Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[assasin]

Renegotiatiing in the midst of a battle sounds like something a diety may actuly do on purpose, after all, it puts them in a pretty good position to negotiate.

"What? You dont want to give me twice the animals this year? Fine, ill just take back the flying powers from your hovering crossbow squad."

i'd rather have contracts be implied then directly stated. its a magic system, not a business meeting. it doesn't seem very pious to argue terms with your god.

though i guess each type of creature could be different. I wouldn't mind straight up business deals with demons. and I have heard rl stories of deals with gods, so i guess it wouldn't be completely out off place. as long as it was done right.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Only jerk gods would ask for a renegotiation in the middle of combat, unless perhaps you were going heabily against the teachings of the god or something. For instance, putting faces on the variables, a dwarven deity of justice might grant strength to a hammerer. If the hammerer gets disillusioned by dwarven government and starts hammerring innocent dwarves who the hammerer feels have wronged the fortress (like a dwarven Batman), the deity might snap in the middle of one of these (say, beating up the guards protecting the corrupt king) and demand some sort of renegotiation before he can continue fighting with the strength.
In normal situations, though, gods and most other similar beings should wait until the guy being granted powers isn't in danger before renegotiating.

[NW_Kohaku]

Transplanting this conversation from a different thread:

The way that magic biomes work now is that there's an integer value for Evil and Savagery throughout the map.  When this value is high enough (such as > 75 evil, I believe), it will make an evil biome in the area. (However, the actual areas affected by evil tend to be stretched out to fill whole oceans or mountain ranges rather than having patches of evil in an ocean, currently... that might have to change to make the spread of magic biomes more gradual for in-play use.)  Good is just a very low Evil rating, by the way. (< 25 Evil.)

So, if you want to make a very crude system for how this would work, you could have some sort of magic energy counter, where every unicorn puts a certain amount of good magic into the area (which would be like -10 points of evil per unicorn or something, and then -1 point for a bubble grass), and every 100 or so points of energy that is put into or taken from the area will permanently affect that regional Evil biome setting by a point. 

So, if you let a cow eat some bubble grass, it adds a point of evil.  If that grass regrows, it subtracts a point of evil.  Each unicorn that dies is +10 evil, each unicorn given birth to is -10 evil. 

If you go and burn away or graze away 40 tiles of bubble grass and kill 6 unicorns, you'll add 100 points of evil magic, and tick over the change on the whole region, adding a point to the Evil Biome score. If that is enough to push the total Evil Biome score above 25, then the area stops being a Good biome, and the unicorns will retreat for "gooder" lands, and the bubble grass might not grow back any more without encouragement. 

If you somehow encourage more bubble grass growth or buy some trapped good creatures from elves that you breed and add to the good energy (negative evil magic as this game puts it), then you can make the biome into a Good magic biome once more. 

That's a basic mechanic for the system, but you can make it more complex, especially when you start having multiple types of magic...

For one, you can have an "overall magicality" in a biome, and then have a "flavor" of magic, so that, even with powerful evil or good magic "flavor", if you suck all the magic out of a region, you won't see any magic effects at all.  (It would be similar to a neutral region now.) Meanwhile, if you have powerful magic but drain away how evil that magic is, it might still be magical, but just be neutral magic instead of evil or good magic.

So what you'd have is a "how powerful is the magic" meter, and then a "what kind of magic is it" meter.  (This "flavor" meter would naturally be multi-dimensioned, though...)

This talk about "flavor" of magic also lends itself well into the breakup of magic biomes - when we have sphere-based magic biomes that Toady wants to move into, instead of having just good, evil, and savage, we might have sky magic and sea magic and land magic biomes, and in a sky biome, everything might fly.  (This thread on brainstorming some sphere magic might be good to look at.) So all sorts of magic creatures and things might be in a region, and producing magic of their own particular flavor, and if there's significantly more sky magic than any other type of magic, then it starts turning into a sky biome, and the natural creatures in the area might start getting turned into sky creatures that might be like normal snakes and tigers and badgers and such, but now they fly because they're sky-badgers. 

Another major portion of the way that Xenosynthesis is supposed to work, however, is that not all things actually add to magic, some drain it. 

A skeletal normal creature, for example, might actually drain some evil magic from an evil region.  Killing it would release some of that evil magic.  If you work from this draining idea, then there's a finite limit to the amount of skeletons that a single evil region can raise before it neutralizes itself for raising too many undead, and you can think of it as a natural sink on the regional supply of evil magic.  In the case of a sky magic biome, meanwhile, then the flying badgers might also be magic-sinks - when the sky magic in the area gets too high, they release some of that excess sky magic by zapping some normal creature into being a sky magic creature.

You also have things that you might purposefully raise - like magic plants - that sink magic because they need that magic to survive, and if there isn't enough magic in the area, they don't live.  Growing too many of these might temporarily neutralize the magic, and you'd need to somehow push more magic into the system to keep feeding those plants.  (This could also work for purposefully raising specific animals that suck up magic.) 

