Dwarf Fortress: Tales of Promise and Failure

Dwarf Fortress (Or:  Armok, God of Blood volume II, Dwarf Fortress) is a game that appeals to me much in the way Nethack appeals to both me and to people with sick senses of humor like me (but who, unlike me, are obsessive and Autistic.)

Namely, it's a game about losing.  Losing in surprising and horrifying ways.  Ways that are also funny.

The Aspergers-afflicted shut-ins who play this game refer to this aspect of the game as "Fun."  "Fun" being a sarcastic way to describe grim failure.  Most of the work the creators of this game have done in creating Dwarf Fortress is to create ever more varied ways for you to lose.

This game has levels of complexity that dwarf (fuck you) supposedly complex games like Civilization and Master of Orion.  It revels in demonstrating to you how intricately it can create an entire planet of dwarves, elves, goblins and humans.  In a matter of minutes it will randomly generate hundreds of different biospheres that rate landscapes based on terrain, local wildlife, vegetation, geology (including dozens of types of rocks, minerals and ores that make up the dozens of subterranean levels), danger level, local civilizations and, of course, how blatantly evil the surroundings are.  Whereas in Civ your biggest concern is which river you plop your first city next to, in Dwarf Fortress you have to worry about whether your first Dwarf settlers will be instantly surrounded and devoured by hell rats.

And, even better, the biggest Autistic masochists can play the game with its original graphic options.  Meaning, there are no graphics.  Everything is in fucking ASCII format, so a dwarf is represented by a different-colored happy face, an arrow is a <, a dog is a d, a monkey is an m, an elephant is an E, and a horrendous hell-beast is a D.  If you care about your sanity at all, you can download a tileset that somewhat attempts to represent the world in a more convincing way than a lazy bunch of letters and punctuation marks.  You'll also turn the default music off IMMEDIATELY and play some internet radio instead (I recommend either classical music, or dubstep.)

After a random world is generated, the game will then spend about 10 minutes generating an entire HISTORY of that world, including notable historical figures, events, heroes, cities, tomes and legends.  It's sort of retarded and pointless, but the game likes to flaunt this aspect of itself.

You start Oregon Trail-style with about 8 dwarves showing up in your chosen area.  The lives of these brave few midgets now rest in your incapable human hands.  As in Nethack, there are shortcut key-presses to remember, menus to delve through, jobs to assign, food supplies to manage, rock to dig through, labors to assign and train, structures to build, caverns to carve, smooth and decorate, and lots and lots of time to waste.

Over time more dwarves will stupidly join your doomed civilization (And don't kid yourself, it's doomed.)  Your society will swell through accumulation of useless, stupid Dwarves with titles like "Cheesemaker" and "Miller" who steadfastly refuse to make cheese and mill, instead choosing to drink dwarf beer and fuck and make useless baby dwarves who instantly become targets for goblin pedophiles.

I don't want to list every way in which your Dwarves can be brutally maimed over the course of their adventures, but here are a few of my favorites that I've either encountered directly or read about from Autistic people posting online.

-A Goblin kidnapper appears in your fortress, luring you into sending all of your poorly-trained militia after him.  Soon after they leave the safety of the fortress they are set upon by well-armed Goblin raiders who kill or cripple your soldiers, leaving the rest of your Dwarves to be murdered in their bedrooms.

-Human traders enter your area, bringing with them valuable items for trade as well as some Yaks.  One of the Yaks goes insane immediately after appearing in your territory.  The Yak tramples the humans and goes on a months-long rampage through your fields and into your fortress itself, killing about 4/5ths of your Dwarves.

-Your Dwarves dig too greedily and too deep, attracting Cave Trolls, Albino Alligators, Imps, Tentacle Demons and Forgotten Winged Poisoned Elder Snails.

-Your Dwarves go insane through lack of clean water and turn on each other.  Lack of laws and prisons mean that murderers go unpunished, and bad feelings send your society into a spiral of revenge killings.

-Herds upon herds of elephants roam through your lands, stomping your Dwarves into paste and camping the bodies of the dead.  They feast on any other dwarves who idiotically try to loot the items left behind, or even those who attempt to bury their fallen comrades.

-You choose the least evil (and therefore happiest and most magical) area to place your fortress...and your settlers are murdered by Unicorns.


More stories await those brave enough to read through more text than the game itself in my future updates.