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[Miuramir]

But anyway, programming in limits really is something Toady needs to do with magic, since all the magic that's been put in so far has seemed to work Megaman-style, but without even the energy meters to slow its use down. 

While I don't disagree with your comments with respect to balancing a (single) game, DF is more than *a* game, it's a procedurally-generated fantasy worlds simulator.  DF should eventually be able to generate worlds that have dramatically distinct styles of magic and forms of theology.  Constraining them to the very limited subset where magic is basically another level of technology, that has limits and discernible rules, would be a shame.  Not all systems are balanced, not all systems are rational, and even some of the ones that are may rely on components beyond the intellects or perception of dwarves... or human players. 

As an amusing example, there was a fantasy story some years ago positing a world where the scientific method was not possible; anyone who started looking at the natural world in an attempt to make repeatable observations or experiments, was assigned a personal demon to maliciously manipulate reality in their vicinity to guarantee that they were unable to prove anything, and ideally to drive them visibly mad.  The system was perpetuated because the "bad" side enjoyed tormenting people and preferred a population driven by fear, conformity, and witch-(scientist-)hunts; and the "good" side preferred a population that had clear incentives to depend on nothing but faith, as the "natural" world was clearly both unknowable and hostile.  IIRC there was also a special branch of demons devoted to making sure that anyone who messed around with gunpowder blew themselves up spectacularly, to keep societies limited to a roughly early-medieval level. 

[SirHoneyBadger]

Actually, in myth, Elves and Dwarves are really just arbitrarily seperated members of the same ambiogenically produced "Species".

Source:
Poetic Edda, The original source for these creatures. (The influence will be readily apparent to readers of tolkien, by Voluspo, stanza 12. Note that "alf" means "Elf", and is the original noun root word. "Gandalf" means "magic elf". Note how he was created along with Durin, though Durin comes first. Early traditions DID NOT segregate elves from dwarves. That distinction is the result of an arbitrary segregation between the "alfhome" and the dveregar's homes. The result of this segregation made dwarves eventually be unable to bear being in sunlight, as it would turn them into stone. This is the likely origin of Toady's "Cave adaptation" puke-o-thons that happen to his dwarves.)

This is clearly not conserved in DF-- since dwarves and Elves have VERY different racial characteristics. This is why we have to resort to toady/Threetoe stories for mythic inspiration.

I will now return to my regularly scheduled programming, dealing with numerical data.

Dwarfs in Tolkien's mythos were actually created before elves, by the Vala Aule, and kept secret from the other Valar and Iluvatar, as beings Aule could teach his crafts to. Iluvatar knew the secret, however, and confronted Aule with it, but Aule confessed and was prepaired to destroy the first dwarfs (I detect echoes of Abraham and Isaac here--although the dwarfs apparently weren't much more than toys, at this point), but Iluvatar stopped him, and gave the dwarfs each a portion of the Eternal Flame (souls, in other words), but didn't allow them to awaken before the first elves did.

Gandalf was quite a bit older than even Durin, however, as he was a Maia, a lesser Vala, or Power (read "god"), who had existed since the very beginning of time, itself. "Gandalf was the original name of the leader of the dwarfs in the Hobbit, and the name was infact taken from the Voluspa "catalogue of dwarfs".

Dwarfs (Dvergar) in Norse myth were quite distinct from every other being, actually. Their singular origins were as worms (Even then they were tunnelers and miners in a sense, see?) that infested the corpse of Ymir, the planet-sized Jotun whom Odin and his brothers had slain, and used to create Midgard, the world of humans, and most of the other 9 worlds. At first, they were like maggots in appearance, but the Aesir gave them humanlike appearance, along with humanlike sapience  and knowledge--Source is the Norse Voluspa, as interpreted by Snorri Sturluson.

The Aesir also specifically obtained weapons, armour, and many other magical devices, from two competing families of dwarfs--thus, they were smiths, and workers of magic.  Infact, the old English word 'Dweomer', meaning 'witchcraft' means, literally, "dwarf speak" or dwarf language, with the connotation of being a secret magical language of the dwarfs. The middle English word for 'Echo' has the same origin--the dwarfs are the ones who produce (mocking) echoes.

