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[NW_Kohaku]

Excellent point re: curses.  That brings to mind the Wendigo - adventurers, if hungry enough, will eat sentients.  Does this ever happen for historical figures in worldgen under any circumstances? (excluding elves, of course)

No.  They don't even forage before they starve to death.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What models are there governing population growth and decline?  Where do you want it to go - a simple and streamlined abstract model of growth and decline based upon a tally of upward population growth forces and downward pressures on populations, or a very gritty and detailed model where every wave of disease is tracked, so that there will be history events of the great city fire of 231?

The problem with that is that starvation doesn't seem to be modelled very well at all - people just keep eating normally right up until there's only food for 30% of them left, and so 70% of the population just sits there and waits to die.

Starvation doesn't work quite that blindly in world gen, but even when they try to save up for hard times and go as far as infanticide (cutting pop growth rate), they can't really forage or disperse right now -- they don't know how to move -- which is when they start to die off.  It has all of the food and population tracked numerically, so they just need more methods to deal with unexpected crop failures or missing caravans or overall food shortages.  Since it is tracking everything, historical citations of specific instances of famine etc. is just a matter of detecting/adding historical events now when something bad happens over a period of weeks.  The new slowness in world gen comes from pushing all of this info around.  When we get to disease, I'm sure that'll be tracked site by site, pop by pop, over the years as well.

Of course, that may eventually change...

The idea of a "positive curse" is one I'd rather like to see, though. 

Urist McPeterParker was bitten by a radioactive cave spider...

[Nasikabatrachus]

The Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind had some good unusual creatures in them. The least spoilerific of these are some humanoids called Andolians who lived to carry messages from place to place. One lesson to draw from those books is that tying "interactions" to objects to create these creatures with unusual motivations is a good idea. The Vorpal Blade can cut through even adamantium--but only at the cost of turning your adventurer into a creature who must eat a -small iron right gauntlet- every day to live! Or some such silly procedural curse.

[sockless]

Just watched a bit of a Fringe episode today. In it there were beetles that ate themselves out of a human host. I think that would be an interesting thing to have in the game, or parasites in general, particularly the zombifying parasites.

[stabbymcstabstab]

That would be awesome and !!FUN!!

[CatalystParadox]

Oh man, that would make an EXCELLENT forgotten beast syndrome.  "Beware its burrowing spawn!"

[Ahrimahn]

What would be the difference between that and a sting. OH it could permanatly paralyze the dwarf and later a new baby copy of the beast could be born from that.

[UltraValican]

-edited several times due to posting fails
Well since the op seems to have extensive knowledge Japanese Myths (where did you find all that great information? ) I would like to suggest Yuki-ona like creatures
The Yuki-ona or Snow woman was basically  sort of like snow succubi(sometimes vampiric and sometime just killing travelers for sh*ts and giggles) She even devise tactics like pretending to abuse a child killing any good Samaritans.
    There is one story in particular about a young handsome boy who was caught by a Yuki-ona the Yuki ona let him live, simply because she thought he was attractive(potential pedo-bear like monsters perhaps?) on the condition he never tells anyone about the encounter, if he did tell she would kill him. When the boy grows up, he tells his wife about the Yuuki-ona.
The wife said,” That was me, I was the Yuki-ona, but I told you not to tell ANYONE about that day or I would kill you, but you are the father of my children so I won't kill you, but if you EVER lay a hand on my babies there will be hell to pay!".
Luckily, the man was a wonderful father

   So along with pedo bear like creatures we could have mercy based on certain aspects of an individual (In this story beauty and later on child rearing) and potentially creatures (night hags or those (fox spirits I forgot the actual name) morph into human forms and potentially integrate into human society for various reasons, in some cases even integrating just to make sure someone follows through on a promise and maybe even showing gestures of forgiveness. Maybe even cases (if toady ever implements a “life” mode involving child-hood) when a child not-knowing any better sets a monster or a beast free from a trap of some sort, the monster could act as a guardian or potential suitor or love interest in the future (or with curses and powers in the next update infects the child and instructs them to come to a certain location when they feel they are ready.
    Speaking of such scenarios maybe we could have catastrophic events brought upon people by benevolent spirits that had good intentions but whose actions result in serious consequences. (A dwarven king Midas but with cotton candy perhaps?)
   Maybe a recreation of the Yuuki-ona’s story but with the man being a dead beat father

[GreatWyrmGold]

Ooh! Creatures that were warped by a secret, built a small fort, and vowed never to let anyone know the secret again. A town might spring up around the ruins, or maybe the secret-keeper chose to hide in a city, or maybe they flee into deep wilderness and patrol the area for other creatures, the better to make sure none learn the secret. The area around the lair is littered with the products and maybe the reactants for a reaction secret.

For instance, if some such thing happened with the procedurally generated secret I described here, Urist McUhOh the part-draltha monster might retreat deep into the territory of The Nations of Wood, who provide guards to help prevent anyone from finding The Blue Grasses and learning The Waters of Greenness. The area might be littered with phantom spider soap and some leathers. The Steadfast Confederation might wage war on The Nation of Wood so it could teach others The Waters of Greenness, and attack the elves with part-draltha monster soldiers who knew The Waters of Greenness to regain The Blue Grasses.

[Lost_Deep]

Although not really fitting to DF's theme (or maybe it is, depends how you look at it.) I think that extraterrestrials might be interesting.

They would be procedurally generated, yes, but more importantly their goals would be.

Urist McJoeschmoe cancelled daily drudgery: licked by extraterrestrial.

Or the ETS could just stand on a hill and take notes... or place bets. Or light fires. Or... kick all goblin axemen in alphabetical order.
It gets Fun when you throw in syndromes. And since it sounds like curses can be spread through syndromes now...

Urist McFirstcontact cancels Job: became a werespider.

Even if this particular thing is not implemented, the framework to do so through modding would be nice.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Or the ETS could just stand on a hill and take notes... or place bets. Or light fires. Or... kick all goblin axemen in alphabetical order.

Or insult everyone in the universe.
Or capture a dwarf, release him back "into the wild" with a tag of some exotic metal and a weird syndrome.
Or...Or...

Yeah, not extraterresrials, but normaller monsters could have weird goals like these.

[Lost_Deep]

Or the ETS could just stand on a hill and take notes... or place bets. Or light fires. Or... kick all goblin axemen in alphabetical order.

Or insult everyone in the universe.
Or capture a dwarf, release him back "into the wild" with a tag of some exotic metal and a weird syndrome.
Or...Or...

Yeah, not extraterresrials, but normaller monsters could have weird goals like these.

Ooh! Procedurally generated faeries would be magnificent! They look weird, they act weird, and no one can blame them because they're, you know, faeries.

ETs. What was I thinking?

[stabbymcstabstab]

sounds like you got a good ole clambake going can i join?