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Author Topic: Organizing the Spheres  (Read 13572 times)

NW_Kohaku

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Organizing the Spheres
« on: May 12, 2011, 10:50:57 am »

A while ago, when working in the Improved Farming, Rebooted thread, the discussion turned to how plants even grew underground, and the ultimate solution I sided with was "well, it just has to be magic".  Because of that, there was the Xenosynthesis thread, which involved ways to create magic ecosystems. Because of how this idea revolved around the previously only vaguely-stated notion that we would have regional magic areas (such as "good", "evil", and "savage" areas we have now), I asked a question in the FotF thread about this:

Quote from: NW_Kohaku
If you are planning on changing the sphere system, how are you planning on changing it?  Are you still planning on introducing spheres as a replacement for the simpler Good/Evil Benign/Savage system of biomes, and if so, how far down are you planning on consolidating spheres (since it would be almost impossible to have different biomes and creatures for 128 different spheres)?

Some of the spheres definitely won't matter as much.  A sphere is really just a hard-coded concept, something that should be a basic idea that doesn't really need to be moddable, much like "MATERIAL" or "COLOR" (though moddable extensions of spheres could end up happening).  If anything, the sphere list is going to grow but the sphere list used for regions in any meaningful way will be smaller.  There isn't a specific plan at this point.  I'd like to include as many as possible, especially because it aligns with the deities, etc., but realistically many spheres are going to be shafted, with regions that should have a given sphere association moving over to "friend/parent/child" spheres with meaningful region interactions, etc.

Note, the wiki has a handy reference on the spheres.

So then, boys and girls, here's the game: We play "make up a magical biome".

Using the current magical regions we already have as templates, we should be able to create a sort of list of potential magical regions which are both Fun and coherent.  Right now, for example, "Savage" means "there are giant versions of some fierce creatures, and animal men".  "Evil" means "undead and mutant/ugly/vicious creatures and worms or eyeballs for grass".  "Good" means "candyland creatures and feathers and bubbles for grass".

The goal is to have a dozen or two spheres that are the "major regional spheres" that all have some sort of sane (for certain standards of sane), consistant ecosystem. This means that there should be more than just "fire biome means versions of common animals that are on fire", but how having an almost unlimited source of heat and fire would actually change the biome itself.  If there were fire plants that could beat off common deer by simply shooting gouts of flame into their faces if the deer went to eat some of their leaves, what animals would start growing there, instead? 

To make for a useful suggestion to Toady, these magic biomes need to have the ideas they represent carried out to their logical conclusions.

For example, in a biome where the grass is made of meat and eyeballs, and the trees are undead it makes little sense for there to be many herbivores, while carnivores would be expected to fare better, especially the bigger carnivores who can actually fight back against all the zombie and skeleton whatevers that will certainly attack them if they choose to spend much time there - hence, you should see a shift of the animal population more towards apex predator populations and away from herbivorous populations (if not eventually having a zombie apocalypse that kills all non-zombie animals).

To give some further extrapolation of this idea:

So, then, I hope that, like the artifacts suggestions, we can have a decent list of suggestions for magical biome types for Toady to browse when he actually gets around to writing the new magical regions/biomes.

I'll make a list, here, of what I would see off the bat as a set of decent "category" spheres that their "friend" spheres are hangers-on to...  Also, I'll try to make some "opposites", like the way that Good and Evil are opposite, while things like "Savage" are unrelated to other alignments.  Of course, don't get hung up on this idea, and go for whatever you guys think makes for a fun sphere.  It should just be a decent starting point. 

Instead of having a dualist system (one versus its diametric opposite), however, we can also have a stand-off between multiple spheres - for example, day and night oppose, but twilight and morning stand between the two extremes.  (This might be resolved by having a "are any of these powerful" metric, and then having a "which one of these is the most powerful" metric, so that not all terrain becomes one of those spheres.)