As far as them turning to stone is concerned, this is a good example of how dwarfs can become confused with trolls, and it's a Scandinavian, rather than Norwegian (Norse) conceit; that trolls turn to stone upon being struck by sunlight. This idea is fairly easily explained by the large number of rock features in Scandinavia, and surrounds, that--with a little imagination--happen to resemble "trollish" humanoids (and these are certainly easy to find, all around the world)--which are probably a good deal more frightening and "alive-seeming" when you're a lonely, frightened Scandinavian woodcutter, lost in the darkness of a 7th century forest around midnight, and being stalked by the (rather trollish) bear that chased you into there.

[NW_Kohaku]

While I don't disagree with your comments with respect to balancing a (single) game, DF is more than *a* game, it's a procedurally-generated fantasy worlds simulator.  DF should eventually be able to generate worlds that have dramatically distinct styles of magic and forms of theology.  Constraining them to the very limited subset where magic is basically another level of technology, that has limits and discernible rules, would be a shame.  Not all systems are balanced, not all systems are rational, and even some of the ones that are may rely on components beyond the intellects or perception of dwarves... or human players. 

That seems more a rationale for a flexible and moddable system, but not the system we have now, where there isn't really any limits.  (Actually, it's not really much of a system at all...)

Remember that in the last Armok game, magic allowed for teleporting organs outside of people's bodies.

It wasn't just the awful graphics that made the original Armok such a mess, it was the sheer and utter imbalance of every part of the game. This video shows a character losing a fight with a bush.

Besides which, Toady hasn't really been trying to make a "do absolutely anything" game, and I don't think it's possible for him to do so, just by the very nature of programming.  Turning some limits off or using different kinds of limits are one thing, but having an overtly malicious nature that prevents objective measurement of repeatable phenomenon is obviously well outside of what DF's physics obviously allows for at the moment, since we have Dwarfputers. 

As SirHoneyBadger hinted at earlier, an "absolutely anything" magic system with no capacity for players to predict is ultimately just plain impossible to program.  (Well, aside from just setting up the RNG to just make it *roll roll* rain *roll roll* kitten *roll roll* fat *roll roll* upwards from the ground for *roll roll* three days so that absolutely nothing in the game can ever make sense anymore.) 

As I've stated in several previous magic threads started on this sort of premise, if you make a magic system where there's a good chance of a wizard opening up a volcano in the middle of your fort with no way to stop it other than murdering every wizard you see on the spot so that they can't self-destruct your fort.  You've just effectively destroyed the magic system because there's no reason anyone would ever want to play a game of Candyland where the RNG is their total lord and master and what they do as players is totally futile.  (Again, go look at that Armok video of losing to a bush.  Note that the bush is constantly blocking attacks.)  (Also note that DF used to have wizards that threw fireballs that started fires they weren't immune to.  They were never fully implemented and removed for a reason.)

A system of 20 MP for a 10d6 fireball and 21 MP for a 11d6 fireball is going to be something annoying to players, and remove a lot of the mythic nature of the game, yes, but I honestly think that's more likely to happen than the personal demons stopping objective observation of reality.  Toady's take on magic so far has been werewolves, vampires, necromancers (with no limits on how their powers work) and Threetoe's stories all involve wizards in libraries reading books for their spells. 

Which is odd, because given how DF works so far, there's no reason you'd need anything but a single point of literacy skill, and you can cast magic in plate mail with a great axe, and you get magic by killing the thing that has that magic, so you'd expect all wizards to just be the same thing as knights, and all knights to be wizards, since why not?

Even in Cado, when the evil wizard's spell is turned back by the other wizard, the evil wizard then defeats the other wizard by just picking up a book and throwing it at the wizard, thus proving that, even in the stories, any noob just throwing a fluffy wambler is more mighty than even the greatest of gods.


I'd also point out that there's more than one source for dwarves if you really want to look, including those Irish "people of the hill" and other, similar tales from myth and lore. 

[SirHoneyBadger]

[quote author=NW_Kohaku link=topic=122647.msg4015676#msg4015676 date=1360370611

I'd also point out that there's more than one source for dwarves if you really want to look, including those Irish "people of the hill" and other, similar tales from myth and lore. 
[/quote]

Agreed! The concept of beings very similar to our idea of dwarfs is one of the most ubiquitous in mythology, right up there with the Great Deluge. The Hawaiians, the Japanese, and the Zulu all have them, they're well-represented in Native American myth, North, South, East, and West, and ofcourse they're everywhere in European culture.

