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[NW_Kohaku]

Wow, plopping a fortress down in an evil region is going to be mental.

It feels like every new version gets darker and darker - call me an elf if you want, but I hope 'light' 'magic' gets some love at some point. Maybe not Rainbow Bright / Carebear levels of love, but maybe random charms for armies combating the evil forces of darkness in good biomes or something...

I can't help but hope he doesn't really go that route, in a way.

While I'm not fond of the notion of a grimdark world where there is overwhelming corruption that is unopposed and will inevitably bring down the universe into zombie apocalypse land, I'm even less fond of seeing Dwarf Fortress become just another High Fantasy.

For reference, High Fantasy means something like Lord of the Rings, where the heroes (or player, in this case) is just a pawn in the game of a cosmic war of good and evil, and everything in the fantasy world is defined by what side of that line they stand upon.  By being creatures that aren't part of the "evil" category, and opposing skeletons, that makes dwarves have to follow "good" just to survive, and I'm pretty sure we all rather prefer the option to be the most evil things in our particular universe.

Adventure Mode Dwarf Fortress works much better as Heroic Fantasy (think any "knight in shining armor" story, or any anti-hero spoof thereof) where there are bad guys and heroes, but it's always about the individual hero's choices making them heroic, rather than the cause they represent.  (Or, alternately, a Puss In Boots being simply a manipulative bastard who lies, cheats, and kills everything standing in the way of getting himself and his master to power, and somehow still gets called "heroic".)

Fortress Mode is probably best as Low Fantasy (Think the Thief series) - cynical, mechanical, and pragmatic more than epic.  It's just high on magical creatures for a Low Fantasy.

I'd rather see something like a sphere of War or a sphere of Fortresses that can somehow crowd out the sphere of Undead, or at least cut into its power supply, so that we aren't engaging so much in a battle of Good Versus Evil as a battle of Red Versus Blue.

[Cthulhu]

I think there'll be plenty of "good" magic eventually.   Gods of life may grant the ability to heal and resurrect (As opposed to reanimate) the dead, etc. etc.

You mentioned that new secrets will be able to be modded in on release.  What kind of functionality on release are we looking at for that system?  Will secrets be able to change attributes, give new body parts, or anything like that, or will it just be tags like [IMMORTAL] or whatever for now?

[FaultyLogic]

I somewhat agree with you NW_Kohahu. I always liked low fantasy settings more, where magic and supernatural things are present, but vague, elusive and rare.

But then again, as a fantasy world simulator, I hope it will be possible to gen a high fantasy world is that is what you like. Or a more mundane, medieval-esque world.

I do not believe DF has to choose any route that is so confining.

[freeformschooler]

I somewhat agree with you NW_Kohahu. I always liked low fantasy settings more, where magic and supernatural things are present, but vague, elusive and rare.

But then again, as a fantasy world simulator, I hope it will be possible to gen a high fantasy world is that is what you like. Or a more mundane, medieval-esque world.

I do not believe DF has to choose any route that is so confining.

Agree with this sentiment. Ideally, you don't like one route, so you gen a world that has this and that, all which you like.

Though I could see it becoming more complicated even than that.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

i was about to post what faulty logic did, but i let this page go unrefreshed for too long and was ninjaed more due to my snail-like reflexes than any prowess by the ninja

i am opposed to a "good" and "evil" sphere, i'd rather have "life" and "death" sphere, and would be delighted if some dichotomic deities like the god of life and death(cycle of life?) were possible... also, thinking about undead, why do they always have to be associated with death sphere? i can picture a god of death whose interest would be to keep the dead, well, dead, and having his followers hunt down ghosts and nightcreaturish undead, i picture zombies and animated skeletons more as a kind of soulless construct than proper undead

[rex mortis]

I don't really mind "good" people having access to some counter measures against the undead. But "evil" should have some as well. Given that you are dealing with hordes of reanimated corpses, who might turn on you (if such is even possible) at any moment, it would be very smart to develop a way to deal with it. Also, since a necromancer has such intimate knowledge of the undead, it would make sense their means of dealing with the undead would be superior. Or other "evil" magic that simply has so much generic destructive power that specialised "good" anti-undead magic cannot compete.

Even a warrior who does not use magic should be able to battle such foes. If I engaged on a crusade of bloody sacrifice to Armok, he might bestow me strength so that I may butcher even more, boosting my strength and endurance far beyond superdwarven levels. A typical legendary warrior might eventually tire as the nearly endless zombie horde presses on but my arms would tirelessly raise my steel axe to cleave one after another.

Of course, such power should come at a price. Especially when dealing with "evil" gods, a failure to please one's patron should have unpleasant consequences. At the very least the power they granted could be taken away.

[LoSboccacc]

We're speaking of curses and secrets, not magic and powers. Probably moot, but toady has always been careful in wording stuff.

Don't think you can take a secret away. But a proper God would certainly smite a lot.