When harvested, however, they no longer consume magic, and you might end up with high quantities of excess magic when you finish harvesting some magic plants. 

Since this excess magic manifests itself by zapping some creature with some odd powers, if the magic levels deviate by a significant enough degree, instead of just giving a badger some wings, it might create something more chaotic and dangerous, or else do something like summon a sky-magic-aligned megabeast, like a roc, or create a titan or forgotten beast on the spot to sink some of the excess magic into. (The same way that corruption, when built up in the thaumcraft, sinks excess magic into bad stuff that comes back to haunt the player.)

When there's a high concentration of magic all of a sudden, magic things happen, and it's just the "flavor" meter's job to tell what exact type of magic will surge wildly.


Now then, for the concept of spirits, the best way to think about it would be to use the sort of "multiverse" concept, as Toady already has talked about different dimensions, like shadow dimensions where the bogeymen come from, or the imaginary dimension from Cado's Magical Journey.

Spirits and gods usually just hang out in their own dimensions, but they can come into the DF world when there's a big enough space that's covered in their flavor of magic to support them.  (They sink magic of their kind.)

Alternately, if there's a large enough zone of magic created, a spirit may be born of the magic, itself.  (Or gods can be created through people worshiping that magic or that spirit if we want to go down that path of gods that exist only through the accumulated faith of their believers.) 

Because they need magic to survive, they will want to see magic in general boosted, and especially magic of their flavor. (Although they will probably despise magic of an opposing flavor, like a sky spirit hating land magic or something.) 

Spirits and gods may also get nourishment from whatever it is their sphere most associates with it, as well, however.  So a justice-aligned spirit/god might gain nourishment from a hammerer executing a murderer, and may become slightly ill from each crime unpunished. 

Sacrifices to the gods (such as a sacrificial ox, classically,) would also be a nourishment to the gods.

Feeding the gods or spirits gives them power, and in return, they'll likely share some of that power with those who actively do things that feed them, like spreading their type of magic, or giving them sacrifices in order to encourage more sacrifices or spreading of that magic sphere's influence. 

A spirit may well be "trapped" inside their magic field - almighty powerful inside their own realm, but incapable of surviving outside their magic biome at all.  Hence, they would want and need henchmen to spread their magic biome out beyond their borders.  (This would be the forest spirit using elves as its emissaries and protectors.)

When there's spirits or gods in a magic zone, they would have the (game-simulated) sentient capacity to determine how excess magic in their area gets spent - hence, if they are angry with your dwarves, they'll make sure every scrap of excess magic they have is spent on creating more forgotten beasts to spew poison on your dwarves.  If pleased, they'll just create some excess winged badgers or something.

Of course, if you do piss off a spirit enough, you can also just "kill" it by draining all the magic power it needs to live away from the region by killing the local magic-producing plants and animals.

So, basically, the "balance" on magic is that if you let magic gain power, it's going to have a semi-sentient spirit that's going to demand things of you that you have to do to keep it happy, or the magic will become hostile to you, and rain organ-melting blood on your parade.


Finally, as for the whole thing going kaput, I think it might actually be okay for dwarves to be capable of causing the extinction of all magic.  (And if they need magic for themselves to survive...) It wouldn't be a bad thing to create this space where dwarves have to keep the magic in order to survive so that you can't go too far to one direction or the other - too much magic causes Ragnarok, while too little magic means dwarves and goblins and elves go extinct, and humans and mundane animals are all that's left.  It would certainly be the dwarfy thing to do to ultimately cause the extinction of their own race.

It'd be certainly interesting if there is a sphere mega drought that people'd pack up shop and try to go back to their sphere-dimension, otherwise there'd be no "sudden resurgence of x-sphere, oh no" especially in the case of sphere-demons. Which would be akin to failed colonies/cities going back home, or becoming refugees.
Certainly fanciful creatures will suffer malaise, and atrophy from a lack of magic, by why let them completely wink out when they can simply become mundane, given they can survive the initial shift.

NW_Kohaku: I think there might be something to your 'Biome-Counter' idea.

D&D alignment is cheezy and restrictive and promoting of the jingoism we're all so fond of in this thread, and the more simplistic ideas of "good" vs "evil", might perhaps be safely disregarded, but I do like the idea of the land itself being magical, and maybe having it's own..."sub-conscience"?

The game already tracks kills, so if the kill rate starts to really accellerate, then the overall savagery-score, or whatever, could rise, and more lions or wolves or polar bears would start moving in.

This would interfere with an Earthlike ecology, ofcourse, and cause real population disruptions (and where are all these predators migrating from?), but it doesn't have to work that way in the Toadyverse, where new creatures can appear from code, and maybe increased savagery also means that predators in these lands require less food to survive, as the world itself adapts to the needs of it's inhabitants, and changes the laws of the ecosystem, in order to conform to the will of the land.

Ofcourse, once the predators don't have to eat as much, the kill rate falls, lions actually have good reason to begin laying down with the lambs, and the savagery level balances itself out in a "natural" way.

