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[cog disso]

I know the "Wizard" lurks off in the coding, waiting to be activated, and Toady's hinted at it a few times, but what *should* happen when it rolls around eventually?

My thoughts:

- It should be artifact based. Artifact crafts might trigger leadership based magics, such as an artifact crown being worn by a noble would give bonuses to an aspect of the fort's group dynamic (arguments are less likely to break out, efficiency is sped up, etc.), while an artifact weapon might be an instant kill against a certain type of major beast. An artifact piece of armor could give it's wearer legendary fighting status, etc.

- Artifacts could be "cursed" randomly... the aforementioned artifact crown would give bonuses to efficiency at the cost of driving the wearer insane after awhile, and since it could only be activated by nobility, the noble's demands would get increasingly erratic and bizarre. OR, it could summon ghosts or spirits, which aren't anything that could harm or be harmed, they just appear occasionally and terrify a few dwarves at a time and give unhappy thoughts. Sometimes, the curse could be absolutely drastic and turn the wearer into a powerful enemy, possessed by a demon or something, take up arms and start slaughtering unwary dwarves.*

- As for the Wizards, maybe they aren't villains. Maybe they actually are like Gandalf, possibly appearing and offering your fortress a mission, sort of an expanded nobility demand. "Produce 30 Iron Plate Armors by the time I return from my travels," and if successful, he'll grant your fortress a boon of some sort. Maybe he could turn all those bituminous coals into diamonds, just this once, etc.

- Or maybe they ARE evil. Unlike FBs, HFS and megabeasts, they sit on the edge of the map and launch waves of goblin raiders at you. Or maybe he'll be key to the undead rising. If he takes over your fortress, he'll turn it into a Dark Fortress and you have to reclaim it in Fortress Mode.

- I think that inherently dwarves aren't a magic race, although they are often presented as the Craftsmen of the Gods in mythology. The elves, meanwhile, might use some minor spells to "improve" their caravans... and this could maybe make elves less annoying and more fun. They start bringing gold bars and jewels, but only SOME of them are real, and you can't tell until you've actually bought them. The fake ones turn into *ashen goblets* or something once you actually pack them into storage. Maybe the goods revert AFTER they've left the premises, so that if you've started encrusting your furniture with glamour gems, and they leave, it reverts to an *ashen goblet* that is now lodged in your new door in a freakish manner.

- And here's where zombies come in.








*This could also be a deviation into an "evil twin" sort of DF: if your dwarves decide to listen to the possessed leader, they could challenge the Mountainhomes for power, perhaps even recruiting some of the "dark" races like kobolds and goblins on a case by case basis. It would be a long and arduous battle, but it could happen, although this is presumably after the Military Arc is complete.

[Kurouma]

Definitely Toady's intention (and I tend to agree with him) is to shy away from traditional 'computer game magic' or RPG magic where spells are set and treated almost technologically with leveling up and such. No adventurer will be able to just spam firebolt at everything they come across, in that respect magic is no different from shooting arrows with a different graphic.

I like the ideas in the op but at this stage talking about the proposed Magic Arc should probably be more about the general model to use rather than the specific cases. Good examples though.

Anyway, my two cents on the topic:

• Magic needs to be impenetrable, arcane, and unpredictable for it to fit the feel of the game
• In no way should magic be directly controllable by the player, otherwise it ceases to be a powerful and mysterious force
• Magic should *not* be embellished upon into schools or disciplines (like elemental magics). Either something is magical or is not, for risk of the above
• OP makes a good point, dwarfs are better as being 'magical' through their craftsmanship than anything else. Artifacts might be magical, they might not. If they are then the way you find out about it is through seeing what happens when it's used or a cryptic tagline in the description
• The Tolkien-ian model of magic is probably closest. In the LoTR books, non-magical races talk about 'magic' as a thing you can do, but the 'magical' races like the elves who actually do the magic laugh when it's called that because it's a far subtler thing than that, it's not for conjuring up explosions to kill enemies with.
  

Actually Tolkien seems to have had similar qualms about working magic into his books as Toady has. He seems to have understood that blatant set use (like 'oh ok so saying the magic word makes fire shoot out of your fingers' set use) ruins the mystique - I think he managed to pull it off very well, because magic seems to be quite an indirect thing.

[Joakim]

I generally agree.

But how mysterious is magic to the magic wielders themselves? Gandalf might have seen magic as unpredictable, but arcane and impenetrable?
There would probably be costs and complications involved that are beyond mortal understanding. Personally I like the selling-your-soul/playing-chess-with-the-devil/bartering-with-demons approach. Although if magic is never controlled directly by the player it's less of a problem. Still, I'd miss the opportunity to be a DF wizard... 

