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[Dynastia]

I think the human's major strength is the fact that when war is declared they haven't already burned their entire civilization to death in magma while trying to make a giant glass volcano-home shaped like a penis because some idiot of a fortress overseer decided it would look neat.

[knutor]

Worldgen should decide the role.  First its alignment, then its aggression.  From there let fate determine the rest.  I like how DF sets attributes so no two dwarfs are the same.  I would think this grass roots type of design would work great for racial profiling.  It would certainly keep game repeatability interesting.  Boredom comes when we put entities into cookie cutter molds, and try and play sandbox mode with those AI presets.  Rather than allowing for random trends and evolution to occur.  That is not to say, I'd rather not adapt to a world that is strangely familiar, as opposed to one that is wholely unfamiliar.  Some comforting presets make for logical pattern forming behavior.  But there is no reason for not having a toggle to remove those presets, and see a band of wickedly awesome elf warriors in full steel.

Knutor

[coolio678]

The game is designed to have racial and even civilization culture be determined during world-gen.   Trying to pigeon-hole who does what just detracts from that.

Well we do want to define SOMETHING that they MIGHT do or be like but there is always room for progress. I, however, am more bothered with elves in the game - They are cannibal midgets... Like... WTF!?

I prefer the current elves. Sure, they hug trees and manage to get wood without harming the forests, but thats where the standard elviness ends. DF isn't a cliche fantasy world, it's a cliche fantasy world generator. It can does make things interesting

[Loud Whispers]

I prefer the current elves. Sure, they hug trees and manage to get wood without harming the forests, but thats where the standard elviness ends. DF isn't a cliche fantasy world, it's a cliche fantasy world generator. It can does make things interesting

THANK GOODNESS FOR SOME SANITY IN HERE.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Worldgen should decide the role.  First its alignment, then its aggression.  From there let fate determine the rest.  I like how DF sets attributes so no two dwarfs are the same.  I would think this grass roots type of design would work great for racial profiling.  It would certainly keep game repeatability interesting.  Boredom comes when we put entities into cookie cutter molds, and try and play sandbox mode with those AI presets.  Rather than allowing for random trends and evolution to occur.  That is not to say, I'd rather not adapt to a world that is strangely familiar, as opposed to one that is wholely unfamiliar.  Some comforting presets make for logical pattern forming behavior.  But there is no reason for not having a toggle to remove those presets, and see a band of wickedly awesome elf warriors in full steel.

Knutor

There should be some guidelines, though. Humans can be more or less random, I guess, since there isn't really a good well-defined role, but I still think that they'd turn to orc-like behaviors due to their size unless trolls/ogres/larger animalpeople/etc took on the role of "big bully" race. However, we need guidelines, unless you want warlike elves to annihilate your hippy tree-hugging pacifistic dwarves.

The game is designed to have racial and even civilization culture be determined during world-gen.   Trying to pigeon-hole who does what just detracts from that.

Well we do want to define SOMETHING that they MIGHT do or be like but there is always room for progress. I, however, am more bothered with elves in the game - They are cannibal midgets... Like... WTF!?

I prefer the current elves. Sure, they hug trees and manage to get wood without harming the forests, but thats where the standard elviness ends. DF isn't a cliche fantasy world, it's a cliche fantasy world generator. It can does make things interesting

More importantly, it's unique. Making what is traditionally one of fantasy's most high-strung and overly-moral races into cannibalistic savages lets everyone know that DF ain't a cheerful place.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I do enjoy the cannibal elves...

In my game, I turn them into quasi-dryads, that bring any bodies they come across back to their trees, using them for fertilizer, and then the tree nourishes the elf in turn. The elves would then have various plant-based servitors and allies, to replace the animalmen they might otherwise have had.

In fact, I'm thinking about just changing the name (dryad, hamadryad, etc. haven't decided...), and adopting a somewhat more Grecocentric feel to the overall game, since the Greeks may have been the original developers of what we consider to be dwarfs (they're where we get kobolds from, for instance, the kobaloi, which is actually another term for "dwarf").