Add in sentient beings, with the capacity for greater and more extended disruptions, and more complex needs and wills, and the land might be pulled in all different directions, and begin to respond with things like dragons, and magic.

Instead of living on Earth, it might be something like living inside of a series of dreams and nightmares the Earth was having.

I don't know that it would be plausible or useful for elements themselves to dominate to a greater degree than a "water" area being a lake, river, or ocean, fire areas being volcanos or deserts, and a "sky" area being, well, the sky.

Some creatures might adapt to these conditions directly, while others might avoid them, but you'd want a degree of Earthlike stability, for modeling purposes, and having insubstantial "lands" where herds of flying buffalo roam doesn't seem like it would be a place my dwarfs could, or would really want to, strike the earth, unless they actually manage to build a tower (or grow a beanstalk) that reaches the clouds, and find they really do have silver in them, and are substantial enough to walk across.

Maybe dwarfs are just naturally earth-dominant, though, so that no matter how hard the Red Bull tries to herd them into the sky, they never grow wings (Thanks, Beagle!).

Well, I kind of want to stay away from overly cliched Four Greek Elements territory... especially since this is a chance to go with what is a more classically appropriate theme of "Sky, Land, and Sea" (Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon) as three major competitors in our polytheistic magic sphere play.

Dwarves aren't completely land-type, but have some dabbling in it. The pure land type would be those who are completely cavern dwellers (as per the older versions of the "Underworld" being a literal reference to the caverns below Greece, and the River Styx being an underground river). 

Of course, with goblins being from a Land of the Dead that is geographically(?) reached via dreams rather than digging far enough down (although maybe the theory of cotton candy generating "portals" that merely look like contiguous geographic space might apply...) then it blends us more into the metaphysical concepts that came about post-Plato. 

[NW_Kohaku]

I'd also like to talk just generally on the concept of what mechanics will actually mean to how a player behaves.

Keep in mind, players will always be finding ways to exploit things, so if you want to have a concept like a "wizard in robes with a staff reading their books" as opposed to a guy in plate mail with a great axe who happens to cast spells summoning zombies in between axe swings as a matter of flavor of the fantasy, then you need to actually create the mechanisms by which players wouldn't want to go into battle with plate mail and great axes.

Traditionally, D&D did this through just plain forcing wizards into a class that couldn't wear armor, or just outright saying that you had to choose, even with a mixed-class between "no armor or no magic".

Games like The Elder Scrolls tend to do something more gentle because they do want to encourage multi-classing (in the sense that there are no real classes) and so will just throw in a -10% casting penalty or the like.


I want to bring up the game Elona (a Japanese Roguelike game) to expound upon the point of how the way you set up mechanics influences play...

In that game, to learn spells, you have to first read a spellbook with the spell you want.  That requires getting the spellbook in the first place (which may mean adventuring or more frequently later in the game, investing in magic stores so they carry more stock - and investing is a skill), then reading the book (which requires the literacy skill to prevent reading the book from backfiring and summoning monsters or draining all your magic and dealing damage to you), then adding to something called spell stock (how much gets added depends on the memorization skill) which is what is used when you actually cast a spell.  Each time you cast a spell, it takes up MP plus an approximately (but randomized) similar amount of spell stock as MP.  This means that just reading a book once doesn't cut it, you have to keep reading the spellbooks (and grinding for more of them) to keep restocking that spell's stock.  And spellbooks have limited uses.  (But there's another skill that can be used to drain magic charges from rods -destroying them- and charge up another item, including spellbooks.  Since a rod of magic missile with dozens of charges can easily be less expensive than a spellbook with one charge, it's often worth it.)

Even then, casting the spell takes (you guessed it) another skill - casting.  You have a % chance to fail the spell, and the casting skill never brings that chance above 90%.  You also have a -12% penalty for holding a shield.  Another penalty for two-handed weapons, another penalty for riding a beast, another penalty for "Medium Armor" (which is actually determined by adding up the weight of all equipment, including weapons) and for "Heavy Armor" (the same). (Many of these penalties are reduced as you gain skill in wearing armor or riding, but the shield one is permanently 12%.)

To power up your spells, it relies upon attributes (buffing spells are mostly based on will, while offensive spells are based upon the magic attribute) as well as spell skill levels.  Because each spell has its own individual skill level.  And to make any spell worth casting, you have to grind that, too, sucker.  And that means buying up spellbooks for spells you want to learn en masse and sitting in a basement repeatedly reading and training a spell until you get it up to a decent level, then pounding out more books to get a hefty amount of spell stock, and only then are you ready to have a lightning bolt that does any amount of damage worth a damn and have enough shots of it to last more than a couple fights with it. 

Also, since that game has no classes, I would kind of recommend any wizard take up a damn bow so that you don't waste your spell stock on the squirrels that get in your way. 


That's all a kind of long introduction to it, but I think it gives an idea of what a system will do to how you play the game, especially when you consider that the game in question also has skill potential, which means you have to grind quests just to keep being able to grind your skills.  (Which actually keeps the grinding kind of varied and interesting...)