  • Mortality versus Immortality/Undeath (I do this because I can't really see "life" as opposing "death", so it's sort of "the cycle of life and death" versus the stuff that go beyond/against that sphere. Hence, birth, death, eating other creatures, being "eaten" by parasitic disease all fall under "life" as a sphere.)
    • Mortality - Birth, death, fertility, family, marriage, disease, pregnancy, children, youth, food, fishing, fish, hunting, animals, plant, trees, seasons
    • Immortality - Longevity, rebirth, dreams, nightmares (also undead, if there is such a sphere)
  • Light versus Twilight versus Dark (Light and dark as in the difference between having a lightbulb on or not, not as in good versus evil, which is its own dualism.)
    • Light - Light, Day, Sun
    • Twilight - Twilight, Dawn, Dusk, Boundaries, Balance
    • Dark - Darkness, Night, Moon, Stars
  • Order versus Chaos (Ah, good ol'Lawful Stupid debates, how I miss the arguments over what constituted "chaotic behavior" or not.  ::)   Anyway, in the tradition of "Law versus Chaos" that extends back to the Ring of Nibelungen, chaos means "emotion" or "freedom" in this sense, instead of "destroy everything", which is what Destruction is for.)
    • Order - Order, discipline, fortresses, duty, fate, laws, thralldom, rulership, justice
    • Chaos - Chaos, gambling, games, freedom, depravity, luck, travellers
  • Creation versus Destruction (Creation as in "making a craft", but also healing... kind of blurring the lines, there, and destruction also wound up with fire, partly because I couldn't find a better place for it.)
    • Creation - Creation, crafts, art, painting, inspiration, healing, peace
    • Destruction - War, Fortresses, murder, revenge, suicide, torture, strength, fire
  • Truth versus Trickery
    • Truth - Truth, oaths, loyalty
    • Trickery - Trickery, lies, persuasion, rumors, treachery
  • Beauty versus Deformity (These spheres have an odd prevalence for very subjective spheres)
    • Beauty - beauty, dance, love, lust
    • Deformity - deformity, blight, muck
  • Land, Sea, and Skies (The Greek male god trio... seems to fit much better than the tired fire versus water and air versus earth crap that gets shoveled into everything, and there are many more spheres that fit more cleanly in like this, anyway.  You could probably also call this "Earth, Heaven, and the Deep" if you wanted to be more artsy and dramatic.)
    • Land - caverns, earth, mountains, metal, minerals, volcanos, salt
    • Sea - Oceans, rivers, lakes, water, coasts
    • Sky - Sky, lightning, thunder, rain, rainbows, wind, weather, storms, mist
  • Wealth versus Charity (Or Greed instead of wealth, but you get the idea, it's selfish emotions versus altruistic emotions.  Again, more emotion-related spheres.)
    • Wealth - wealth, jewels, labor, jealousy
    • Charity - charity, forgiveness, consolation, generosity, hospitality, mercy, sacrifice
  • Joy versus Misery (Kind of had no better places to put these...)
    • Joy - Happiness, Festivals, Revelry
    • Misery - Misery
  • Knowledge (Finally at the stuff that doesn't have an opposite.  There's no "stupidity" sphere, but presumably, that's because it's everywhere there isn't a knowledge sphere. That, or the god of stupidity locked himself into his own aquarium by building the window from the wrong side, and drowned himself.)
    • Knowledge - Wisdom, scholarship, writing, poetry
  • Sound versus Silence (Quite a few sound-related spheres for a game with no real sound support.)
    • Sound - Speech, song, music
    • Silence - Silence
  • Glory (Sort of the oddballs that didn't really fit anywhere else. I almost made this an "honor" category to play off "direct glory hog heroes" versus "sneaky trickster heroes", but throwing lies versus truth seems more what some of those spheres were for.)
    • Glory - Victory, fame, valor, courage, strength



Anyway,  this is what I came up with about a month ago, before Toady came along and decided "Death" meant "Undead".  I find that kind of wierd, since you have to kill the undead, and "Death" should mean "you stay in your grave". I'd actually rather expect that a Death god should be the person you turn to when you want to stop an undead army.

Niyazov said it well, here:
While I'm not generally a big fan of the Elder Scrolls mythology, I thought that they came up with a pretty good solution for the whole if-the-dead-come-back-to-life-they-will-outnumber-the-living problem that fantasy worlds with necromancers in them run into:

In the Elder Scrolls universe, the god Arkay is the patron god of the natural life cycle. Priests of Arkay will travel to regions where necromancers are creating lots of undead. The priests evangelize and spread Arkay's Law, which is basically a set of proper burial practices that permanently prevent reanimation. Thus, Arkay is venerated and his law is strongly observed in areas that have formerly had problems with necromancy. However, as the evils of necromantic magic fade from living memory, people lose their faith in Arkay because he really doesn't do very much for people who are alive when compared to other gods and daedra (quasi-demonic entities). Observance of Arkay's law gradually lapses and necromancers move back in, causing the cycle to repeat itself.

Toady has stated that necromantic magic will originate from gods associated with the death sphere. It makes sense that other gods from opposing spheres such as SPHERE_YOUTH or SPHERE_FERTILITY would introduce something to ameliorate the uncontrolled expansion of necromancy. Even death gods do not necessarily have to approve of necromancy; in DF terms, Arkay would actually fit within the death sphere but overlaps with the lifecycle spheres. Since necromancy interrupts the natural order, Arkay opposes it and is therefore a benign death god rather than a malevolent one.

