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[Detoxicated]

I believe that Ethics should be completely Dynamic and that there should be more tags to be added, also the entities creatures personalities should add in.

Example a people of Traditional beings that are adventurous, should remain in a tribal nomad style life, unless they get a ruler with a high dutifulness and some anarchic tendencies who would change the laws to form society. Rulers are activated after a certain amount of time, and they are chosen from the amount of stuff they created as well as their standing in friendships and such.  Therefore if you had a grower being the lucky one you might get a proletarian dictatorship, while gemcutters would create capitalist oligarchies with guilds sitting at the top, and warriors would create classical kingdoms, hunters tribes, priests form society after their gods will.

To initiate this you would need to have certain ethics related to religious spheres. Ethics should also include behaviours like house building in legends, caring for other races members, and be corelated with personalities. An optimistic dwarf in power would perhaps loosen sanctions of crime, letting capital punishments become jailtime and so on. Personalities who have the need to be in power should more likely seek acceptance by other to gain political power. Once a certain level of friends are reached he may order them around in a fit manner.

 This way you could have many different cultures develop rather easily.

[Beznogim]

Dynamic ethnics is actually a good idea.

I think, civilizations should not form ethics based just on their race (elves = good, goblins = evil), but rather rely on the dominant personality traits (anger, friendliness, altruism, etc.) of the members of the civilization - so the egoistic, unfriendly, society would most likely tolerate infighting, backstabbing, slavery - regardless of the race of the civilization. I know the traits are given random now, but it should be less random, so that the national stereotype could be formed.
So that will be a nice implementation of the known philosophical debate - whether a society forms personality, or vice versa. The newer generations would usually inherit most of qualities, standard for the existing society - with slight deviations. But it could be changed by the type of the area they live in - good creatures would less likely to be living in Savage and Evil lands - harsh climate endorses egoism and struggle for survivall. And even if they do settle in such lands, they may slowly experience personality changes and in a decade they or their children may become cynical and evil themselves. Frequent deaths and type of job would affect this too - so if, for example, a dwarf is in military and frequently witnesses death - its hard to expect him to be compassionate and friendly. And if half of the Fortress is enlisted in military - well, you got the idea.
The opposite is less likely to happen, but also possible - so if an evil creature settles in good lands and avoids conflicts it might become more kind and friendly.

[knutor]

Dynamic ethnics is actually a good idea.

The full dynamic spectrum would make the game R.  I'm against it solely for that.  I like how it attracts teachers and is a decent tool for teaching, if in the hands of a well motivated family.  If there was a way of doing it without real life indicators, or comparables, I'd leap at this suggestion.  Since there isn't.  I'm sorta against it.

That isn't to say, I wouldn't like a more robust Governing body selection.  Not all Civilizations develop with a nobility.  Its a choice to, and really should depend on overall wealth, not on the state of the population and relationship with the Mountainhome.  The queen bee in that nest outback in your tree, do you think she got permission from the Wasphome to become queen? 

She just was, what she was, out of necessity.  Her workers made her for the job.  Nobility as a result, I don't think if she could speak, she would say her life was very noble.  Raped by drones 30x/day.  Guesstimate.  That's hardly something to look up to.  Hardly noble.  Lotsa sex is hardly a royal quality.  Although, as I'm no royal, I really can't say that I'm an expert on what makes a royal a royal. 

But I can say, hopefully without any disrespect, that I wish to say nothing about Religion.

Sincerely,
Knutor

[Detoxicated]

I like your ideas Beznogim
so to round up:
Civilization Ethics must become Dynamic and be based off of a mean value of personality traits as well as the traits of powerful rulers
Personality Traits should be given to the children by parents, but during childhood they should change depending on experiences of said individual and on the environment they live in.
We would need a school system, where children get sent to until adult where they learn values and perhaps some skills, they would work as indoctrination stations to change a society.

To implement dynamic personality traits, dwarves should be able to realize shortcomings of food and other materials. So if you have 10 dwarves and only 10 pieces of food left it should produce a thought "Urist McUrist has realized there is not much food left". If you amount to many such thoughts he will decrease his willingness to share and become less kind of hunger around him, which could bring him to steal. If something gets stolen from you it will decrease trust, etc.

[knutor]

We would need a school system

The entire fort is their school.  If they get kidnapped, schools out for them, for good. 

I don't like the idea of a school or school room.  Not because its a school, persay.  But because of what we are given to work with.  Hillbilly's living underground in the Dark Ages.  This is the what we got on a kids daily checklist for that timeframe. 

Forced Labor
More Forced Labor
Delousing Parents
Burying Relatives
Running with Sharp Sticks
Fleeing for ones own Life
Chasing Food

In there, I cannot really see time for sitting in a classroom?  Sitting still, would be a huge hurdle before soap?  I mean I'm all for it, I'd really dig, setting up a room with chairs and tables, for this teacher/student interaction.  I can't see a short drunk underground hillbilly writing contrapuntal scores for his favorite granite drum; while chasing food, fleeing death, holding sticks, burying kin, picking lice from hair, and scrubbing out furnaces and hauling ash?  Can you see that happening?  Honestly?  The ethics and government would be dictated to the nonwarrior caste, by the meanest warrior.