So the point is, when you're talking about how magic systems work, part of it is asking what this actually means when a player wants to get something out of the magic system.

A concept like contract magic could involve players having to grind up negotiation skills in order to deal with spirits, for example.  Bard-like characters might need to drop the heavy armor and carry really nice clothes for appearance bonuses to negotiate with some spirits, for example. 

It could depend on the "class" of mage we are dealing with - druidic magic users must shun metal and follow the guidance of the forest spirit.  Clerics would follow a strictly prescribed path of their deities.  Some of the more spirit-trafficking magic-users like the charismatic bard types might actually just go out to charm lower-level spirits like fairies and befriend or out-negotiate them into getting magic that they want.  Wizards, meanwhile, would be the kind that stick to strict open contracts that are contracts that involve the simple budgeting of energies or specific payments of magical components to a spirit that doesn't require renegotiation of their contracts.

It's then a matter of figuring out if you want to punish wearing armor or swinging an axe while casting that magic, and how that punishment will work out...

[Neonivek]

Well, current demigods aren't really meant to be "demigods", they're just mean to be adventurers with more stats than normal.  That said, Toady has talked about letting players start as something like a priest or an "inquisitor" (as in, a religious figure tasked with hunting night creatures) from the start of Adventure Mode as an alternative to starting as a peasant or hero.

He has also spoken about allowing Demigods to be Demigods with actual dietific lineage and abilities.

I made a topic about it but I feel it is so flawed that I want to redo it.

[NW_Kohaku]

One other thing I have been thinking about are the multiple stories about various kinds of relationships that humans have with mythical creatures in myth.

That is, as an expansion on the concept of contracts and magic through relationships with a magical creature/spirit/god, you might somehow come into a potentially intimate relationship with some sort of spirit.

If you contract with a fairy or something, and flatter, sacrifice to, and generally stay on good relations with that spirit, they might eventually be interested in a relationship beyond just trade.

In the case of having a contract with some fire god or fire spirit king/queen, they might suddenly declare that one of their subjects has been spying on your progress, and grown infatuated with you, or after a particularly notable performance for the spirit, you may suddenly find yourself being "gifted" with the spirit king's daughter's hand in arranged marriage. 

This could be anything from a wondrous modern fairy tale romance to a horrific ancient fairy tale nightmare depending on the exact nature of the spouse.

A spirit king of a realm too weird might give a straight female adventurer a princess to marry, and wonder what the problem is?  Are you going to insult the king by denying him this wonderful gift... and when are those grandkids coming along?  (Oh, and did we mention the king doesn't deal with women?  It's just really hard to tell what gender you are in your species.  If you say you're actually a woman, it's off with your head...)

The proposition might be either absurd - your new spouse is a wise-cracking fire-breathing parrot cartoonish sidekick more than a romantic option - or something to be feared - one of the 7-headed acid-drooling forgotten beast types of spirits - or perhaps some sort of bizarre combination.  Maybe you're getting forced to marry a magma kraken that turns into a beautiful spouse by the light of the full moon... or the blood sacrifice of children. 

Likewise, how well the potential spouse takes it can be a little up for grabs, as well.  They may hate the idea, and happily conspire with you to get out of the marriage. (And if we want to get downright Shakespearian romantic comedy, during the collusion, may grow to have feelings for you, after all.) They may just be a sadist who despises you and causes you pain every step along the way.  They could genuinely have longed for you since spying you from beyond the veil since the time you were born, and hope that you'd be able to see past the fact they breathe ammonia and have six arms and fins for legs. 

Trying to get out of a fae marriage could be an extremely interesting type of adventure, although one of the more esoteric to code for, as it would require having a much better conversation system to enable real diplomatic shenanigans.

On the other hand, if you aren't the sort to kick your lover out of bed just because she has gills and webbed feet, it opens up the prospect of using the "children of adventurers" mechanics planned to start a game as a descendant of deep ones, and innately casting magic. 

In the case of magic spouses, it can also be an adventure just in every day life, as many magic spouses had contract-like clauses into their weddings, as well.  For example, there are old myths of Celtic lore, where a king married a magical bride on the condition he never see her bathing.  Though married for a while, curiosity eventually overcame him (as dramatic narrative dictates it must,) and he spied her in the bath, only to find that when submersed in water, his queen was actually a squid-like monster.  She cursed him and fled.

Likewise, from Japanese myth, there are kitsune (spirit foxes) that shape-shift into humans and marry men and bear children that have magic powers - but fear dogs, as dogs can smell them out, and once revealed, they flee the village, and only return by night to watch over her family from afar.  Other Japanese myths (they're more into the "marry a magic creature" thing than most... go figure) involve yuki-onna (snow spirits) that nearly kill a man in a blizzard, only to reappear as a human, but warn not to see her at a certain time.  When failing to keep his word, different versions of the story have the yuki-onna kill her husband, or else merely abandon him and her children because she couldn't bear to kill her own children, and breaks the contract off entirely, herself.

(It should be noted, these are usually predicated on the lack of understanding on the human's part that they actually are marrying a monster.)

