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[TychoTheDwarf]

You know, like MODESTY, SELF_EFFICACY, DEPRESSION, those ones.

What do they do?

Now, you might say "read the wiki n00b" but I did indeed read the wiki.  I have attempted to use the forum search function to actually pin some of these down, and it's a lot of people just hazarding guesses about their function more often than not, seems to me.

So, none of us know.  Except, you know, maybe the guys who are making Dwarf Fortress.

Hey, I wonder if THEY could tell us? Maybe a pretty please and an artifact of some sort would coax answers from them.

No seriously, it's driving me nuts not being able to figure out how these traits are charting the courses of my dwarves' lives.  It's like finding extra bolts left over after doing a tear down and rebuild of a car.  Minus the potential for Fun of the real-life sort.

[trees]

Depressive dwarves are more likely to go melancholy instead of berserk or stark raving mad, I think. I'd assume that most of them just tweak little things about their social interactions, and since they don't do a whole lot of that yet and we don't really see what goes on when they idle they're hard to pin down.

[Kilroy the Grand]

Modest dwarves I think get a bad thought from naked dwarves.

[Sphalerite]

Modest dwarves I think get a bad thought from naked dwarves.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen at all in the current version.

[Kilroy the Grand]

Modest dwarves I think get a bad thought from naked dwarves.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen at all in the current version.

Maybe I'm wrong then, It's been a really long time.

[trees]

I think pretty much all thoughts relating to nakedness and bad clothing aren't in right now and haven't been in since 40d(? maybe earlier) due to dwarves not properly wearing clothes at all any more. Modesty might affect how often or sever a dwarf would have gotten offended by that, though.

[C0NNULL]

I myself would do a voodoo dance to entice THEM, but I would be asking more people than there are to ask.

And the ONE bloke doing this as likely to share as I am likely to give live birth. (Or lay an egg.)

[If the Toad tomorrow comes out and tells us all, I'm pretty screwed. I don't want to lay eggs.]

Also, there are no extra bolts to a car. What happens is that in your grabbing tools and various implements, you also grabbed a bolt or twelve from that other car you had "extra bolts" for, (see the preceding statement,) and therefore only think you have extra bolts. But we all know that you are just adding to the collection of bolts that you have already.

[Girlinhat]

Modesty isn't concerned with clothes, it's concerned with bragging.  If you'll wiki the traits, you'll notice that modesty involves "is very willing to compare himself favorably with others".  This is in the form of "he's so modest, he never brags about his success" not "don't look I just got out of the shower".  If anything, most of these (should) apply to personal interactions.  Most dwarves make friends, some become enemies.  The speed of friend-making and the chances of becoming enemies (or lovers) depends on the dwarves' personalities.  Presumably, a dwarf who doesn't like crowds would be put off by someone who's boisterous and brags.

For the most part, these are unused though.  There's a lot of personality tags that are currently useless, but Toady has mentioned in a Talk that he wants to expand.  He said something like "you see all of these dwarves, and they've got personalities written down, but right now it doesn't really matter, they don't really do anything.  We want to do that, later, have them actually feel and react to things because of their personality."  I think a large part of this would be situations where you carve a statue.  If it's the militia commander striking down a badger, then the militia commander may love it if he brags a lot.  If he's modest, he may get less of a thought from it, or actually not like it at all.  As it stands, all dwarves are pretty much identical, but when personalities get really worked on, there should be a lot more individual perks.

[TychoTheDwarf]

Modesty isn't concerned with clothes, it's concerned with bragging.  If you'll wiki the traits, you'll notice that modesty involves "is very willing to compare himself favorably with others".  This is in the form of "he's so modest, he never brags about his success" not "don't look I just got out of the shower".  If anything, most of these (should) apply to personal interactions.  Most dwarves make friends, some become enemies.  The speed of friend-making and the chances of becoming enemies (or lovers) depends on the dwarves' personalities.  Presumably, a dwarf who doesn't like crowds would be put off by someone who's boisterous and brags.

For the most part, these are unused though.  There's a lot of personality tags that are currently useless, but Toady has mentioned in a Talk that he wants to expand.  He said something like "you see all of these dwarves, and they've got personalities written down, but right now it doesn't really matter, they don't really do anything.  We want to do that, later, have them actually feel and react to things because of their personality."  I think a large part of this would be situations where you carve a statue.  If it's the militia commander striking down a badger, then the militia commander may love it if he brags a lot.  If he's modest, he may get less of a thought from it, or actually not like it at all.  As it stands, all dwarves are pretty much identical, but when personalities get really worked on, there should be a lot more individual perks.

I did notice that dwarves developed grudges (for no reason I could think of at the time - there was no physical conflict or anything) towards one another occasionally.  It was fairly rare though, even with dwarves whose personalities (and mannerisms) I could only describe as obnoxious, or incredibly antisocial ones.  And the grudges didn't seem to affect anything (maybe there were unhappy thoughts whenever the begrudger saw or talked to the begrudged, I could not tell).

[Urist Da Vinci]

For us to be able to do science on personalities and friends/lovers/grudges, we'd need to evenly mix all of the dwarves in a single tiny meeting zone, and then process the resulting relationship data against personal attributes. It would be easier if one of the utility programs could dump some of this data into a file.

[Girlinhat]

We know that therapist can gather, and therefore sort, these attributes.  I don't know of any program that can understand relationships, but I assume it's possible to find the memory of these.  From there, it should be simple "data pool" method of finding who grudges whom.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I think Toady meant some of the traits were useless, others are definitely not--I've seen dwarves that prefer solitude randomly hang out in the far end of a tree farm, dwarves prone to anger do seem to tantrum and go berserk more commonly than one's slow to anger, dwarves that like helping others and are quick to action make better doctors, etc. Dwarves that are social have dozens of friends while antisocial ones might have just one or two (or better yet none, even after years in the fort).

I imagine certain functions are already in place, but others are not.

[Girlinhat]

Right, there's a lot of very social actions connected to personal traits, but I believe Toady is wanting more direct gameplay effects.  Right now, you can really ignore all of those and have a very productive fort, but in the future, you may find yourself needing a few single-table dining cafes (can't call it a hall) to make the antisocial dwarves happy, or you may need your immodest axedwarf to have a statue of himself in his bedroom for him to smile at.  Of course, I suspect most of this could be easily ignored and have a good fort, but a great fort comes with all the trimmings, right?