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[Gatleos]

EVEN YOUR EDITS ARE MULTIPLE PARAGRAPHS

One of the things I've always wanted to do in Dwarf Fortress was terraform in a more subtle way than leveling a mountain for fun. You know, like build artificial rivers of magma and clear-cut forests, then let the landscape degenerate from a lively forest to a magma swamp full of skeletal squirrels. And watch the elves vomit when they show up.

[NW_Kohaku]

EVEN YOUR EDITS ARE MULTIPLE PARAGRAPHS

eh heh heh...

Well, I wanted to try to represent a compelling argument that would appeal to Rowanas's perspective, from having glimpsed a few of Rowanas's posts in some of the previous magic threads.  I thought of a new angle for reasoning after I posted, so I felt I should explore it.

But more seriously, there is a pretty fierce deadlock between the two camps of players about the "soul of DF's magic", and I think that some kind of method for addressing both sides' concerns needs to be found.  A game like this is capable of a subtle and expansive enough type of play that it would allow for wildly divergent playstyles to both enjoy the same game without actually taking something away from the other side.

Mechanisms and all of the many things you can do with the physics engine provide a fantastic amount of depth for players who want to explore it... but you can also just solve all your problems with a strong military and some proper planning.  You never need to go to the trouble of the advanced pressure plates and gear assemblies.  It's something that exists for the player who wants to play that way, though.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, new thought.

The talk about mountaintop removal projects, and a lingering trace of the discussion about the elven "forest spirit" made me think for a second about the Ancient Greek deities, and how they would battle one another, with their favored cities as pawns or proxies in their wars.

As part of the theme that messing with magic stirs up potential backlashes against you if you do not treat it with proper care and respect, then what about something like a wrath of a forest spirit being a directed, purposeful rage against you, rather than a general "you made too much wild magic appear" type of punishment upon players.  If you give the forest spirit power by causing their type of magic to flourish, then abuse that magic to your own liking, it becomes wrathful.  If you sap the spirit's strength in the region, then you can do whatever you damn well please, but you don't get any magic goodies from that spirit, anyway.

One of the discussions back in the "Making HFS More Deadly" thread involved talking about how elves don't so much worship nature as they worshipped the forest spirit - if you created your own natural landscape, but it wasn't part of their forest spirit's domain, then it's not "nature" to them, and is an alien aberration in their eyes.  In fact, it might be best to remember the old stories of the Fae rather than Tolkien's elves.  (We could always do with being more able to venture out of Tolkien's shadow a little more often...)  Their purpose is to nurish the forest spirit, not to protect the trees per se, but to protect the power source of their spirit.

I was also thinking about the entire "drowning out metaphysical elfishness with metaphysical dwarfiness" bit that VoidPointer had said... We have "Mountain" as a sphere, and often as a deity.  What if mountaintop removal projects to strip-mine all the valuables would piss off The Stone, the protector, and progenitor of the dwarves?  To mine, to explore, to build your kingdom within the embrace of The Stone is to live well, but to desecrate The Stone by exposing her innards to the hateful Sun is blasphemy!

[Gatleos]

Exactly. You could just torch someone with a pew-pew magic missile, but that's no fun. What if instead, you used a magical crafting system to make something much better? Sacrifice a tiger, then combine summoning and blood magic to make a live tiger spawn inside someone and telefrag/slice them to ribbons?! That's how I imagine the magic system in DF to work: on one hand you have a realistic picture of how a society that used magic would function, and incorporate it into world settlements, history, etc. in sensible ways. On the other hand, have a "magical crafting" system that can be as absurdly complex as you want it to be and allows players to do the kinds of insane things they do with every other aspect of the game.

As part of the theme that messing with magic stirs up potential backlashes against you if you do not treat it with proper care and respect, then what about something like a wrath of a forest spirit being a directed, purposeful rage against you, rather than a general "you made too much wild magic appear" type of punishment upon players.  If you give the forest spirit power by causing their type of magic to flourish, then abuse that magic to your own liking, it becomes wrathful.  If you sap the spirit's strength in the region, then you can do whatever you damn well please, but you don't get any magic goodies from that spirit, anyway.

And that's how I imagine deities in DF working. These gods that do absolutely nothing in-game now could have power in the area you embark in, and you could even make your Dwarves happy by changing the face of the landscape to attract the presence of one of the gods they worship!

I was also thinking about the entire "drowning out metaphysical elfishness with metaphysical dwarfiness" bit that VoidPointer had said... We have "Mountain" as a sphere, and often as a deity.  What if mountaintop removal projects to strip-mine all the valuables would piss off The Stone, the protector, and progenitor of the dwarves?  To mine, to explore, to build your kingdom within the embrace of The Stone is to live well, but to desecrate The Stone by exposing her innards to the hateful Sun is blasphemy!