There are also tales from around the world of various celestial marriages taking place where humans force a marriage between themselves and a known magical (often heavenly) creature by stealing the means they have to return to the heavens. (Often a robe of feathers that transforms them into swans or the like.) When stolen, the human (almost always a male) forces the celestial to be their spouse (almost always female), and the relationships often end tragically - often with a child of the relationship siding with their mother, and finding their mother's robe to give back to her.  At this point, the celestial mother murders her human husband, flies back to the heavens, and abandons her half-breed children.  Ceres, Celestial Legend is an elaborately long version of such a story and its aftermath.

A variation of this takes place in D&D, as well, with nereids having their life tied to a shawl - if stolen they can basically become the thief's slave. 

[NW_Kohaku]

On the subject of being magic...

Since I lightly discussed in the last post about starting off as a magic creature, and because it's possible that a player character could transform into a magic creature that can cast magic innately, or is simply an inherently magical creature (like a thrall or vampire), I think it's worth also discussing what it means to be a magic creature...

Part of the problem with magic right now is that it basically runs on nothing, and produces power ex nihilo. 

The only thing that doesn't quite operate this way is the vampire - which needs to drink blood (if you are one of them). 

While contract magic in general tries to set limits on magic, and I know that we're not trying to have "MP" the way that most RPGs do, we need to start talking seriously about limits on magical abilities, especially ones that the player might have access to without need of contracts that need renewal or have other limits for abusing because they are the player's innate abilities. 

To a certain degree, using "stamina"/fatigue as a means of preventing more than a certain number of spell uses within a period of time is a start, there really needs to be more to it, and I actually have an idea that ties it in with the concept of Xenosynthesis, and vampires, besides.

That is, if you are a magical creature, you have a quantity of magic inside of yourself naturally, and using magic uses it up... and if you want to get magic back, you have to eat it. 

As in, if you have nether powers, you have to somehow find a way to eat nether caps to get their nether energy into yourself to recharge your nether magic.  (Meaning making something like a nether potion.)  Depending on what sort of creature you are, this could have serious side-effects for consuming too much nether stuff into your body, and you would probably have limits to how much you could ingest at a time. 

This could also relate to what you are doing for a magical creature you have a contract with - rather than just paying random stuff to them in the contract, you're actually giving them the "food" they need to live and cast the magic you want cast, along with a premium for the service. 

If you are a relatively normal creature with a magical ability, the magical ability relies upon magical "fuel" to operate, but you can probably live when you run out of magic.  If you are a magical creature, however, you may need a constant supply of magic just to survive. 

A vampire, for example, gets their magic from blood.  If they can't keep themselves in blood constantly, they die of a loss of their magic.  (And we could potentially go into White Wolf territory by making vampires in DF have other magics that require constant blood-feeding to charge up power to cast.)

This could apply to other creatures, as well - thralls might need exposure to evil biome magic or whatever is in the corrupt rain in order to keep running - if a thrall-adventurer leaves that magic cloud too long, they run out of juice and just disintegrate.  (Preventing the magic invincible, uneating thrall adventurer nonsense.)

These concepts can also apply when you deal with other creatures besides the player character - a dragon pet, for example, might need food prepared in magical ritual format to produce the magic they need to stay alive and breathing fire, for example.  (Or they simply need to keep eating more regular food, which they inherently turn into magic, but also consume far more food for each dragon fire they breathe...)

This could mean that the magical spouses discussed in the last thread, for example, could have a need to constantly consume more magic fuel to power the magic they need to stay alive or power your spells if you are contracting magic directly through them.

Rather than having an MP recover when you sleep, it helps tie the magic system into what DF is best at - resource management.  You are a more powerful caster if you have access to the capacity to farm more magic mushrooms that fuel your magic, or which you trade to the spirits that fuel your magic.  It also greatly differentiates different kinds of magic, as a fairy might be powered by magic flowers, while a necromancer by blood sacrifices, while an angelic being may be powered literally by good deed and kindness alone.  (You have to do some minor thing like help an old lady cross the street every day or die of goodness starvation... Meanwhile, you're literally powered by friendship, so if you're a charismatic sort, you could just keep a bunch of really happy followers to say nice things to in order to get your magic back.)

[Neonivek]

Part of the problem with magic right now is that it basically runs on nothing, and produces power ex nihilo.

I honestly do not see that as a problem at all. At least not for Necromancy. It transforms it from magic being derived from some sort of unknown power source into magic being derived purely from knowledge beyond that which mortals can muster.

Similar to settings where simple words hold power. Which inadvertingly makes it feel more magical then it would have otherwise while at the same time feeling extremely mighty.

In my oppinion "free" magic should continue to exist in some form and that its designation as a problem is erronious.

Mind you I always considered this entire suggestion to be "in addition" rather then how things should be.

These concepts can also apply when you deal with other creatures besides the player character - a dragon pet, for example, might need food prepared in magical ritual format to produce the magic they need to stay alive and breathing fire, for example.