[wierd]

Oh, I agree about origins. (That's why I was pointing out that Tolkien borrowed heavily from norse mythology.)

However, the assertion that norse dwarves don't turn to stone in sunlight is false. It is not a confusion with trolls at all.

The statement about the dwarves starting as maggots in ymir's corpse is correct; however, so did the elves. In early traditions the two are used interchangably.

I was pointing out that since this is not the case in the toadyverse, either the dwarves have been distinct from the elves a very long time, or they have a different or mixed mythic heritige.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Oh, I agree about origins. (That's why I was pointing out that Tolkien borrowed heavily from norse mythology.)

However, the assertion that norse dwarves don't turn to stone in sunlight is false. It is not a confusion with trolls at all.

The statement about the dwarves starting as maggots in ymir's corpse is correct; however, so did the elves. In early traditions the two are used interchangably.

I was pointing out that since this is not the case in the toadyverse, either the dwarves have been distinct from the elves a very long time, or they have a different or mixed mythic heritige.

Oh, that first one's a good reference! I still opine that there's got to be some level of cross-pollination going on, but that's a nice early example, and I could always be wrong.

Also, I have to question whether that's a specific reference to that singular dwarf in that single story. In other words, is it there because it provides necessary resolution under the impetus of narrative causality (thanks again, PTerry!), or is there greater evidence that this a quality that might be considered applicable to every dwarf?

I know it's a lot to ask for, and you've certainly proven your point to my satisfaction, but seeking to define specific quality of mythological beings that separate them from "random magical dude from random magic land" is a lot like nailing jello, so the more references to this we can find, the stiffer the jello we have to work with (it's still jello, though).

Creatures that live within the earth and away from the sun, turning into stone under it's influence, well it does have some sort of faerie-tale logic to it, I guess, as much as anything ever does, so it certainly could be a thing. Certainly, other mythic beings turn into various substances, often when defeated, so it's hardly a unique element, but my interest is in how important it might be considered to be, to what it means to be a dwarf.

I'm wary of it, though, if it is. The more fluid the definitions become for these beings, the harder it'll be to put them into the game, in a sensible, ordered way. As a modder, my work lives and dies by rational organization, and while it's nice to get things as close to mythological "accuracy" as possible, and it's definitely a goal of mine that I would really like to make a priority, the system will only bear so much chaos.

Weeding is a necessary part of effective gardening, even when you understand that weeds are only weeds because you decide they don't belong in your garden. It's all arbitrary surgery for the sake of an individual, temporary, aesthetic: With perhaps the exception of honeybees, creation requires destruction.

So yeah, I'm happy to admit I could be wrong, and have been wrong. I know the choices I make and the philosophy behind them, comes from a single, limited perspective. I also must admit that I'm willing to disregard inconvenient facts, if they lead to greater satisfaction with the result. I just try to "weed" with as much enlightenment as I can muster, because I'd like to create something that can still surprise me.


On to the subject of svartalfar, (and dokkalfar, for that matter)...you're right that they were sometimes used interchangeably with "dvergar", but I just can't agree that they are synonymous with the DF elf. The eddas are even more ambiguous than usual on this point, and there seems to be too much that goes unsaid to guess that ljosalfar and svartalfar/dokkalfar are that closely related.

Also, the Celtic Sidhe are just much more vivid and detailed, and more important within their own narrative, than the German alfar were in Norse myth (they're kind of "the elves that didn't do anything", and are much upstaged by the Aesir/Vanir and their valkyries, the Jotuns and their monstrous allies, and even the relatively unaligned dwarfs, trolls, and undead, when it comes to supernatural influence ), and taking into consideration the Viking invasion of Ireland and Scotland, one can guess that the Aes Sidhe are partly or entirely the source for the Ljosalfar, if not all alfar groups--and their are a great many shared elements between Norse and Gaelic myth.

I nod to your sensible theory that the names for these beings may only reference the lands in which the beings dwell, and the varied peoples who lived there may just not have been that well known or well defined--or, like the Vans, they may have their own, not always parallel, narrative going on. So much of the original sources have been lost, though, that it's all just guesswork. We could be missing whole libraries of Alfar sagas that every Viking was so well acquainted with that little more needed to be said.

