from
http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_7_transcript_2.htmlJust as a general question - what are the effects of the artifacts? there's a bunch of categories they could fall into; if you have weapons and armour you can kind of see what effects might be there. You don't want to say something like 'it's a +3 flaming sword' but if in effect the sword is just on fire and burns things and stuff, that's certainly a fair artifact to put in; just because it's a cheesy Dungeons and Dragons thing doesn't mean that it's the end of the world. But it could be the end of the world if having the artifact sword is somehow drawing your fortress closer to some kind of world of fire and then suddenly it like sucks into some kind of fire plane and your whole fortress catches on fire and then everyone wonders why there's a new volcano.
It's cool to think about how to make magic unreliable, unpredictable, all that kind of thing, but of course if you go too far in that direction so that every artifact is a death trap waiting to happen then there's just going to be a lot of mood dwarf crushed under bridges. So you don't want to go to nuts with it. The other kinds of magic there is where it's not an industrial process are things like having conditions, so if one dwarf were inspired by the god of the harvest to create a chest that you can bring with your armies so that they never have to have supplies or food, then that artifact could in fact be very reliable; it would not be understood and the god might say 'if you want to keep using this then never march during the full moon' and if you do then we can really indulge in catastrophic horrible things because it's your fault; the werewolves can come out of the chest and eat everybody, or whatever needs to happen.
it's kind of depressing in a way if magic isn't mysterious.
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Topic: Artifacts: ideas for effects (Read 808 times)