That somehow brings up the problem with Xenosynthesis when applies to everything. Perhaps magical creatures should have at least some lesser form of magical regeneration. At least true magical ones.

It would keep certain creatures active without a constant need for Spherical lands and other means to replenish them. As well you could just connecting to "magic in general" and thus a weakening of the world's overall magic can weaken their ability to regenerate.

---

Actually that is something

I purpose the game, if this suggestion is used, keep track of how much active "magic" there is in the world at all times and lower the quality of magic according to how much is left.

As well it should affect the health, strength, and reproduction rate of "magic creatures" even if magic was available.

It should be noted that perhaps we could split "magic creatures" into two categories. Ones who need magic to function (like fairies) and ones who need magic to do certain abilities (Like your version of the dragon).

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, that was part of a discussion that happened over in the Hard Facts on Sapients thread when talking about how magical the elves were, and it spilled over with how magical the world itself was.

Basically, if you look at the concepts that Toady has for the "ages" of a world (I.E. Age of Myth -> Age of Legends -> Age of Heroes) and his old concept for the "late game" (read as: world where most of the magical creatures are dead) in the old devpages, then you would see that Toady was mirroring Tolkien somewhat (again) in the concept that "The magic goes away".

That is, the presence of dragons and hydras and titans makes the world more magic, and that, in conjunction with the theory of Xenosynthesis would mean that you could say dragons are "exomagical" - they are producers of magic.  If they die, the world becomes less magic.  They're like the plants in an ecosystem based upon magic.

That said, rather than just innately being infinite magic, they could have some trick to transmuting magic from the mundane.  Vampires are magic, but they get their magic from blood from even mundane creatures - maybe the act of drinking the blood somehow converts a mundane thing into a magic power through an act of ritual rather than physically running upon the blood of another creature.  This can also explain the preference for sentient being's blood when killing a random wolf for blood would not inspire the suspicion and hatred of their village - the ritual drinking of the blood of your own (former) kind is more symbolically potent, and therefore grants access to more magic.

Hence, a dragon could generate more magic for itself through the act of hoarding.  Eating an oxen given in ritual sacrifice could give it magical, as well as physical, sustenance.

At the same time, as the magic creatures in those spheres die out, the sphere, itself, dies, because those creatures supported the sphere as much as the sphere supported them.  (Hence, the magical ecosystem analogy.) 

Dragons might be powerful enough creatures to not need a "treasure" sphere around it, they just naturally create a treasure sphere around their hoards through their magic hoarding ritual. 

Likewise, there should also be some infinite fountains of magic, but they should generally be "somewhere else", like The Underworld as a source of undead magic or something - it's infinite there, but you can shut off the access to that magic.  This world is innately a mundane world unless some of that magic from somewhere else is bleeding through.  The less magic a place is, the more distinct this world is from the other worlds.  (And the magic-creating plant types, such as nether-caps, are basically powering themselves through generating nether portals by this explanation of the game's mechanics.)

Hence, if a necromancer is going to power his magic, he has to be capable of linking himself to the underworld, somehow.  Maybe he has to stay in his lair, filled with underworld magic, to charge up, but then runs on an "internal battery" when he leaves, and has to return to recharge. 

Also, consider it as a game mechanic - there's a problem in having a power that is abusable whenever you want.  There are no limits to current necromancy.  You can keep raising the same zombies infinitely in a single turn, and it makes necromancers nearly impossible to defeat.

If you make necromancers rely upon charging their power in their towers, however, there is a mechanic for why they can't just keep raising dead, and also for why they build towers the way that they do - to gain more magic.  It also means that a necromancer in their tower is still an almost-infinitely-undead-raising super boss. 

It's like the way that Vancian magic makes a wizard incapable of leaving their spellbooks - when you put limits to the way that magic works, it actually not only severely limits how it can be used, but also how people play, and flavors the way in which people think of the whole notion of magic to begin with.

[SirHoneyBadger]

The game, minus magical creatures, doesn't by itself sound that interesting to me.

If we link magical creatures to magic itself as some kind of elemental resource, and then the magic goes away, what's going to replace it, since there's also not going to be steam punk?

I don't mind the idea of magic in the game becoming less powerful over time, but I'd like to atleast see the power replaced with complexity.

My generic idea for this is to replace magical creatures with undead over time, so that in some sense, "magic" gets replaced with necromantic "anti-magic", so that you'd go from some kind of "survival fantasy" building up to high fantasy, to heroic fantasy as the magic goes away, and then ending on survival horror/apocalyptic fantasy, genre-wise (and possibly even get into some kind of Wheel of Time-esque cycle), but I'd really like to know if there are some other thoughts on this.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, again, part of the idea of Xenosynthesis is that it doesn't have to be completely entropic decay.

Much like how a forest that was chopped down and whose soil eroded and became desert-like can be built back up to a forest with enough time and effort, (or just geologic-level amounts of time and nature itself working...) you can actually enhance the amount of magic present.