[monk12]

From what I understand, this whole "Good" and "Evil" thing is just a placeholder until spheres are fully fleshed out, which should make the whole thing a lot more diverse and interesting than your typical High Fantasy world.

[Cthulhu]

"Good" and "evil" are really just labels.  As long as they're not explicit spheres (And as far as I know, they're not.  The only explicitly good and evil things I remember are biomes) then they're not really concrete things, outside of an individual's opinion.  Since good and evil biomes will probably be going away before long, replaced by themed biomes, as has been mentioned in dev notes and such, I don't think it's going to be a big deal.

Of course, if the people of the world feel differently... Even if ultimately there's no good or evil, just opposing forces, I imagine the various factions will still make it exist, if only in a symbolic fashion.  Priests of death and deformity team up to create an army of deranged mutant undead, while priests of life and protection do battle against them.  Most people will see that as pretty clear good vs. evil even if in the grand scheme of things that distinction doesn't matter.


I can't wait until secrets and the like get into Adventure Mode.  That, along with the eventual fusion of adventure and dorf mode.  I want to be Dagoth Ur.


NINJA:  Yeah, what he said.

EDIT:  And even then it's not that cut-and-dry.  Maybe the priest (I"m using the word priest because the secrets come from gods.  Just a quick label) of protection is on the bad side and is using his magic to protect the army.  Maybe the priest of death is hunting down a rogue priest of life who's using his powers to overload people's life force and make them explode, or maybe the life priest has lost control of his powers and is hemorrhaging life energy into the forest, turning it into a nightmare world of maneating plants and Rodents of Unusual Size.

[darkflagrance]

i was about to post what faulty logic did, but i let this page go unrefreshed for too long and was ninjaed more due to my snail-like reflexes than any prowess by the ninja

i am opposed to a "good" and "evil" sphere, i'd rather have "life" and "death" sphere, and would be delighted if some dichotomic deities like the god of life and death(cycle of life?) were possible... also, thinking about undead, why do they always have to be associated with death sphere? i can picture a god of death whose interest would be to keep the dead, well, dead, and having his followers hunt down ghosts and nightcreaturish undead, i picture zombies and animated skeletons more as a kind of soulless construct than proper undead

Since the new necromancers gain their power to raise the undead from the secrets of immortal life, this might already be the tacit assumption behind the coming implementation of the undead.

[EnigmaticHat]

Personally I hope that (eventually) necromancers and other magic creatures aren't restricted to obvious good/evil roles.  So maybe the necromancer has to do human sacrifices or something to keep his immortality, and that puts him in conflict with people, but he's still the same person.  A necromancer dwarf who spent his entirely life defending his fort from goblins might not be allowed to rejoin the fort's guard, but he might focus on killing goblins and avoid hurting his old friends.  Or a really dedicated mason could decide to use his new skeletal labor force to build a giant monument to an ancient war just because he wanted to.  Perhaps if a necromancer were useful enough people might overlook the whole killing people/defiling the dead thing.  Or maybe a necromancer could use his newfound powers to gain revenge on people that wronged him, so he would still be violent but maybe he would be justified.

Basically, it would be cool if anything that had a soul acted according to reasonable motivations, instead of just random murder.  The game would be so much more interesting that way.  If your friend turns into a cannibalistic night creature, for instance, he could immediately start attacking you.  But it would be more interesting if he remembered his friendship to you and sought other victims.  That way you could choose between avoiding him, taking the heroic path and killing him so he couldn't harm others, or going the darker way and recruiting him to help you even though he kills people.  And since he would go on to do things on his own, the player would eventually see consequences of their actions if they let him live.

[Bralbaard]

-Necromancers with sieging undead armies and a complete undead rewrite

Sieging undead, that should be interesting. I wonder if they will include some kind of ghosts among their ranks, that would put an end to the "just raise the drawbridge and we'll be fine" tactic.

[Sizik]

-Necromancers with sieging undead armies and a complete undead rewrite

Singing undead, that should be interesting. I wonder if they will include some kind of ghosts among their ranks, that would put an end to the "just raise the drawbridge and we'll be fine" tactic.

That's how I first read your post.

[PTTG??]

Heya Urist, it's Bombrek, from the legendary office down the hall.
Good to see you acquaintance, how've you been?
I've been content lately. I've become a zombie lately.
I really wish you'd let us in.
I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand
Why you folks might hesitate to submit to our mandate.
But here's an FYI: you're all gonna die screaming.

All we wanna do is eat your prepared dwarf brains.
We're not unreasonable, I mean, no one's gonna eat your prepared dwarf eyes
All we wanna do is eat your prepared dwarf brains.
We're at an impasse here, maybe we should compromise:
If you open up the doors
We'll all come inside and eat your prepared dwarf brains.
...

[veok]

What races can necromancers arise from? Just Humans and Goblins? Or can Dwarves, Elves, Kobolds, (and modded races) become ones as well?

I'm especially worried about a lock-picking, trap-avoiding Necrobold!