[Loud Whispers]

I do enjoy the cannibal elves...

In my game, I turn them into quasi-dryads, that bring any bodies they come across back to their trees, using them for fertilizer, and then the tree nourishes the elf in turn. The elves would then have various plant-based servitors and allies, to replace the animalmen they might otherwise have had.

In fact, I'm thinking about just changing the name (dryad, hamadryad, etc. haven't decided...), and adopting a somewhat more Grecocentric feel to the overall game, since the Greeks may have been the original developers of what we consider to be dwarfs (they're where we get kobolds from, for instance, the kobaloi, which is actually another term for "dwarf").

So the elves have some sort of necrovinophilia?
(They enjoy drinking dead people).

[GreatWyrmGold]

In fact, I'm thinking about just changing the name (dryad, hamadryad, etc. haven't decided...), and adopting a somewhat more Grecocentric feel to the overall game, since the Greeks may have been the original developers of what we consider to be dwarfs (they're where we get kobolds from, for instance, the kobaloi, which is actually another term for "dwarf").

...Kobolds were dwarves? This really changes my perspective on them...or maybe on dwarves...

[SirHoneyBadger]

Not only that, I'm afraid... According to Wikipedia, the word "goblin" may have been a more recent bastardization of the word "kobold".

[GreatWyrmGold]

It's like the opposite of what happened to trolls. (FYI, what I'm referring to is how the word "troll" got broadened to include a bunch of different cultures' monsters, leading to this.)

...I seem to have aided my own thread's derailment. 

[SirHoneyBadger]

...I seem to have aided my own thread's derailment. 

I don't believe you have...

I mean, I feel it's really important to get to the heart of where these beings come from, to consider that and extrapolate from that, and then to use that knowledge as a medium and a palette to create from, until we arrive at a form that appeals to us, and that wrings the most interest and enjoyment possible out of the game as a whole.

Knowledge is really important here, and there's an amazing amount of goodness to stumble upon, when researching mythology. It's one of the reasons I love it so much--another reason is that it's such a strong connection to an amazing past, to this "other world" of romantic history, and mystery, that it's otherwise really hard for us to see, anymore, and harder to connect to, and be a part of.

In centuries to come, I hope that people will look back on epics of "science fantasy": movies like the original Star Wars trilogy (or the Dune novels), epic novels like Gene Wolfe's 'The Book of the New Sun', Phil and Kaja Foglio's 'Girl Genius', and epic shows like Doctor Who, and feel this same sense of magic, wonder, desire, etc. that we do when we think about the world of the Illiad and the Odyssey, the Bible, the Norse Gotterdammerung, the Mahabharata, or the epics of Gilgamesh or Herakles; but I hope even more strongly that they, like us, will seek out and learn about all the stories that came before, and led up to them.

I'm a big believer in the immense value of fantasy and myth, that imagination is one of our greatest strengths and gifts as a species, and I don't think that this...even if it's not hard facts or "science", atleast great wisdom and insight into human soul, and psyche...this knowledge, will ever really become obsolete, as long as humans remain human.

Dwarf Fortress is about depth, in every sense of the word.

So yeah, if you really want to have the peoples of the DF world mean something beyond being just ambulatory piles of hp and gp, then I think it's worthy to consider them from every possible angle, and to try to make them as real, as valid, and as symbiotic with the rest of the game, as we possibly can.

P.S. There are varieties of trolls in folklore who are nearly identical to dwarfs in every aspect but name. And also, I'm a big fan of TVTropes

What we think of as a dwarf, is a global phenomenon, and you can find strongly similar beings in nearly every mythology on the planet. The earliest Viking version (Norse 'dvergr' or Old English 'dweorg') is arguably of equal or lesser similarity to the Tolkien dwarf than beings from as far away as Greece, Hawaii, Japan, the Phillipines, Brazil, and Mongolia.

