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[NW_Kohaku]

From the FoTF thread...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well time to disregard the current conversion and blurt out a random question.

Will there be any interactions between wanderers and your fort? The ability to set up an inn for them to stay in would be cool. Maybe expand thieves to pretend to be travelers at first?

That sounds slightly amusing... but what will wanderers do at your inns?  Do they purchase food and drink?  If they "purchase" it, how do they pay, because players may not want coins...

If players decide to just bump off the travellers (and trust me, that's exactly what a great many players are going to do just by default, especially if they don't do anything seriously positive, and may contain thieves) will there be any negative consequence for doing so?

This could be useful if fleshed out, but... it needs said fleshing.

Travelers could be a source of happiness for your dwarves. "Was entertained by a foreign story recently"; "Received news about the Mountainhome recently"

Also, once a more complicated culture model is introduced, it could be the best way to stay connected to the outside world.

Travelers could always have an ability to sell some of their used gear to either you (High quality steel weapons for example) or sell some crafts into the internal fortress economy selling directly to shopkeepers. makes the fortress appear a little more alive and allows shops to stock some more unusual crafts and things instead of nothing but the same rope reed amulets the fortress has been cranking out for years.  Then the traveler buys some food and such using the fortress coin (or far more likely the fortress credit) he got from the shopkeeper.

If the adventurer enjoyed his stay and was well taken care of, when off site expeditions get implemented, the traveler could tell you of some ore he came across in his travels.  At which point you could send a miner or two off map with a wagon for a season or two and he'll come back with a wagonful of ore.  Allowing more workable amounts of offsite ore or large amounts of sand or rare gems to be obtained.  Which can help with impossible mandates.

It could even be expanded further, for example allowing you to pay high skill mercenaries and adventurers to help defend your fortress or train soldiers for a year or two, in trade for some excess gear and board for the duration.  An adventurer would probably kill for even your spare crappy low quality adamantine gear.  Let them hasten your soldier training or shore up your defenses for it.  It's just taking up space in the stockpile anyway.

Heh, suddenly, I'm reminded of that talk about contracting out work and "Majesty"...  Travellers are now miniature-caravans and also mercenaries you can hire to loot dungeons or slay dragons, if you post a high enough reward for the behavior?

But how do you trade with a traveller?  Do you set up a store and post what you'll accept as payment?  Or do you have to go into an individual caravan trade screen for each and every random hobo who walks into your tavern?

It would also be interesting if they decided to stay at your fort for a while. You'd have people not under your control running around. Yes I think the benefits should be high and the downsides high as well. Yes they should have an impact on your economy and yes they should have an impact on your dwarves happiness. But they could also raise crime. (bar fights, theft, ect...) This would make the guard far more interesting. However to prevent them from being annoying players could simply opt out of them by not building an inn. Then very few travelers would pass by. Maybe a few family and friends from the mountainhomes would come to visit but human vagabonds wouldn't bother. It would just be nice for your fort to feel less isolated.

Heh, suddenly, I'm reminded of that talk about contracting out work and "Majesty"...  Travellers are now miniature-caravans and also mercenaries you can hire to loot dungeons or slay dragons, if you post a high enough reward for the behavior?

I was actually thinking of majesty...and no. Trading with randoms could be done by the fort but it would be nice if dwarves would take initiative and trade themselves.

So then, I'll probably reformat this into a more relevant OP later if this gains traction, but for now it's just starting the thread.

Threads that have potentially related themes:

Dwarven Imperialism - about the upcoming changes with the new army arc, and potential ability to have direct command over worldmap armies and order the construction of roads and other worldmap featurs (potentially influencing the traffic in and out of your city)

Class Warfare - about revising the social structure of fortresses so that you have reason to be concerned with the quality of life for your dwarves, and introduce many more luxuries for your dwarves to use.

Thoughts On Technology - about introducing long-term changes to technologies, which may be heavily influenced by notions like individual visitors brining in new ideas from afar.

A Pleb For Civility - about differences between "country" and "city" citizens.

[NW_Kohaku]

Reserved for potential future needs.

[Flaede]

Like I said over on the FoTF thread, I want to see where this goes.