[wierd]

I don't have any more "dead ringer" references like Alviss, but the ambiguity of the eddas about weather dwarves made man shapes out of mud, or that the dwarves were made of mud and given man shapes could be a hint about weather or not all dwarves become stone when revealed in sunlight.

This is pure supposition, but in many magical traditions, magic gets dispelled by being seen more closely, and the rising of the sun often is associated with spells and magic being broken. If dwarves are originally made from mud/stone, and are made flesh through magic, as is ambiguously hinted at in voluspo, then the breaking of that spell would return them to that state.

[mavj96]

Kobolds pls! Loving all of your posts.

[wierd]

I'm afraid you wont be terribly happy with the myth background of "kobolds"-- They are basically like the boogey man. Things that go bump in the night so to speak, in a figurative sense. Mischievous spirits that appear friendly, simply to cause mischief. Take delight in making well thought out plans backfire, or in corrupting the efforts of hard work, making them all for nothing.

Etymology of Kobold 

Basically, just little mischievous creatures that like to cause mischief, for mischief's sake. Similar to, but distinct from brownies. (Brownies can actually be quite beneficial. Kobolds? I haven't seen any good reference materials for them ever being anything but headaches.)

Kobold in it's current use comes mostly from a mal-apropriation by Wizards of The Coast's pen and paper RPG series, Dungeons and Dragons, where they are a subterranean humanoid reptile, that can poison metal ores.

In folklore, Kobolds are not reptilian at all, just diminutive and often ugly.

[Vattic]

Basically, just little mischievous creatures that like to cause mischief, for mischief's sake. Similar to, but distinct from brownies. (Brownies can actually be quite beneficial. Kobolds? I haven't seen any good reference materials for them ever being anything but headaches.)

As things stand Gremlins pretty much fill this role. Pulling levers, opening cages, being trap immune, and picking locks.

[Miuramir]

While I don't disagree with your comments with respect to balancing a (single) game, DF is more than *a* game, it's a procedurally-generated fantasy worlds simulator.  DF should eventually be able to generate worlds that have dramatically distinct styles of magic and forms of theology.  Constraining them to the very limited subset where magic is basically another level of technology, that has limits and discernible rules, would be a shame.  Not all systems are balanced, not all systems are rational, and even some of the ones that are may rely on components beyond the intellects or perception of dwarves... or human players. 

That seems more a rationale for a flexible and moddable system, but not the system we have now, where there isn't really any limits.  (Actually, it's not really much of a system at all...)

Flexible and moddable system, yes.  Think of it this way: Currently, DF has systems that generate overall landforms and climate from a combination of a moddable parameter file, some simple rules and a random seed.  It then applies another set of physics-based rules in combination with some ideas of what makes "interesting" worlds to generate weather, vegetation, rivers, etc.  After that's all done, it loads up a moddable list of societies and what they need, and tries to find places that they can plausibly start out.  It then runs history forward to see which societies thrive, expand, war, fail, etc. 

A naive observer would think that people would want to settle in nice places; and for newer players, or people trying to accomplish certain sorts of goals, that is still a decent idea.  But if you think about the stories that we consider epic, the settings that have been particularly fun or rewarding, it's frequently the bizarrely hostile locations.  Glaciers with no surface resources, offshore volcanoes beset by perpetually reanimating dead, swamps with rains of acidic sludge, societies riddled with concealed vampires, and so on. 

My hope is that eventually the magic system generation will yield similar interest.  Those wanting a mundane experience can set "NUM_MAGIC_SYS" to 0 in the raws or some such system, many will normally accept default parameters which yield a few interesting systems that vary a bit, but DF will hopefully have options that allow for "challenge" areas because of their fascinating, bizarre, or simply hostile magical environment. 

Right now the first hints are the "reanimation zones" and the "bizarre rain".  Once the Sphere system is more fully implemented, it's interesting to think about areas that strongly push those ideas... perhaps a strongly manifested Light sphere might lead to all squares being Lit even if underground, a strongly manifesting Water sphere might prevent fires, a strongly manifesting Fertility sphere might lead to drastically increased breeding rates for everything, a strongly manifesting Plant sphere might make using wood difficult as it would tend to sprout even after being made into shafts, beds, etc.

Like most sorts of existing challenge areas, the interest and story potential is from being jolted out of a one-size-fits-all embark and predictable fortress developments.  Much of the longevity of DF is in the fact that just the base game can really play quite differently many times over, and modding extends that many times over.  The right mods allow folks to rearrange DF's physical world to simulate various favorite fantasy settings; I would hope that the same would be true of magic. 

