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[ChaosMage]

Having lost my fort in a huge riot of unhappy dwarves I have been thinking of ways to make them happier. Also making dwarves who are resting stop going insane. So far I have two different units for entertainers and both could be used.

1. Musicians: They play music in the meeting halls and provide a happy thought over an area to anyone who listens to it. Better instruments and skill make more happiness. However, if they play badly they can make an unhappy thought over the area because bad music just makes people mad.

2. Jesters: They provide single targets with multiple happy thoughts using a variety of jokes and gags. They can be assigned to people or they can just wander around entertaining random people. Perhaps some nobles can demand them as part of their retinue or in one of their rooms. If they're assigned to an injured person they make them happy all the time which keeps them from going nuts.

3. Actors: They could give plays which give a large happiness boost with a long duration but take a lot of preperation and setup time.

Another idea is that using the same joke or song over and over reduces the amount of happiness it produces. Making more songs or jokes/gags/props etc could be part of an entertainment workshop. Perhaps the construction of musical instruments could be moved here as well.

These unit types would make it easier to keep large populations happy and keep them from going crazy and murdering everything. Probably it would work to have a new Entertainer profession with skills Music, Acting, Jocularity, Playwriting, Songwriting and some kind of joke making skill. Also maybe include some specific skills for making musical instruments and setting up stages/costumes for plays.

[Rozenbuddy]

this is a good idea, a happy dwarf is a non-maniac dwarf! and this helps from when you get "**** child has thrown a tantrum" crap loads of times when tons of dwarfs die from an invasion, it could also be nice when the economy comes in dwarfs can hire jesters and or pay to attend plays (conducted by actors) or even attend a musical concert(played by musicians. it would also give instruments a purpose other than trading.

[Luke_Prowler]

It also gives a use for social skills.

[Granite26]

I've been thinking about this...  If things get more 'interesting' and 'fun', we're going to need more happy thoughts.  Entertainers are a good one.  Presents too?

[Dee]

 I like this idea, also this would be good in adventure mode going to tavens you could see entertainers playing.

[Zeroarmorclone]

And strippers? 

[Sizik]

And strippers? 

We already have that. Just make a meeting hall in your barracks and make your wrestlers off-duty.

[Grimlocke]

Oh yeah, nothing like public nude mud wresting to get over the death of your wife.

I like this suggestion though, it could be merged with the idea of writing books into a suggestion for dwarves (and other civilisations) to have culture.

[Vester]

Oh yeah, nothing like public nude mud wresting to get over the death of your wife.

I like this suggestion though, it could be merged with the idea of writing books into a suggestion for dwarves (and other civilisations) to have culture.

As it is, the entirety of dwarven written history is, apparently, engraved in stone. Except for the records. Those are woven into the bookkeeper's beard.

[Murphy]

As it is, the entirety of dwarven written history is, apparently, engraved in stone.

No, there's also part of it in item decoration, sewing and coin images.

[Craftling]

And beards.

[Athisus]

As a supplement to this idea, one could also implement heckling. This would make dwarves with low social skills who are genuinely not entertaining still have a use. A dwarf and everyone within earshot could get a mildly happy thought from making fun of the entertainer, but the entertainer would get a devastatingly bad thought from being made fun of, possibly moving to kill the instigator in extremely successful heckling.

[Pilsu]

Killing seems over the top but it might encourage fistfights and grudges

[Vattic]

As much as I dislike the economy I'd like to see a jester receive a coin or two from the dwarves he entertains. A potentially quite odd type of adventurer to play as could be a travelling entertainer.

[Osmosis Jones]

From the Dev log, musicians are planned and may even be in this release 

07/19/2009: The training update is underway. Things should be quite a bit more organized now, as outlined in the list, with a few different activities for you to watch as the critters are training in the barracks. The framework for meetings and parties is going to be merged with the new training framework. This should allow dwarves at parties, for instance, to do single and group activities like playing instruments or dancing a bit more easily than it otherwise would have been. I'm not sure if I'll throw in any of that this time around, but it's possible, since there should be some very low-hanging fruit there.