I like the way you think.
Temples built in your fortress could help win the favor of your civilization's central deity, and depending on which Dwarven (or elven/human eventually) civilization you embarked as, you would have an incentive to match the preferences of your chosen deity. Or you could piss off your civilization and go against their deity of peace and nature by burning down forests and waging wars.

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh, and clearly, the way to venerate The Stone is to create mountains...  And only natural stone counts, so get that obsidian casting scaffolding ready, you're going to need to build at least a 30-z-level pyramid to appease The Stone!

[Gatleos]

"APPEASE THE ROCK-LORD, PUNY DWARVES! APPEASE MEEEEEEE"

[jseah]

The posts about deities have given me space to expand the idea about warring biomes terraforming each other. 

Some of those spheres might have a spirit arise, especially the more powerful one.  This would then become a historical entity and have it's own goals.  Most of them would aim to spread their influence (and just to mix things up, some would like to fade away), and would actively work towards doing that. 
If the sphere entity could mildly influence the sphere animals' behaviour, like make them attack certain things on sight or like to eat a certain plant, it could attempt to accelerate terraforming beyond the normal sphere's speed.  (another step along the self-reinforcement.  Spheres reinforce themselves through their representative creatures, and when strong enough, gain a mild intelligence to further increase their reinforcement)

The idea that dwarven forts and civilization, and indeed all the civilized playable civs, are caught between a subtle metaphysical war of various supernatural entities would allow FUN from magic to happen outside the player's control (for random magic) and yet have a sense of purpose and give the player a chance to divert or defend against it (for controllable understandable magic). 

[NW_Kohaku]

The problem is, then, that we now have two metrics - a sphere's power, and how much that sphere 'favors' you.  That means there needs to be a difference between acts that create or drain power from spheres, and acts which gain or lose favor with that sphere's spirits/gods/guardians/whatevers. 

[Darvi]

The problem is, then, that we now have two metrics - a sphere's power, and how much that sphere 'favors' you.  That means there needs to be a difference between acts that create or drain power from spheres, and acts which gain or lose favor with that sphere's spirits/gods/guardians/whatevers.

Why not combine them into one metric? You know, a favorable sphere having a lot of power towards  helping you, a neutral sphere having no power, and a hostile sphere having a lot of power that's turned against you.

[NW_Kohaku]

Why not combine them into one metric? You know, a favorable sphere having a lot of power towards  helping you, a neutral sphere having no power, and a hostile sphere having a lot of power that's turned against you.

Because then we couldn't choose one particular sphere to utterly screw over, and dominate with some opposing sphere that likes us, but then demands something of us that we can't refuse because its power is now totally unopposed.

If this was some sort of Ancient Polytheistic pissing contest, you could do anything you wanted to enrage the Egyptian gods so long as you were in Greece, where their Gods couldn't really extend their influence over you, anyway... You can also give Ares the bird while you're in Athens, just don't do it in Sparta, and make sure that you appease Athena, or else you're getting some judgement from on high.

[Darvi]

The greek gods were all jerks anyway, so it wouldn't matter if I pissed them off or not.
But I get your point.

[jseah]

I would prefer a system where the dwarves (and by extension the player) cannot directly influence the attitudes of a sphere.  Spheres having their own goals and working to acheive them, possibly using or destroying the dwarves in the process, appeals more to me. 

[Lovechild]

I agree with jseah above, but make that gods instead of spheres. All gods are tied to one or more spheres, so if you increase the power of, say, the fire sphere in your fortress, then expect the god of fire to act through it. If your civilisation worships the god of fire then you'll get more fiery benefits, but if the fire god is worshipped by the goblins you will have some trouble.

[NW_Kohaku]

Perhaps I should rephrase that, then.

I don't mean that dwarves/the player can control how the Gods think, but that they control how much they follow the desires of the Gods.

I kind of wish VoidPointer might come back and start getting excited about mythology again, since it would help guide the discussion, but I'll post back to something he said earlier...

Allow me to expand upon this, as a good dose of polytheism is exactly what Dwarf Fortress needs.[1]

You're quite correct, to start with. Polytheistic gods are very different from the Abrahamic God, or really any monotheistic (or henotheistic, but for purposes of this discussion the distinction is trivial) god. Polytheistic gods are not immaterial. They are bound up with the physical, even though they dwell in spiritual realms. When a priest of Baal sacrificed a bull, the idea was that the meat would literally pass upward to Baal and supply him with stock for his larder. When the city of a local god was conquered, that god was conquered (by the god or gods of the conquering city).[2] The gods were even physically manifest in the form of idols, which were literally treated as if they were the god (as, in a very real sense, they were, in fact, the god). One of the kings of Babylon (Xerxes, I think, but don't quote me on that), for example, took all the idols of all the gods of the lesser cities he had conquered and took them to Babylon to help protect it, and this angered the other cities because they would be denied their gods' protection!