I'm prolly just biased because I run in cheat mode, with child labor turned on. But in the Dark ages, kids worked, there was no Federal Labor Department, and Child Services looking out for them.  The only thing looking out for them were hungry wolves.

Sincerely,
Knutor

[Detoxicated]

Lol, I wonder if you look your name Knutor...

[knutor]

Lol, I wonder if you look your name Knutor...

Its my ol'Mud handle, mate.  Picked for its incredible ease on the fingers. Knutor just rolls off the fingers, doesn't it?  When ya need someone to type /heal Knutor a bazillion times in a Mud, ya pick something short and sweet.  Something with lotsa pointer clicks, for my pocket Cleric was a huntnpecker, LOL!

It's got nothing to do with organ removal.  Funny tho, it sounds. 

Sincerely,
Newt-Or

[coolio678]

We would need a school system

Maybe not a sit down class school, but an apprenticeship would be a good idea.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I like this general idea. To quote a (very) recent post of mine:

Of course the races would have to remain true to their own styles, so nothing too crazy like elves making mountain homes and humans protecting forests. What I'm suggesting is that each civ has their own art pref, minor deviations from their laws e.t.c. Which would make for more/less conflicts and more interesting interactions between fortress and civ.

My two cents: Races should have a starting point, defined in the raws and perhaps with some starting variations predefined. All elves start out hippies, all dwarves start out with metalsmithing, all goblins start out evil, all kobolds start out mute, all humans start out...humaney, although the elves might be culturally carnivorous, the dwarves might focus more on traps than on armies, the goblins might follow tundra spirits or something rather than demons, kobolds might sometimes have organization in their governments, and humans might...um...I'm not sure. Then history would shape them. If a civilization of elves protected a fortress of goblins from human attacks, the goblins might join the civ and spread their ideas throughout it, or the elves might show the goblins the grandeurs of the forest retreats, leading to goblin traders bringing pig tail cloth, blood thorn armor, and tame giant bats. Dwarves and humans might trade steel for large human weapons, only to unite against a goblin civ that's terrorizing the trade routes, who then forge a treaty with subterranean animalpeople to raid dwarves' settlements, and causing later goblin armies to include animalmen squads. If unusually humble and kind kobolds came to dwarvish settlements begging for food, and the dwarves agreed for whatever reason, the possibilities multiply to include kobold underclasses, secret raids on nearby settlements occupying prime land, and multi-race forts. Dwarves who value human, um, values might decide plains and savannas sound nice and therefore spread there, engulfing the original human lands and leading to dwarves with access to longland grass, elephants, and pikes. Et cetera. Please excuse the wall of text and the tv tropes links.

[Detoxicated]

I like the idea of having kobolds joining your fort, they should be extremely happy citizens, who happen to deconstruct buildings unpurposely... They should be stupid but likeable, and they should be able to breed with goblins and with dwarves, so there could be Koblins and Dwarbolds...

[Loud Whispers]

I like the idea of having kobolds joining your fort, they should be extremely happy citizens, who happen to deconstruct buildings unpurposely... They should be stupid but likeable, and they should be able to breed with goblins and with dwarves, so there could be Koblins and Dwarbolds...

AAAAAHHHH

[Escapism]

Arise.

Another thing I think would be interesting is dynamic ethics for your own fort. Your initial dwarves all come from the same civilizations, which has its own sets of ethics. As your fortress grows, how you rule your fort as well as outside interference affect this. Gruesome conflicts, a harsh environment, civil conflicts, poverty and crime (when these are implemented) would serve to make your citizens less inclined to altruism and compassion, while prosperity and peace would do the opposite. Immigrants would share the ethics of the civilization from which they hail, possibly with some RNG variance depending, for instance, on their former profession/social standing. The ethics, of course, are not on a single axis of moral/amoral, but follow the pattern of current ethic tags, i.e [KILL_PRISONERS:ACCEPTABLE], [KILL_GOBLINS:HONOURABLE] and [SLAVERY:DESPICABLE]

These ethics would then determine what actions are deemed to be acceptable by your populace, with civil disorder, unhappiness, emigration and strife between different fort factions as possible repercussions for actions that are deemed to be out of line by some groups/individuals. Your actions would in turn also have an effect on this. If you choose to impale your enemies corpses on pikes to scare off your enemies, it might cause an uproar at first. The next time you do it, your dwarves might possibly condone it seeing how effective it is at demoralizing invaders, or be hardened in their resolve and chose to emigrate/become even more unhappy etc.

The same can of course be applied in adventurer mode where your reputation would include your deeds, which in turn would result in different attitudes from different civilizations.