Also the magic rules and frameworks would be procedurally generated, right? This means that the pitfalls of magic would be in different places in each game, giving you a suitable sense of paranoia and the unknown, even as a wizard. That kind of randomness I fully support. But I don't think the magic itself should be so random as some people have suggested in other threads where a wizard waves his wand and something happens. I have never ever seen or heard of a magic "system" like that, in books or myths or anywhere else.

[lordnincompoop]

Of course, the problem with a mysterious and unpredictable magic system is that coding it becomes difficult. Computers aren't very imaginative or unpredictable, so the underlying system at least must make logical sense and be "predictable" in a sense for it to work well. It's not that I don't want this kind of magic, it's just that I'm rather concerned about how all this is going to translate into actual code and stuff.

[Kurouma]

Sure, of course. But how many players actually get to jump straight in and be Gandalf? None immediately, but he does exist in the story. So presumably there's a period of working up where you actually can accumulate magical knowledge and power (say as an adventurer). If you decided that this was your role then you could treasure-hunt your way around the world finding only the most powerful artefacts and reading all the arcane scrolls you could get your hands on. What would be the end result of that? Players would feel the need to have their efforts rewarded by *something*. What would it be? Being blessed by passive effects, finding things just going your way more often?
Having some kind of sphere-appropriate reality-warping aura effects randomly assigned to you for having a certain amount of magical power in your possession would be cool, similar to how at the moment you get a title if you make enough significant kills.

Like Joakim suggests, procedural generation does wonders towards the coding aspect. With a large enough library and enough ways to combine said library elements, you can get a high enough number of potential combinations to make the magic system seem infinite and unpredictable to players.

Also the magic rules and frameworks would be procedurally generated, right? This means that the pitfalls of magic would be in different places in each game, giving you a suitable sense of paranoia and the unknown, even as a wizard. That kind of randomness I fully support. But I don't think the magic itself should be so random as some people have suggested in other threads where a wizard waves his wand and something happens. I have never ever seen or heard of a magic "system" like that, in books or myths or anywhere else.

I fully agree with this.

[Liber celi]

Yes, and another problem may be the balancing.
If you don't want players to exterminate every person or artifact that could be holder of magical power, fearing it could destroy their perfect fortress, you have to make the damage magic can invoke avertable or at least bearable.
The same thing, if a magical trick grants the player giant loads of cheap advantages, the game would become TOO random and unpredictable.

[GTM]

One of the challenges is that magic that appeals to the immersion players can cheapen the experience for the technical players.

Let's say there's a shield that grants its wearer invincibility.  That's awesome for worldgen - you've got this guy who just defeats every army he comes across, at least until his friend/lover betrays him and throws it in a river to save civilization from his growing excesses. 

But you know somebody playing fortress mode is going to farm for invincibility artifacts and then complain that it's "too easy."

[Kurouma]

One of the challenges is that magic that appeals to the immersion players can cheapen the experience for the technical players.

Let's say there's a shield that grants its wearer invincibility.  That's awesome for worldgen - you've got this guy who just defeats every army he comes across, at least until his friend/lover betrays him and throws it in a river to save civilization from his growing excesses. 

But you know somebody playing fortress mode is going to farm for invincibility artifacts and then complain that it's "too easy."

That's only true if there's some way to control your shield making to have them all give invincibility.
And that's exactly what I'm saying DF magic shouldn't be. So even though outright invincibility is probably too extreme a power to have anyway, even if there was this one occurrence of it in worldgen, there's no guaranteed way for you to actively reproduce it in fortress mode.
So then no fortress can farm anything and magic becomes flavor; adding to the game for both the story enthusiast, who gets their epic history, and the technical player, who gets their nice little random bonuses (and sometimes extra challenges).

[GTM]

That's only true if there's some way to control your shield making to have them all give invincibility.

I guess what I meant was gaming the system - I.e. People giving 50 dwarves apprentice level armorsmithing and hoping for a strange mood that confers invincibility.  It sounds ridiculous, but you know at least 100 DF players will try it.  And once they get their one invincible dwarf, they'll start complaining that the game is too easy.

Nevertheless, I'm confident that Tarn can strike a healthy balance between the immersion-gamers and the strategy-gamers.

