Jon, you painted a clear picture of Dwarf Fortress with your words. I have read hundreds of forum posts about the game and the famous hand-illustrated after action reports but they never managed to explain the actual core experience of the game. After hearing your talk I feel I really understand the game for the first time.
Reading and hearing about games like Dwarf Fortress being played inspires the same dread and fascination in me as watching the land divers of Vanuatu or people eating Hákarl. It’s very interesting but unlikely to be imitated.
You can tell when a dwarf is angry – a red exclamation point flashes over his tile. (If he’s thirsty, it’s light blue; hungry, brown; sleepy, grey).
Clothes do matter, once they start to wear out – a dwarf gets unhappy thoughts from wearing rags, and happy ones from the particular fabrics (and colors too, I think) that he likes, as well as from shopping if he’s got money (“XXX made a satisfying acquisition recently.”)
I’m pretty sure dwarfs don’t die of old age, but pets definitely do.
Now: you’ve never been in a battle? No goblins? How is that even possible? I’ve never NOT been invaded by goblins. There must be some trigger you’re not hitting.
I once caught one in a cage. I am given to understand that these can be trained and then used against captured goblins in a coliseum-type affair, but I never figured that one out because I accidentally flooded that fortress trying to force a river underground so I could have a nice, safe, enclosed fishing room for my fisherdwarfs.
My favorite dwarf fortress shenanigan: I found that if you choose to build a fortress in a very cold climate with an aquifer, because of the way temperature works, tapping the aquifer produces water, but the water immediately freezes into ice if exposed to the surface. On the other hand, underground water is insulated and stays liquid.
The EUREKA! moment was noticing that you could manipulate this by creating an underwater reservoir, then ordering dwarves to transfer water by bucket to an aboveground location. The water would stay water while in the bucket, but when it was dumped, the physics engine would suddenly go “Oh! Right! It’s cold up here!” and create a solid block of ice instead. The great part is that the ice can be tunneled, mined, polished, and engraved just like the stone you tunnel into.
I started with a gigantic ice roadway formed by exposing the aquifer bed in a huge patch. The aquifer was two levels, so I tunneled it out in a U-shape so there was an icy road between short cliffs of ice, and tunneled into the cliffs to make tombs for my dwarves’ final resting places, with glass statues set at the surface on top of each filled tomb. Every step of the roadway was engraved with the history and myths of the dwarven people!
Then I made bucket brigades haul up unfrozen water and just stack ice on top of ice in gigantic pillars, with the plan of making cross-sections and creating an entire PALACE OF FROZEN CRYSTAL! The first pillar I built was just to test the idea, so I used it as an execution pillar for captured goblins - I’d have the dwarves bring the cage to the top then fling the captive off the pillar, plummeting to a grisly death 20 stories below.
Of course, there were accidents along the way, like when a liaison from Mountainhome was following around my Mayor, who was also the fort’s best miner, as he was mining out the roadway. Urist McLiaison was standing on the wrong patch of floor as it was mined out, and dropped into the aquifer just as it filled up - and turned into ice, instantly killing the diplomat. Whoops!
Another great podcast! If I had a complaint, I think that Jon undersold the amount of complexity in Dwarf Fortress. For example, when Tom asked if dwarves could have children, it reminded me of a story I read where a female dwarf went crazy one day and attacked another dwarf in the mess hall. He was wounded, and she went back and locked herself in her room. Upon examining the dwarf, it turned out that she had been upset about a recent miscarriage. I’d say that’s a bit more detailed than, “Yeah, dwarves can have kids.”
The game also tracks an insane amount of detail about each character, and supposedly all of that information has an effect on gameplay. You can look at a character and see his bio: “Torben is somewhat happy. He slept in a drafty room last night. He admired a fine door today. He likes malachite, rubies, fine beer, cats that purr, and wolves for their loyalty.” I can’t even make this stuff up. You can read more detail here.
Also, before the game starts, the entire world is generated, including an extensive history of battles, invasion, and major world events. This can take over twenty minutes! And the crazy thing is, you can read through these events. In detail. Here is an example of historical events, and here is detail about a battle.
Let’s see, what else…? The level of simulation in this game is just insane. For example, here’s a section from the development notes:
07/06/2010: ISo, combat fixes. Wounds with items stuck in them won’t bleed perpetually anymore, and the “major arteries” tag now works – this includes the heart which is beyond major and beyond an artery. It should always gush out nicely when it is broken open now. My test for that was to set up two lines of 11 crossbowmen each and just wait for a good shot, but the heart wound ended up being a guy getting shot in the arm, dropping his crossbow, running over to the opposing line, and jabbing his stack of bolts into somebody’s chest.
I have no words. Just read the development notes, then pick your jaw up off the floor.
I am in tears just from reading that. Mostly from the epic stories of Quatoria running down goblins and Falcon-Punching them hundreds of feet across the ice.
Hah, I bet that makes breaching the aquifer trivial. No need to do a cave in or system of pumps, just channel out a shaft to the surface, channel into the aquifer, and then mine the ice after it freezes.
Does the water remain frozen if you roof it over? I know that farm patches are considered “surface” once exposed to the sun, even if you build a roof later. On the other hand, Windmills require that the central square have access to the sky, roofing it over stops the wind. So which approach does the ice take?
I really need to play this game. The way you describe how your own stories are created during the game reminds me somewhat of a Fall From Heaven II game I was playing with a friend. At some point my hero died, but instead of reloading the game we left him dead to add to the narrative and described in words how he died. Of course, the difference is that we would reload if something TOO annoying happened, and its almost inevitable that we win.
My jaw dropped really when I listened to the podcast, because I’d always assumed that Dwarf Fortress was just a very ambitious rougelike. (Not sure how I’d gotten that impression ;) ). And as I’ve played my share of rougelikes, I didn’t have much interest in poking into it. But as Jon explains, its more an amazing world builder. Now I understand, and am excitedly working my way through the tutorial.
Any newcomer’s foray into DF should start with this podcast.
