  Even if you add it in with "all of the above", you get exactly 50% of the vote.  This is not overwhelming.

And I have to wonder why you included "all the above" in the first place, if you have a choice "A" (magic), choice "B" (steampunk), choice "AB" (magitek, the combination of magic and steampunk), and a choice "O" (screw them both)... "All the above" seems like it's just a way to say "I don't want anything to have any overarching order or meaning to it".

Regardless, if we have a magic system, then as long as it's nearly as flexible as Toady has seemed to indicate it will be, you can obviously mod in your steampunk.  You just change the magical properties of some things with some thin technobabble veneer, and magic golems become steam-powered automata. 

How powerful the modding can be is a pretty major concern, as well, as it means that things like the Fallout mod can become more viable - with a bit of flexibility, Dwarf Fortress could become something of an RPG Maker, with the ability to put in all kinds of crazy crap, including brain worms from an alien god that is slowly awakening.

Also, I expected most people to tl;dr the stuff I write in general, but I'm a little surprised nobody wants to comment on the last post I did...