[Mel_Vixen]

well indestructable might work with some drawbacks like still conducting heat hehehe. Drowning, poisons etc. would still work and blunt trauma would still be transfered. And well you might get disadvantegeous stuff like being slowed down more then normaly or unpredictable side-effects. Said side-effects may occur if 2 artefact souls dont like each other for example.

Like Joakim suggests, procedural generation does wonders towards the   coding aspect. With a large enough library and enough ways to combine   said library elements, you can get a high enough number of potential   combinations to make the magic system seem infinite and unpredictable to players.

Well If the player reaches a certain level in magic realted skill (s)he might try to derive his/her own spells which in turn can be rather satisfying. The game could also catch up on this a bit with recombination and a little bit of machine learning. A good system would also allow to achive one and the same effect by different ways. 

[Knigel]

well indestructable might work with some drawbacks like still conducting heat hehehe. Drowning, poisons etc. would still work and blunt trauma would still be transfered. And well you might get disadvantegeous stuff like being slowed down more then normaly or unpredictable side-effects. Said side-effects may occur if 2 artefact souls dont like each other for example.

Plus, a wrestler could just yank the damn thing out of your hands.

My only suggestion is that use of magic would lower your attributes, which need to be at a certain level to use the magic, to prevent stat-dumping, to keep it from being overused (I had a separate thread for this idea, but decided to lock it because it doesn't need one when we have a thread like this now).

[Auto Slaughter]

A side note - in Middle-Earth Gandalf was one of only five semi-divine immortal beings in the entire world, so you wouldn't expect the abilities or experience of a magic wielder at a frontier colony of dwarves to correspond.

[cog disso]

I think the emphasis should be on the level of controlability being equal to the level of practical value. If it's something the player can actively control (by regular play, cheats, manipulation of the system, etc.), then it's practical value should be low in comparison. If it's The One Ring, it should be able to level a fortress completely if used improperly.

The thing about "control players vs. immersion players" might end up being the all-encompassing problem with DF in general. I think I consider myself an "immersion player", because I love the little operatic tales of woe and madness that I can get ONLY from this game, but I can totally see how some players might not like that at all.

[Neonivek]

WARNING THE POST YOUR ABOUT TO READ IS NEEDLESSLY CHAOTIC!

In no way should magic be directly controllable by the player, otherwise it ceases to be a powerful and mysterious force

Yep then it becomes... wait

After this step WHY include magic again?

The "What not to do" Magic Steps! (For Satire and not insult purposes)
1) Magic should not be capable of being controlled: Magic is so mysterious the player should have no control over it whatsoever, that is to ensure that no player will be able to essentially have magic they have control over.
2) Magic shouldn't do anything you could normally do: Magic is magical! and thus it is KING! in the sense that magic doesn't want to do anything that could be useful to someone EVER!
3) Magic should just randomly backfire and kill you: Losing is fun, what better way to exemplify this then to make a skill just randomly kill or maim the player? Players who get to legendary magic skills should give themselves a pat on the back because they just won the magic lottery. Why would people want useful skills?

As for Tolkien magic... you should probably be aware that there is Conjuring fireballs in Tolkien magic. So your example falls flat as to where you put your examples

Look...  When magic is purely uncontrolled, barely useable, and unuseful it in it of itself stops being "Magic" and turns into banal chaos.

Magic
1) Must be controllable
2) Must be safe
3) Must be useful
4) Must be predictable
While none of these have to be 100% safe or 100% useful it must be to the extent that there is a point to doing so.

Heck I wouldn't mind if magic turns out to be such an arcane and dangerous thing that only gods, demons, and other beasts of magical might are the only ones who weild it... Just don't make it pointlessly chaotic.

As for Schools I'd think alligning all the magic to spheres would be great and would fit the flavor of the game. Heck if the spheres of the magic you use infuse your body or the area that in it of itself could be the limiting factor. Use a lot of "Gem" magic? Well maybe you will turn to diamond and crumble.

The largest disapointment I have with this game is that Toady does NOT plan on having Magic using Adventurers. So we can rule it out.

Which saddens me. 

[Nivim]

 Toady doesn't know what to do with magic yet; that's why it's the last arc. From the DF talks, we know he's listened to most of the ideas about it, and understands what the people want. Probably more than they themselves do.

 Magic is going to vary per world generated, generated with it, such as having a scale of mysterious↔vancian magic with the worldgen options. I don't think anything else is more solid than that, and it's as solid as a sandcastle.

 Also, the arguments here match these to such an incredible degree. Specifics vary, but its grasping at the subject like people aren't talking about Dwarf Fortress.

Edit: Failed the link.