Infact, some historians and archaeologists believe that the general idea of a deformed, secretive, militant, antagonistic metalworker may have originated from the early bronze age, when metalworkers, early alchemists, and miners would regularly come in close contact with poisonous materials such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, which could easily cripple limbs and stunt the growth of smiths (and their children), as well as having adverse effects on their emotions and general mental health, while providing high pay, and a strong concrete motive for keeping trade secrets.

These smiths would also regularly accompany armies, so that they could make repairs and sharpen blades on-site, giving these small but unusually strong for their size workers, an immediate motive for learning self-defense, both for defending the camps and their own very expensive equipment and hefty pay, and also because their skillsets would make them ideal targets for live capture, and subsequent enslavement (These slaves sometimes had one or both of their Achilles tendons severed, to prevent them running away, which wouldn't interfere with their ability to forge arms.).   

Metalsmiths were also regularly considered to have supernatural abilities by dozens of cultures, and this belief existed even into relatively modern times. In Africa, Shaka Zulu's iron assegai, for example, was often compared by the British with King Arthur's Excalibur due to it's percieved supernatural creation, magical attributes, and immense symbolic power, less than 200 years ago.

Personally, I'm close to being convinced that the Vikings got much of their idea of the "dwarf" from half-remembered stories of the Roman conquest of southern England, that they learned from the English they came in contact with in the dark ages--short (in comparison to the Celtic English), dark skinned and dark haired, oft-bearded warriors with "supernatural" technology and skill at architecture, metallurgy, etc., who spent a lot of time both mining, and clearing English forests with axes (and who used Fasces axes as symbols of power), and who left behind extraordinary ruins and treasures that may have, by then, mostly existed underground.

How then did the Romans turn into Thorin's entorage, and that unnamed medical professional and his 6 adjectival buddies?

Well, start by adding in various encounters Vikings likely had with semi-historical stories of relatively small Picts (where we get both 'Pixies', and the small but immensely strong Scottish 'Pechs'), the drunkard Scottish Clurichauns--close cousins of gold-hoarding Leprechauns, Scottish accents(), English brownies and Celtic faerie folklore (Celtic elves, who later became tiny faeries, owned/made various extremely impressive magical weapons and other items, and were very often said to dwell in underground mounds and dance in toadstool circles), Russian stories of the Domovoi, Jewish banking and trading in gold and gems (and an environment of rampant antisemitism), as well as their cultural unwillingness to marry outside of the faith--a strongly patriarchal theocratic faith which was wary of allowing Jewish women to interact with gentiles in general, at that time...and then just the presence of all that beer, mead, and strong spirits that went so nicely with all that storytelling.

The Vikings themselves provided a loving relationship with axes, heavy drinking, chainmaille, high quality iron, grudges, treasure, and really awesome beards; and were willing to fully explore and exhaust all concievable homicidal, fratricidal, and suicidal possibilities in each and every one of those things.

Throw in tattoos and mohawks dyed blood-red (which the Vikings came very close to bringing back from America), and we've gone well past Tolkien, and have nearly arrived at the Warhammer dwarf, a mere 1500 years or so early.

[Owlbread]

...I seem to have aided my own thread's derailment. 

Infact, some historians and archaeologists believe that the general idea of a deformed, secretive, militant, antagonistic metalworker may have originated from the early bronze age, when metalworkers, early alchemists, and miners would regularly come in close contact with poisonous materials such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, which could easily cripple limbs and stunt the growth of smiths (and their children), as well as having adverse effects on their emotions and general mental health, while providing high pay, and a strong concrete motive for keeping trade secrets.

These smiths would also regularly accompany armies, so that they could make repairs and sharpen blades on-site, giving these small but unusually strong for their size workers, an immediate motive for learning self-defense, both for defending the camps and their own very expensive equipment and hefty pay, and also because their skillsets would make them ideal targets for live capture, and subsequent enslavement (These slaves sometimes had one or both of their Achilles tendons severed, to prevent them running away, which wouldn't interfere with their ability to forge arms.).   

