Inspired by this thread. Dwarf Fortress is a free, incredibly well thought out, incredibly low graphics (examples here) real-time strategy game. This is a thread for setting up a game of Dwarf Fortress where each player controls the game for one year and then passes the Fortress off to the next guy to do as they wish while chronicling what happens for the rest of us to read. An absolutely hilarious history of some people doing this can be found in the chronicles of “Boatmurdered” here.
This game was described by one poster as “crack on toast” and in case you still have any doubts as to its level of sublime fantasmacoolity, read this (link gives an error every so often, but should be good).
So, the Rules:
Never give up. One lone starving dwarf can still make a comeback. As the game itself says, “Losing is fun!”
You get from the First of Granite (First month in Spring) of one year to the First of Granite the next year. After that you save the game and pass the save on to the next guy.
No mining of Adamantine (mining Adamantine guarantees the inevitable and irrecoverable destruction of your Fortress). You can take on the demons if you want and are prepared, but don’t touch the metal.
Don’t flood the world. If a flood you create touches the external river, then a bug causes the flood to never recede. You can flood the exterior with lava if you want for a real “scorched earth” policy.
Don’t crush with drawbridges. When a drawbridge comes down it instantly and completely destroys anything under it and leaves no remains. This is a easy way to destroy incoming armies or demons. I consider it cheating though. There are plenty of other ways of drowning/burning your enemies, and that way you can keep their stuff.
First thing you do when you take over is name a dwarf after yourself. That is you. If your named dwarf dies before your turn is over, then your turn is done and the next player finishes your turn and then takes his own. I suggest not making him front-line military.
You have one week to play out your year. If you finish sooner, that is great, the next player will get to start sooner; but if you take over a week, then save what you have and put it online. The next player gets to finish your turn and his own. We want to keep this moving.
Keep us updated. I will create another thread this evening and start recording what I have done. Make up a distinct personality for your dwarf to make the chronicle more interesting.
That is about it. You can get the game for free here. I am using an adjusted object tileset created by Dystopian Rhetoric available here (which also uses the tileset by Herrbog). This makes things a little nicer visually.
A good primer is available at the beginning of the Boatmurdered chronicles here. Further info on how to play can be found at the wiki here. This is what I used to learn how to play. I highly suggest you play out a couple of years on your own before your turn comes up. This game is amazingly detailed and incredibly complex. It takes a long time to get the intricacies of it and I am nowhere near there myself.
If you want to play, just let me know in this thread and we will make a list. As soon as your turn starts, let me know that you have begun or after a day or two we will pass it on to the next person in line. Feel free to ask questions here, get suggestions on what to do next, make comments on how things are going, or make suggestions based on other games of DF you are playing. The other thread will be for in-character discussion. Basically the guy playing and comments from previous players whose dwarfs are still alive.
Oh, and anyone know of a good place to host the saved game files? When you use them, just delete the save folder in your game directory and replace it with the downloaded one.
Not like it’s probably going to get that far on a first game anyway, but once you get the king he starts mandating admantine production, and killing for not following the mandate. So once he shows up you are eventually doomed. I don’t know if there is any specific task you can avoid to prevent him from coming if you want to grow continuously.
I’d also suggest making sure you start in an easier type of land. wolves and foxes are much easier to deal with than trolls and werewolves.
I chose an “Untamed Wilds” in, I think, Tropical Scrublands. Untamed Wilds is the most aggressive version of a neutral map (not good or evil). I was hoping to get a heard of elephants, and this is the third map I chose, but on all of them I just got Warthogs and Giant Tigers. Oh well, is it possible elephants will show up later if they aren’t there in the first year?
Oh, and my defenses are fricken awesome, complete with “drowning room”. I am not worried too much about attacks.
Theres always my solution: set up a nice flooding mechanism in most nobles rooms and the moment they start making unreasonable demands have yourself a good ole revolution.
Hehe “Sure your majesty we’ll get right on that. While you’re waiting why don’t you have a nice frosty brew and stand on that big X in the room over there. And go ahead and lock the door, we wouldn’t want anyone disturbing you.”
I usually play straight-up and try to keep everybody alive.
New Rule:
9) No King: He needs an expensive road in order to show up, so do not improve the road (this should not prevent you from getting anything else). Unfortunately I have already put some nice bridges there, but I do not think it is enough for him. The person who finishes the road should use uncut cheap stone.
Is there some primer to this game? A way to make a small, functional fortress? I can’t get my dwarves to do anything. They’re being killed off by unicorns one by one…
stick me down as a reserve - i’ve got the time but i’m still a relative novice at the game (haven’t really dabbled in anything beyond basic survival skills yet!)
I’m reading the boatmurder game after hearing about the game in your threads. I haven’t played yet so i plan on trying a couple test games to see how I do and reading how Treatykisses does
OK, I am done! Here is the save file. List of players:
flightdone
tanstaafl
Omi no Kami
wolfman
Revenant Threshold
garius
tanstaafl, you are up next. I will try PM and emailing you dependent on what you have made available. Just make a note here that you are on it in the next 24 hours. If you don’t have time right now, let me know and I will bump you down one slot.
I think things went well, if a little boring the first year. My population is small but ecstatic. Good luck.
Sure I’ll join. And I have a question: how can I get peasants to start doing something useful, like mining or something? I’m still in the mystified stage and waiting to see how long I can survive. My miners are working, but I have a lot of idle laborers.
Naturally each dwarf will only do a subset of tasks. If none of those tasks are available he will sit on his ass. Unless you changes your settings everyone has all the hauling tasks turned on, as well as those for which they have some skill. If you want someone to do something that they have no skill at you have to turn the task on.
Hit v to give you unit info and then highlight the dwarf in question. Hit p for preferences and then l for labor and you will see all the jobs that they will do. Turn on the ones you want him to do. This is necessary when retasking a dwarf, turning them from a miner to a brewer for example.
It is also good to go to your important dwarfs and just turn off all the hauling jobs so they stick to the big stuff.