From the wiki:

"I finally saw a world arrive at the Age of Fairy Tales, which happens if mundane creatures (ie humans) make up at least 90% of the world's civilized population with the requirement that there are still a few fantasy creatures lurking around. In this case, it was a kobold cave that their scouts never found. I guess all of the fairy tales were about people having their crap stolen."

The Age of Fairy Tales was a time when fantastic creatures were few and far between, and some even doubted their existence.

Old Devpages:

LATE GAME: As you kill the large creatures, the world becomes more... boring. The game can be prepared for this kind of change and move over into a sort of fairy-tale/Beowulf/Robert E Howard type of hybrid with human civs and occasional monsters so that things continue to be interesting. This already happens naturally in a way, but the dialogue and reactions of people to these changes should be there to fully adjust to the new setting. Related to Bloat149.

What Toady was doing with his ages is mostly describing a sense of Tolkienian entropic decay from a perfectly ordered, pristine magical world that eventually gave way to a corrupt world of humanity. 

This is perfectly in line with Tolkien's orthodox Catholic views, which paint history as starting with a paradise of "Eden" before humanity sinned, then went into a "Golden Age", then a "Silver Age", then an "Iron Age".  It's a story of perfection decaying into modern decadence, getting worse all the time, where all of humanity's achievements actually serve to pull people further away from a perfect, primitive communion with God. 

In terms of how Toady has been telling the game/story we tend to have now from a much more "Norse Gods Get Drunk And Kill Shit While Screaming WHOOOO!" perspective, it's actually a little odd to see this sort of trend.

Hence, I'm actually a bit happy to see the "Third Age of Legends" pop up, and show that magic can actually spring back in this model. 

Like I said in the other thread, I'd like to see it something that the player can engage in and push around, rather than just a natural decay, where every game, by 2000 years into worldgen, will be a "mundane world", and a game at year 1 will be a "top-level magic crazy crap happening, hey lookit all the dragons!"

I like to see things as an ecosystem that reacts to the forces that are at play in the world, as well as the player's actions, themselves, where the more the player pushes, the more the natural forces tend to push back. Unless the players know how to precisely ride on top of those forces, and use them to their advantage, you're just going to be doing a lot of wasted effort. 

Magic can be something that you spread on purpose, that you farm or champion as a cause.  Or it can be something you stamp out.  Or it can be something you exploit without understanding, only to find out that you've doomed your whole species to extinction because you've extinguished the magic that dwarves need to survive.  (And that's what being dwarfy's all about, right there...)

[Neonivek]

I really don't like the idea of everything that is different from real life instantly being downgraded to "magic".

I'd hope that not every fantastical element is going to end up falling under this.

[NW_Kohaku]

I really don't like the idea of everything that is different from real life instantly being downgraded to "magic".

I'd hope that not every fantastical element is going to end up falling under this.

I'm not sure how that's a downgrade...

What other category would you put "fantastical elements" under besides "magic"?  (Aren't they synonymous?)

[TastyMints]

While this may seem unrelated, Toady mentioned working on a language system at some point in the future. This seems like a good time to introduce magic in my opinion. Languages provide the most suitable framework for spellcasting outside of magical abilities being granted by deities, and would give modders a framework to both expand on, and completely rework, existing magic systems amongst races and civilizations.

I have a sort of image in my head of a menu-driven conjuration system that would encompass things from throwing burning hunks of molten iron from your hand to summoning a deity and making a deal with it (or possibly FORCING it to do your bidding if you are powerful enough and have a very high skill, can bind it, and have some sort of outstanding leverage.) With the military/order system as it is now, commanding wizard dwarves to cast a range of spells wouldn't be as difficult as it sounds. A makeshift dwarven wizard militia could drive away the horde of goblins or burn the whole fortress down from the inside, or maybe you conjure your fickle god and he decides to bring steel and fire to everything at the site. Maybe the Goddess of Love shows up and convinces the Goblins to go away, but kills all of your children to attain the power to do so.

Basic conjurations could be one word. Saying "fire" might conjure fire in your hand, but if you're not very good at magic the object you conjure might damage you or explode in your hand. Coating your flesh in ice might work well as armor, or it might freeze you to death. Doing the same thing with stone may not freeze you to death, but it may encase you in stone for eternity. For extra fun, the magic language(s) could be entirely separate, or only certain words in a civilization's vocabulary could hold magical power. Now that I think about it, perhaps the system could work similarly to fighting styles as envisioned in the dev logs. Magical words and skills could be flagged in worldgen in the same way that animal domestication is handled. Cross-cultural magic systems and languages would be possible given the entity system currently being worked on.

This clearly needs to be a scripted process, however, insofar as which words can be used for what and by who. However, I very much enjoy the idea of a "contract" system for very powerful entities. It gives Gods a definitive reason to take control of civilizations and gives the races themselves a definitive reason for worshiping them. Coming up with an abstract measure of divine/demonic power might be somewhat more difficult. Slaughtering a city full of elves in the name of Armok should do a lot more than, say, sacrificing a goat. There would also have to be systems in place for recognizing historical events that you have offered to a god before. Maybe something along the lines of "Go slaughter ten scores of goblins." would empower a deity to the point where it decides to turn your body into white-hot slade, making you nigh invincible, and taking you as its champion to eliminate an entire civilization from the face of the world in order to create a new entity which takes the form of a theocracy. Maybe that's too dramatic, maybe the elfish god of the forest grants you an army of giant rabbits with which to gnaw the beards off of the dwarven heretics? Maybe this particular fellow isn't you, but does decide to show up at your fortress to carry out said beard gnawing.