Metalsmiths were also regularly considered to have supernatural abilities by dozens of cultures, and this belief existed even into relatively modern times. In Africa, Shaka Zulu's iron assegai, for example, was often compared by the British with King Arthur's Excalibur due to it's percieved supernatural creation, magical attributes, and immense symbolic power, less than 200 years ago.

Personally, I'm close to being convinced that the Vikings got much of their idea of the "dwarf" from half-remembered stories of the Roman conquest of southern England, that they learned from the English they came in contact with in the dark ages--short (in comparison to the Celtic English), dark skinned and dark haired, oft-bearded warriors with "supernatural" technology and skill at architecture, metallurgy, etc., who spent a lot of time both mining, and clearing English forests with axes (and who used Fasces axes as symbols of power), and who left behind extraordinary ruins and treasures that may have, by then, mostly existed underground.

How then did the Romans turn into Thorin's entorage, and that unnamed medical professional and his 6 adjectival buddies?

Well, start by adding in various encounters Vikings likely had with semi-historical stories of relatively small Picts (where we get both 'Pixies', and the small but immensely strong Scottish 'Pechs'), the drunkard Scottish Clurichauns--close cousins of gold-hoarding Leprechauns, Scottish accents(), English brownies and Celtic faerie folklore (Celtic elves, who later became tiny faeries, owned/made various extremely impressive magical weapons and other items, and were very often said to dwell in underground mounds and dance in toadstool circles),

Before I point out a couple of things there, allow me to commend you on your post. That was wonderful, and I enjoyed reading it immensely. However, I would have to cast doubt on the significance of beards on dwarfs; is it actually recorded in Norse mythology that dwarfs had beards? I'd also have to say that the Romans, when they invaded Britain at least, were not usually bearded as it was not socially acceptable for Romans to be bearded. I'd suggest that beardedness came about much later.

By the time the vikings had begun invading too, the ancient British population had gradually mixed with the Romans, meaning that the vikings were actually meeting a hybrid culture of Romans and Britons (if they entered Wales and so on). The vikings in England though would have met an awful lot of Anglo-Saxons rather than Romano-Britons (who were displaced by the anglo-saxons and sent North, West and Southwest). You can therefore see how dilluted and distant these half-memories of Romans/Roman metalsmiths would have been. As intriguing as the Roman Dwarfs idea is, I would suggest that the idea of ancient metalsmiths being perceived as almost magical is a far stronger hypothesis than some sort of Latin origin.

I also have to say that I always believed Clurichauns were Irish, not Scottish. I've never heard of a Scottish clurichaun, so I'm afraid the Irish drunkard might be the stereotype we're going to have to deal with here (thank god). Scottish accented dwarfs are a modern invention, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

This sort of thing has always fascinated me though. The origins of these strange beings like the sėth are quite a mystery, especially since they're so important to the cultures of the British isles in ancient times. So important in fact that people were still half-remembering the sėth and such at the turn of the 20th century, if not later. They live on in our superstitions. I still touch wood in case something bad happens when I'm talking about, for example, how I've never had a filling or my grandmother's cat is still going strong at a venerable age.

[GreatWyrmGold]

...Wow, that's a lot of text.

I suppose you do have some good points there, but it still feels like the thread is derailed. And since I mentioned that I had derailed my own thread, we began a discussion on weather or not the thread was derailed, which derailed the thread. Yikes.

[Loud Whispers]

Stop derailing yourself... Stop derailing yourself...

*Spontaneously asplodes*

[King Mir]

Humans are always the odd ball in fantasy like this, and SirHoneyBadger makes a some interesting points about modding them out.

However, DF is a fantasy generator, not a static fantasy setting, and it has the concept of Ages, which are dictated by who dominates the world. This allows for the setting to evolve to fit rather different kinds of fantasy. In the age of legends, humans are the odd one out, but in the age of heroes humans are the race to be, and stories like Beowulf could be told. You can't have Beowulf without humans; a Beowulf dwarf would not be as awesome. If I read more of Treetoes stories I might be able sight an example from there of a story that could not be told to the same effect without humans.