... Besides which, Toady hasn't really been trying to make a "do absolutely anything" game, and I don't think it's possible for him to do so, just by the very nature of programming.  Turning some limits off or using different kinds of limits are one thing, but having an overtly malicious nature that prevents objective measurement of repeatable phenomenon is obviously well outside of what DF's physics obviously allows for at the moment, since we have Dwarfputers.  ...

See, I think that's the sort of thing that should vary.  Some worlds or regions should generate as highly mechanical, and rod-gear-power logic should be easier than the current default; others might generate with settings that make it more sensible to make logic out of weird combinations of animal / invader pathing, and so on.  Again, this might tie into Spheres or some similar system; Perhaps the local demon lord doesn't like the incessant clacking noises, or the local tree demigod thinks that straight wooden shafts are aesthetically unpleasing and has what amounts to a low-level Warp Wood magic that dramatically increases the wear rate of your works.  You should have a general idea pre-embark of what you're getting into (if you bother to look), but probably not know the details (such as it is now with weather, evil zones, subsurface rock layers, and so on). 

Looking at it another way, many players enjoy experimenting within DF to figure out how things work.  We've already hit a point where most of the "easy" experimentation gets done long before a new release changes things; and as the game gets more finished and stable, that will be the case increasingly often.  If DF can generate dramatically different worlds to explore and test, that really increases the replay value; how many games out there are capable of *generating* magic systems, rather than merely implementing them? 

[NW_Kohaku]

Looking at it another way, many players enjoy experimenting within DF to figure out how things work.  We've already hit a point where most of the "easy" experimentation gets done long before a new release changes things; and as the game gets more finished and stable, that will be the case increasingly often.  If DF can generate dramatically different worlds to explore and test, that really increases the replay value; how many games out there are capable of *generating* magic systems, rather than merely implementing them?

A system-generating-system like that would mean that you're aiming for emergent gameplay to develop among magic systems... and that sort of emergent gameplay requires such a complex system, where there are so many "moving parts" that can all interact with one another in so many iterations as to be functionally unpredictable. 

(Take, for example, the difference between Chess and Tic-Tac-Toe - both are, technically, "Solved Games" - games with a finite number of possible moves, and hence, hypothetically predictable outcomes.  Because of symmetry, however, Tic-Tac-Toe has an extremely low number of possible plays.  Chess, however, has a phenomenal number of potential games that could be played, and as such, is not typically seen as a "solved" game the way that Tic-Tac-Toe is.)

Currently, the only things that are really complex enough for emergent behavior are the spatial simulation (every physical object occupies space, and the way that players can control space through mining, mechanisms, fluids, and so forth, have so many moving parts as to become emergent), and maybe, maybe the AI of units.  (And those two often overlap through the pathfinding and dangerous-creature detection and other code.)

And the thing is, you're talking about creating this sort of "massive number of systems that can overlap" just within the code before it actually hits the game itself - this is something that doesn't actually appear in-game.  You're asking for all this to happen with code that hasn't been programmed yet.  You'd have to create something as complex as the spatial simulation out of nothing to achieve the same effect, whereas each addition to the spatial simulation makes everything in the spatial simulation more complex.

Shy of creating some sort of adaptive AI that learns from player experiences, I'm not sure how you even build a procedurally-built raw generator that is so complex as to be capable of generating truly unpredictable and new things without just making random hashes of old ideas.

If you want to make demon lords who get angry at how people make dwarfputers, you're either going to have some scripted amount of functioning mechanisms before a scripted demon lord appears, or it's going to take a nearly-impossible amount of code refinement to make that happen "naturally" in one world and not in another. 

Besides which, if Toady ever DID try building that programming, it would come out in bits and pieces... during which time players would already be conducting logic experiments on to find all the iterations of the new piece before it was added, exactly as you just said they would do for the pieces being added onto the already-complex spacial simulation.

Hence, the best you're going to get is a moddable system, not some sort of procedurally-generated system with its own emergent behavior. 

(And Toady has said he's on the fence over if he wants spheres to be moddable, at that...)