Now that I think about it, I rather like the idea of elevating some poor lost soul of a ghost to Godhood by offering entire cities of goblins to it. Urist McGod was once a simple child murdered by a lasher, but in his name and honor were slaughtered tens of thousands of goblins. He now watches over the dwarven fortress of BumbleBrick as eternal sentry, so that no goblin may enter again. On that note, I would like to point out that this magic system would likely tie into the soul system very heavily. The soul of a creature has its magical power, skills, etc. So if you were to, say, die as a very powerful spellcaster, maybe you'd be reincarnated with special gifts or birthmarks associated with your past life. Perhaps you'd be able to form a body out of something else if you're powerful enough, or steal someone else's body if you're a powerful psychic/mesmer/illusionist/blood mage/magic martial artist that sort of thing.

How this interacts with the physical world and what kind of reagents you'd need to conjure different things would definitely need to be addressed. Even a highly skilled conjurer probably shouldn't be able to force a god to manifest itself just because he feels like it. Just because you call doesn't mean they have to pick up the phone. Or maybe they'll just show up and kill or curse you because you didn't draw a containment circle/pentacle/hexagram/whatever and you pissed them off by annoying them one too many times. Multiple creatures casting a spell would likely yield much better results, and provide much better protection. Your arcane sanctum is as much a containment facility as a laboratory.

Everything, every soul, should have to draw power from somewhere to use magic. Lands (a city or swamp with inherent magical power as an abstract entity e.g. Silent Hill, current savage Evil Biomes), worship, other planes, divine/demonic masters (demigod parents), that sort of thing. This could be tied with anything from favored sites to sphere alignments to art preferences (magic skin branding, tattoos, and runes). Imagine a group of dwarven earth magicians that draw power from a mastercraft engraving of their earthen god. Aforementioned dwarven earth magi may only allow 10 people into their group, as the engraving only has enough power for them and every consecutive member reduces the engraving's power drastically. However, they embue this power with skin brandings. When they die, and their skin rots, the power source passes from them and can not be used after death as it is a part of the corpse. This power could be some product of item value versus magical value, the magical value itself being given from a strange mood or somesuch. This would also open up a lot of possibilities as far as artifacts are concerned. If your imagination serves you as well as mine serves me, you can see how this would give megabeasts and thieves something to do to change their lot in life.

Consumables and alchemy could also be factored in. Maybe a group of humans that know how to make potions (or if you're feeling particularly adult, consumable powders and smokables) from plants sacred to their order that give them claws and sharp teeth and they empower their god, who is associated with fire and blood, by burning down cities and practicing ritualistic murder. Consuming the "sacred" consumables could make them prone to rage or corrupt their sense of justice or empathy (or maybe increase these traits, in the case of good deities). This small change in their biology can give them some interesting advantages or disadvantages to pad out the story-telling capacity, and since it would be tied to the entity system not every civilization or group would be able to do it. It is a "secret" after all.

Magic as a system is an abstract concept, a pool of non-physical resources to be shaped as needed by a powerful will (a certain historical figure). This can come from many places presumably, but the most common would likely be worship. It's not being a giant minotaur monster that breaths poison gas that makes Aglakasjaka terrifying. It's the belief that Aglakasjaka is so terrifying that he's worthy of worship that makes him stronger than any other megabeast alive, elevating him from a roving monster to a full-blown civilization leading entity capable of changing reality on small scales. This could also be used as a viable system to set up powerful pretenders. Lying that you are a god and people believing you is a big deal within this system, and can presumably cause serious consequences throughout the entire world. On the bright side, this provides a suitable application of abstract entity populations without actually putting them on screen, while simultaneously allowing powerful threats (like demons escaped from the underworld) to appear in an organic in-game manner. Not only that, but it provides methods for which the adventurer can gain methods to kill or weaken said enemies.

This also leads into another thing Toady has been talking about lately: Apocalypses. These need not necessarily be the world being immediately destroyed, but simply the world being changed massively. If magic were used to cause erosion, destruction of biomes, reformation of biomes, etc. Magic applies at a massive scale when it is consolidated, or one would assume. After this apocalypse, the status quo would surely change. The world would look forever different, civilizations extinguished overnight as a living god ascends to a higher plane and tears the world asunder. Entire regions-worth of cities crumble overnight, leaving nothing but a massive bottomless chasm through which the magma sea slowly drains, bleeding the world dry slowly but surely.

P.S. The Modify button is my best friend.

[Neonivek]

No I agree multiple sources of magic.

Though the question is... Should Xenogenesis be one unifying source of magic that all others pour into? Or is it one type of magic?