[existent]

possible traveler types:
Bard (like the "Was entertained by a foreign story recently" suggestion)
Adventurers (like the "pay high skill mercenaries and adventurers to help defend your fortress or train soldiers for a year or two" suggestion)
Migrant Passerby's (These guys are like migrants, except they just show up at your fort to chill en route to elsewhere)
Foreign Tourists (other races, that could impart some knowledge for a fee (IE, elves could teach better bow techniques, which improves the quality of all future bows made)
Saboteurs (like the thieves mentioned, with the added ability to destroy a workshop/pull levers/general sabotage by a rival group, etc)
Traders (could replace current caravans- several smaller traders rather than three big ones. Each could specialize in a certain ware- instead of only getting a reduced quantity of what current caravans bring now, these would bring, say, exclusively weapons, or food, etc)

[Flaede]

I wasn't thinking that they'd have specific Statuses and titles. I thought wanderers would act based on their temperaments and prior training. More fodder for the Personality File each critter has.

[ZebioLizard2]

I think what existent was posting was like what some of them could do when they are here, like some of the musical inclined would entertain with music/dance, or those interested in dwarf culture might pay to buy trinkets and the like.

You could even have one of your badass adventurers visit from time to time.

I like this entire idea however.

[Andeerz]

Hooray for the ideas, and perhaps just as importantly, the oh so awesome alliteration that is the title of the thread.  <3

[Quarterblue]

Sounds cool. Also, you could be able to assign a certain amount of booze and food to the inn. The quality of the inn and the created wealth would attract more travellers, while dangerous surroundings such as Forgotten Beasts, zombies and skeletal carp would reduce the amount of travellers, but increase the skill of the remaining ones. And at the inn screen you could have a list of all the adventurers present in the inn. You could ask them to tell stories, trade away your artifacts and food and booze for valuable gear, hire them to kill some FB or HFS, hire them to train your military or even imprison them and seize all their valuable equiment (but travellers would be less likely to come). You would need social skills to convince them to do stuff, maybe they would have moods just like merchants. And they could be fully integrated to your fortress if they are very pleased.

It would be some serious choice to make: on the one hand, when you open an inn, you get many helpful travellers - on the other hand, they will eat and drink all your supplies, they need to be given beds, they need to be taken care of if you don't want them to leave, and your fortress could very well starve to death and have tantrum spirals because everything good and edible is being used by the strangers.

[Acanthus117]

This could pave the way for advanced adventure mode interactions with towns!

[loose nut]

possible traveler types:
Bard (like the "Was entertained by a foreign story recently" suggestion)
Adventurers (like the "pay high skill mercenaries and adventurers to help defend your fortress or train soldiers for a year or two" suggestion)
Migrant Passerby's (These guys are like migrants, except they just show up at your fort to chill en route to elsewhere)
Foreign Tourists (other races, that could impart some knowledge for a fee (IE, elves could teach better bow techniques, which improves the quality of all future bows made)
Saboteurs (like the thieves mentioned, with the added ability to destroy a workshop/pull levers/general sabotage by a rival group, etc)
Traders (could replace current caravans- several smaller traders rather than three big ones. Each could specialize in a certain ware- instead of only getting a reduced quantity of what current caravans bring now, these would bring, say, exclusively weapons, or food, etc)

A few others:
Fugitives (causing tensions with a neighboring civ, if not given up to their authorities)
Refugees (just a drain, testing the ahaha compassion of the player - they may or may not move on after a couple of years)
Priests (who try to convert your dwarves)
Relatives (of your migrants; happy/ angry thought from seeing them)
Nobles (treat them well, piss them off, dump them in magma for foreign relations Fun; obviously they want gifts and nice guest quarters)
- also, the dwarven King should definitely visit before he moves in

[Urist McOverlord]

How about having "traders" type people function as a sort of revolving shop, for the economy? Your trade caravans would meet at a "market" area, and after you declare trade to be "open" (ensuring that the general fortress gets first dibs) the populace can go buy what they want. It'd add a good bit more depth, and get more interesting stuff floating around the fortress. Of course this only kicks in with the economy.

Also, I like the idea of having a bunch of different traders replace the current huge caravans. Maybe reduce micro by being able to tell the broker to buy X steel murdersticks of exceptional or higher quality, and make him smart enough to trade whatever goods you have pre-marked for trade up to a value that they'll accept, without going insanely over.