This physicality defines the relationships of polytheistic gods to each other and to mortals. In one of Baal's sagas, he defeats Sea, the godly embodiment of the ocean, and makes him his vassal. Sea had no active cult, because Baal wanted Sea to be weak, and sacrifices to Sea would give him supplies, wealth, servants, etc. Similarly, Baal is in the habit of throwing lavish parties to keep the other gods in line and keep himself popular, lest they overthrow him. The gods need worshipers to give them sacrifices, and thus strength and power, and in turn the gods are willing to do favors for those who are willing to sacrifice to them, and make examples of those who do not (“Eh, nice fields you got there. It'd be a shame if Valiant Baal were to, oh I dunno, not rain on 'em this year, huh?”). In this way, the gods' relationship to mortals was half quid pro quo, half extortion racket.

The example of Sea also illustrates something important. In addition to whatever gods are actively worshiped at any given time, polytheistic systems also have gods (usually weak, old ones) who personify the forces of nature (in Greek mythology, the Titans were mostly or entirely examples of these). The “spheres” are not merely things to be associated with, but sometimes living things in their own right.[3] This in itself has potential, in that if a sphere grows too strong in a place, the gods might get annoyed (as they hate, indeed fear, competition from lesser spirits).

This system, as Kohaku mentioned, also basically does away with the idea of any universal morality, as there is no Supreme Being who is the author of right and wrong. Morality becomes “Do as I say, not as I do, or I'll destroy you in the most inventively evil way I can dream up.”[4] This links strongly back to the “protection racket” thing. The gods don't necessarily want to teach you a lesson, they just want revenge for your pissing them off.

And yeah, Tartarus. It's a place where the gods put inconvenient immortals. Not much else to say there.

I can't wait to obsidian-cast a god. And this largely does away with real vs. fake gods: If all the miracles you want is "your enemies are crispy now", a dragon is a perfectly serviceable god.

[1]: Please note that my expertise on this subject is strongest with respect to ancient Near Eastern polytheism; to whit, the pantheon of Baal, Asherah, Moth (or Mot), and so on. This is not a large problem, as the Greek system definitely, and other systems probably, work in the same manner. In fact, Baal can easily be identified with Zeus via the known sagas about him (his area of power, sacred mountain, and rivals largely match those of Zeus).

[2]: Consider Isaiah 36, wherein an Assyrian polytheist argues that Israel will be destroyed because Assyria's god is mightier than the god of the Israelites. His argument is not that said god does not exist, but that he will be conquered like all the other gods.

[3]: This isn't terribly relevant, but I find it difficult to pass up an opportunity to point out that Genesis 1 is not an argument against evolution so much as a refutation of these ideas. The sea isn't some other god that God is in charge of. The sea, in fact, has no spiritual force. It's simply something God made. It's stuff and nothing more, and God is outside and above it, so feel free to toy around with it. Poseidon isn't going to smite you for exploring the Marianas Trench.

[4]: And yes, this is bloody well different from how it works in a monotheistic system, just to head off any snide remarks. It's irrelevant to the discussion at hand, so I won't post it here, but I will explain to anyone who asks via PM.

[Gatleos]

To me, the best game mechanics in god sims, RTS's, etc. are the ones where instead of directly changing different variables in the environment, your actions indirectly affect them. That's how you open your system to many different play-styles and make sure there are many ways to approach a problem.

The problem is, then, that we now have two metrics - a sphere's power, and how much that sphere 'favors' you.  That means there needs to be a difference between acts that create or drain power from spheres, and acts which gain or lose favor with that sphere's spirits/gods/guardians/whatevers. 

That's exactly what I'd like to see, though. General altering of the environment could drive off a forest spirit and invite a fire goddess to your fortress. The more the environment suits a particular spirit/deity, the more influence they have. Give them a lot of influence, and they may make demands like some kind of ethereal noble. "The water-spirit of peace has prohibited the killing of sapient creatures!" You could follow this mandate and receive the protection of the water spirit, or start pillaging the countryside and make it mad, leading to a swarm of demon-carp eviscerating your fisherdwarves.

There could even be chaotic gods that just throw out mandates at random. "The sand-spirit of chaos has mandated the killing of all camels!"