In any event, I want to post this while it still seems like Toady is playing around with the ideas.
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blizzerd

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2011, 12:49:04 pm »

those plants in caves get resources from flowing water and rock deposits

they often form a closed nutrients system where occasionally some top life creature comes in and dies, to fill in any resource leaks

    Knowledge - Wisdom, scholarship, writing, poetry
   vs
    Ignorance, incompetence, uneducated, unaware, or misinformed

    logics and sense vs madness and irregularity
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shadowclasper

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2011, 12:53:47 pm »

interesting composition there o.O I look forward to seeing how this thread evolves
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Patchy

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2011, 10:08:07 pm »

Sounds interesting. Though I'd hope the spheres effects on the lands wouldn't be hard borders. I remember back with Age of Wonders 2 where the wizards you controlled were practically spheres/forces of nature all by themselves. And their domains could overlap each other. And these overlapping areas your troops suffered or benefitted the effects of both of their magic sphere domains.
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Neonivek

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2011, 11:46:28 pm »

One problem with Order and Chaos is that with Chaos there are really two aspects: Maliciousness and Serendipity. (Spelled incorrectly for your disservice)

I think "Luck" in the spheres is meant to refer more to good luck (as in luck) then bad luck. It is random but more for the benefit.

As well I'd add "Temperature" to the list as well.

Which is another axis...

Malevolence and Mercy

A Merciful land is one that generates harmless barriers and wildlife.
A Malevolent land is one that goes the extra mile to kill you.

Not all "Fairies and butterflies" are merciful. For example a powerful land of Justice may appear to be a strong "good" flavored land, but justice is useless without the force to carry it out.

While Lust COULD be a rather "evil" flavored at first glance. Yet it would be rather merciful as the point of Lust is to draw you in, not scare you away.

I'll start becoming active here later. Since I did once write a HUGE sphere suggestion I guess I am invested by now.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2011, 11:48:49 pm by Neonivek »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2011, 11:58:17 pm »

On thinking about it, I believe that I have come up with the best way to describe the dualism between Mortality and Immortality...

You make the current "Evil" region Immortality - a place where nothing truly "dies", but is left in a limbo state between life and death forever.  Hence, zombies.

The Mortality region, however, is something where the cycle of life and death become hyperbolically pronounced.  Maybe this means a shorter childhood, but I think the best way to think of it would be to import the current Savage region as the model for a heavily Mortal region - creatures caught up in a continual state of extreme natural selection, preferably with more trophic levels added onto the ecosystem.  The plants are more bountiful with food, but the trees just might develop poisonous or even outright start moving like an ent to defend themselves from dwarven "parasitism".  The creatures are larger and more fierce and live more violent lives.

Just like Toady has mentioned that living in a Evil region might cause boils and sores to pop up, because "living in an evil region should suck," a highly mortal region could cause dwarves to live life over-the-top (even more than they already do) as total Large Hams.  Maybe even having their joys and sorrows multiplied to give them dramatic mood swings back and forth.  ("BY ALL THE GODS! THIS IS THE MOST LEGENDARY DINING ROOM I EVER LAID EYES UPON!" *gets on his knees and weeps*)
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Neonivek

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2011, 12:10:24 am »

Well forget about evil and good altogether. I just was using them as an example for lack of a better word.
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Fidna

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #7 on: May 13, 2011, 03:34:36 am »

I find the duality in spheres kind of overly strict. In many mythologies, things like life and death aren't seen as opposites necessarily; numerous European and African deities with dualistic, triune, etc., aspects often had things this system would see as completely opposed. Ogmios, for example, was the deity in Gaul of all knowledge, writing (oddly, for a civilization that very rarely ever wrote), and oration (which included both the ability to lie or speak honestly). I'd like something a bit more fluid that allows for a civilization to define their own connections and oppositions between spheres, within some logical framework, and have civilizations around areas define the spheres used in those lands as they develop. I don't know how that'd be done though, and I imagine it'd be overly complex.
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Neonivek

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #8 on: May 13, 2011, 05:45:45 am »

Though death wasn't always compatable with what was alive.

The underworld, outside the heavenly parts, were often extremely hostile to the living.

Hades alone is one HUGE deathtrap.
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Naryar

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #9 on: May 13, 2011, 06:06:26 am »

I think we need more spheres.