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.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I really don't have a good grasp of how extensively ToadyOne would like to utilise spheres, and how much they'll ultimately influence the game, but it seems natural to me that spheres might be sortof gathered into a pile, and then drawn from by the gods and god-level powers, at the beginning of the game, and that in that way you could have, say, the high priestess of the dwarf protector goddess 'Axebraider', who has access to spheres A, B, and C, allowing the high priest to cast spells on livestock, fire, and children.

So what kind of spells could the high priestess cast?

Being a goddess of protection, Axebraider would grant protective spells only. 

Also, maybe magic users who get their power from gods have the qualities of casting very powerful spells, since they come from a divine source, but they're strictly limited to just that god's speciality (and whatever spells the god deigns to grant), and the spheres that god holds, or their diametric opposite. 

So our high priestess might cast a spell to protect an open flame from going out in the rain--from a light shower to a deluge to a waterfall--(and possibly even a "rain" of frogs, or possibly not, but definitely not snow, or spilled wine), or protect herself from being burned by normal flames (but not magical fire). She could protect a sheep from becoming lost, or protect them from attacks by wolves (but not dogs). She could additionally protect a single child from kidnapping until such time as they become an adult, or enchant a blade so that would could never cut an immature member of any species, or turn a dragon back into an egg, to name a few possible spells.

These effects could still be easily defeated by an unrelated sphere--the flame could easily be blown out by wind, or snuffed out with a handful of sand, or by any means that isn't rain. Acid would still burn her, as would molten lava. Any other child could be snatched, and any other harm could befall that child. The wielder of the blade could be killed and eaten by baby unicorns, and breaking the egg would release a full-grown dragon (and it would still inevitably hatch), and maybe turn the priestess into an infant at the same moment.

The types of gods each Entity has access to, and what their powers are, and their (starting?)spheres could all be randomly determined at the start of each game.

All the spells in the game, and their effects, should already be completely mapped out ahead of time, and the system itself completely laid out.

The powers of the gods themselves might be semi-randomized, so for example the Dwarfs might have a set of 1 to 5 gods in this game world, each with a single power from power B through power G, and a single god with power A only, while the goblins get 1 to 7 gods with powers B through D, and G through J, and the elves get two gods with a single power from Q through W, and one with three powers from B through Z, and then the spheres would be distributed randomly among the gods, and any other beings or powers. 

There should also be some method for gods and other beings to gain or lose spheres of influence, and these could be considered the greatest of all "treasures".

Wizards, on the other hand, might have to gain their powers by distilling the alchemical essences of magical beings, or finding raw magic (vis?), or by making bargains with, and performing quests for, gods and demons, in situations where their own worshippers are unsuitable, or the risk is too great--priests that the gods trust enough to give them access to spells should be rare, and might not venture far from their temples very often.

That might make for some interesting relationships between your Fortress's religion(s), and any secular magic users attached to it, who might seek access to powers the gods want mortals to access only through worship, or not at all (necromancy might be just one of these "dark paths", and demons, titans, dragons, spirit beasts, or the mightiest of archimages, could be holding some of the most desireable spheres, while your Fortress's gods only got the spheres of flowers and domesticated vermin, which is just great for your  mead industry, but maybe not that much else).

The religions might be hostile to such interlopers, or they might just be wary of them, and willing to use them as pawns in their celestial games.

[Neonivek]

Being a goddess of protection, Axebraider would grant protective spells only

To me if you want to make dieties you have to give them a bit more flexibility as well as expanding them beyond their domains. Yet since this isn't the discussion I'll move on.

As of right now the Minor Races, Sapients who don't have current Civ files and thus don't form societies except in extreme cases, only seem to live as leeches that feed on the waste of civilisations and living in harmony with nature.

I hope that changes in the not so distant future but right now Toady stated he doesn't know what to do with them and doesn't know what role they should take.

Currently the only story with a civilised minor race was Cado's story where he had a child Rhinoboy.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I like to think of gods as personifications of ideas.

If Axebraider is the goddess of protection, then she might also have a great personality, speak fluent Mandarin, DJ on the weekends, feel free to follow her feelings wherever they lead her, and share vegetarian cooking tips on the internet...but when it comes to granting her flock of fanatic worshippers access to the universal majesty of her divine charge over all elements and graces protective, they really should be powers of protection.

She's not the goddess of protection and whatever feels groovy.

I'm not sure what sentients should do, besides either living off of nature and other civilizations, or forming into Entities. What other options are there? Abducted by aliens?