Also, how about allowing the player to post a "bounty" on the inn, so that you can send the random adventurers out to kill some forgotten beast troubling your caverns, or even out in the world. Greater bounties equal better-armed people out trying to meet them.

All-in-all, this sounds like a great way to intermix the fortress with the rest of the world, something that is severely lacking.

[Brandon816]

...
Foreign Tourists (other races, that could impart some knowledge for a fee (IE, elves could teach better bow techniques, which improves the quality of all future bows made)
...

I'm not sure you want to simply improve the quality of the objects themselves. Maybe they could actually impart that knowledge with available dwarves in a manner similar to military training.

You could pay them based on how much they teach (xp gained) and dwarves taught. The initial deal would cover the max amount of dwarves that can attend and for how long they will be taught. After the deal is made Dwarves could be selected from a list and be "activated" to go learn as soon as they finish their current job and aren't needing food, water/alcohol, or sleep.

The lesson would start either after the number of attending dwarves has reached the maximum set in the deal, a certain amount of time has passed from the deal being made, or the player has given the go ahead to start teaching the deal. In regards to the latter two possibilities, unused slots could or could not be refunded. Maybe it could be either, and this could depend on the the individual teacher's personality or whether or not an extra percentage fee was paid in order to refund unused slots.

In the case of refunds, you would go into a trade menu with the amount of value refunded and can rebuy whatever you had sold them for the lesson.

This mechanic could also be used for most of those roles, with each teaching what they know. The value of the goods given in exchange for the services could also depend on the role of the teacher, value increasing for stuff they want/need and decreasing for the stuff they don't want/need. An adventurer would want basic supplies like food, water/alcohol, rope, etc., a mercenary would want armor and weapons, a trader would want goods in the category they trade in, a bard would want instruments and high quality clothing, and a tourist would want crafts (souvenirs).

[Socializator]

This seems to be a very interesting idea, nice way how to interconnect the, now isolated, fortress with the rest of the world. One even might want to pursue a "hotel fortress", known for its great services.
This also brings a new job possibilities in hospitality area for dwarfs (both males and... females)

------------
minor details
1/ I would be careful about what all should be possible to do with travelers, or to be more precise, what all they would request. e.g. I would not like to add boose and food to Inn manually, assign bad manually for every incoming traveler etc...
But I assume noone really wants

2/ Also the idea of having lots of small traders instead of 1-3 per year today. While the idea itself is nice, I think that it would lead to less enjoyable gameplay - now I have to enter the trade screen and trade just few time per year, more or less being able to buy anything I want. But if would need to do that dozen(s) of time, searching for stuff I need, just because those small merchants dont carry enough stuff with them, I would get pretty annoyed...

[Areyar]

with regards to beds, I'd suggest using the same mechanism that hospitals use: zoning.
That way you could zone at two different locations and have beds designated for travellers not in the dininghall of the inn.
I'd expect ravelling to make much noise, drunk tourists certainly are loud.

For booze and food, I'd say a stockpile inside the zone would work (allow quality and type parameters), otherwise an innkeeper could determine the stocks required. (not dissimilar to bookkeeper, but also not in the nobles screen)

for trading...I'd prefer to let them act as temporary shops rather than small caravans, they could gather at a social gathering place, preferably a well or meetinghall and allow local dwarves to buy goods.
OTOH you might want to trade with them officially, then send your appraiser to a depot and traders should gather there. You'd need a way to select which trader to trade with though.

Having minted coins could be a prerequisite to attracting/buying from traders.
Other visitors might pay in foreign coins.
Paying with coinage should certainly be cheaper relatively to bartering.
(I'd love to coins to be more integrated with the economy, rather than just archeological curiosities)

[Socializator]

Additionally, this whole mechanic would encourage to build a real army, instead of trap maze and locking yourself up for a year. I can see that people not getting in might be not so problematic, but trapped tourists would probably try to get out - or at least do some mess around So fortress guard would be more useful as well.
It really seems that this idea fits nicely into current DF, being interconnected with lot of stuff which is already in there, not just being isolated functionality