Also, we already have good and evil, order (calm) and chaos (savage). Though Untamed Wilds is where I embark nearly every single time I make a fort, and it's generally not very dangerous as a biome...

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #10 on: May 13, 2011, 10:58:38 am »

I used dualisms pretty often here because that lets a single integer value on a map cover multiple types of spheres.

Any given specific spot on the map would have a value of 0 to 100 in one of these dualisms, the way that we have Savagery or Evil (and Good if the "Evil" value is very low) on the map, now.

A chunk of the map with 84 points of Creativity will be a creative-aligned chunk of map, while a chunk of map with 13 points of Creativity will be a destructive-aligned map.

Like in the quote from Toady that I pulled up, it would simply be a little silly to have over a hundred different sets of spheres and plants and creatures associated with those spheres.

Reducing this down to 2 trilisms, 8 dualisms, and 2 monolisms, there only have to be 14 noise maps applied to the worldmap (the trilisms will have to take two maps to represent the balance). 

It also reduces the number of distinct sets of plants and creatures down to 24 different flavors of regional plants and creatures and interactions.

Hence, a Sky region might be filled with flying creatures, including ordinary groundhogs that are "Sky groundhogs" that can fly.  There might be a "curse" that gives people wings.  (Must... resist... Red Bull reference...) Maybe "Sky" can be associated with certain types of behavior, as well, such as wanderlust and daydreaming.  Special creatures might include sylphs, and maybe plants could be floating puffballs that get carried in the breeze, attaching roots to the ground to suck up nutrients as they float by.

That sort of stuff...

You can then cram in more spheres that fit under the umbrella of those larger regional-type spheres, such as putting Mist and Storms and Lightning as child spheres under the Skies regional sphere.  You can have some Interactions that are related specifically to being a "storm creature" as opposed to a general sky creature.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
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Mountain-King

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #11 on: May 13, 2011, 07:37:55 pm »

some spheres should be restricted to, or at least more commonly found in, certain types of terrain. like water areas should be swamps and oceans, sky areas should be mountains and cliffs, fire areas should be around volcanos, etc.

spheres for manmade things, like fortresses, shouldn't have their own regions. spheres for emotions and other immaterial human-exclusive things should have regions, but they should have gotten that way because of events that occurred there, instead of being like that from the start. like for example if a bunch of terrible battles occurred in a region, it could become war-aligned.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #12 on: May 13, 2011, 11:06:22 pm »

some spheres should be restricted to, or at least more commonly found in, certain types of terrain. like water areas should be swamps and oceans, sky areas should be mountains and cliffs, fire areas should be around volcanos, etc.

spheres for manmade things, like fortresses, shouldn't have their own regions. spheres for emotions and other immaterial human-exclusive things should have regions, but they should have gotten that way because of events that occurred there, instead of being like that from the start. like for example if a bunch of terrible battles occurred in a region, it could become war-aligned.

You make a good point...

However, the main purpose of organizing all this into 24 separate "umbrella spheres" is because it will be impossible for Toady to make over 100 different sets of creatures and plants and interactions and curses for each and every sphere.   Hence, I'm mostly focused upon trying to make a set of spheres that are related just enough to be grouped together for the purposes of having a manageable number of sets of magical creatures and such.

It also raises the question of which comes first, the chicken or the egg: Maybe magic spheres are created first, and then the land reacts to that magic.  Hence, a "sea" region might be put over what would be a desert, and turns into a swamp, rather than a "sea" region only being present in a place with a lot of water, anyway. 
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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nil

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2011, 02:45:38 am »

Making a duality of knowledge vs. glory wouldn't be too much of a stretch.  Realistically, learning and strength aren't at all mutually exclusive, but there's a long tradition of peaceful intellectualism versus aggressive martialism in both games and literature... I feel like it would be worth it to stuff a couple square pegs into squarish holes; 14 maps is a great, but depending on programmer ambition, a few less might be even better.

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Organizing the Spheres
« Reply #14 on: May 14, 2011, 09:42:23 am »

Making a duality of knowledge vs. glory wouldn't be too much of a stretch.  Realistically, learning and strength aren't at all mutually exclusive, but there's a long tradition of peaceful intellectualism versus aggressive martialism in both games and literature... I feel like it would be worth it to stuff a couple square pegs into squarish holes; 14 maps is a great, but depending on programmer ambition, a few less might be even better.

Are you worrying that Toady lacks for ambition?  :P

Actually, if we have something like the Glory idea, I think that something like a "humility" sphere popping up would make sense.  Maybe then a "Luddite" sphere or something for those who revel in ignorance.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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