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[SixOfSpades]

Make a Dwarf Fortress calendar for 2015. Each month would have its own picture: January could show a dazzling sunrise over a northern glacier, April could be a blossoming alpine meadow, August a beautiful forest glade with animals peeking through the trees, November a bountiful harvest-time, with dwarves gathering fruit and their children playing.

All quite tastefully rendered in full-color, high-definition ASCII.
Your coworkers will have no idea WTF is wrong with you.

[Romegypt]

Yes please, make people wonder what language I can read that they can't!

[Witty]

I'd happily pay for something like that, but I doubt Toady would ever make any real merchandise outside of the ASCII stories/crayon drawings.

[Chevaleresse]

I'd buy a DF calendar.

[Splint]

And of course, each month bearing the proper DF Term (though setting it up for our months would mean Moonstone is the first month of the year, since Granite seems to correlate with March.)

[SixOfSpades]

And of course, each month bearing the proper DF Term

I'd be good with that, though of course giving each month only 28 days would defeat the purpose of having a calendar.
 . . . Unless, of course, your purpose is to REALLY make people think you're nuts.

But whatever you do, DON'T let it slip to your boss that dwarves take breaks only a few times a month. The in-game demands from nobles are already bad enough, we mustn't let them spill out into meatspace.

[Splint]

And of course, each month bearing the proper DF Term

I'd be good with that, though of course giving each month only 28 days would defeat the purpose of having a calendar.
 . . . Unless, of course, your purpose is to REALLY make people think you're nuts.

But whatever you do, DON'T let it slip to your boss that dwarves take breaks only a few times a month. The in-game demands from nobles are already bad enough, we mustn't let them spill out into meatspace.

I meant the names of the months, but only having 28 days works too if you are shooting for making people think you've gone mad.

[Dirst]

I think having a mini-epic of Threetoe stories would make an excellent calendar.  The ASCII art nice and prominent, with the narrative small enough you have to come in and look.

The obvious starting point would be 12 stories on a wall calendar, but a nice desk version bound in "minotaur leather" encrusted with "gems" (or whatever is appropriate to the story) would be awesome.

Not sure Toady is up to pushing merchandise for his baby yet, but if this happened I'm sure they'd sell.

A completely different epic could appear in crayon drawings, but that wouldn't be nearly as geeky.

[GavJ]

Just ask him if you can make your own and donate 75% to DF or something. probably be okay with it.

Technically I don't think you'd even need permission, since sunrises, etc. aren't even in the game and thus wouldn't be copyrighted as a collection of ASCII characters, and the characters themselves aren't. If you used the month names or said dwarf fortress on the front then that's a different story. But you should be able to do a normal calendar with earth months but fan ASCII art.

[Dirst]

Just ask him if you can make your own and donate 75% to DF or something. probably be okay with it.

Technically I don't think you'd even need permission, since sunrises, etc. aren't even in the game and thus wouldn't be copyrighted as a collection of ASCII characters, and the characters themselves aren't. If you used the month names or said dwarf fortress on the front then that's a different story. But you should be able to do a normal calendar with earth months but fan ASCII art.

Unless the person(s) selling the calendar composed all of the ASCII art personally, the original authors need to give permission.  You can have copyright over a dozen or so ASCII characters so long as they represent creative output (i.e., aren't just spelling a common word).  Think of it as an even more inscrutable ee cummings poem.

Not that I think it would be hard to get the permission, just that it is needed.

[Harken]

Make a Dwarf Fortress calendar for 2015. Each month would have its own picture: January could show a dazzling sunrise over a northern glacier, April could be a blossoming alpine meadow, August a beautiful forest glade with animals peeking through the trees, November a bountiful harvest-time, with dwarves gathering fruit and their children playing.

All quite tastefully rendered in full-color, high-definition ASCII.
Your coworkers will have no idea WTF is wrong with you.

No I have a better idea, why not do a calendar of fan art with a mixture of player quotes/stories. All profits going to support DF dev.

[SixOfSpades]

Unless the person(s) selling the calendar composed all of the ASCII art personally, the original authors need to give permission.

Copyright issues aside, for the images I wasn't thinking "ASCII art" in the regular sense, where you stick a regular image into a program and it spits out the sequence of colored symbols that best approximates the original image. I was thinking of each month showing how various calendar-type settings . . . such as a charming, quaint little village . . . would be represented in DF. So, where a "regular" calendar would show a bunch of Thomas Kinkade-style cobblestone cottages with thatched roofs, and a little milkman making his rounds in the distance, the DF calendar would be an almost-unedited screenshot taken directly from the game (Adventurer mode would be better for getting sunrises): Mostly black, with some big brown squares, and some pixelated smiley faces, both inside & outside the squares. And probably some green squiggles of dog vomit.

As for copyright issues, I think as long as we don't do anything that would offend Bill Watterson, then we wouldn't offend Tarn Adams, either. Meaning: As long as the artist's creation is not used to make a profit by anyone but the actual artist, and as long as the merchandise stays true to the artist's original vision, it's all good. (So, if you pay money for any merchandise depicting Calvin and/or Hobbes, you're essentially flipping off their creator. If Calvin is peeing on / praying to something, that's even worse.)

No I have a better idea, why not do a calendar of fan art with a mixture of player quotes/stories. All profits going to support DF dev.

With so much good fan art & Urist stories flying around, that sounds more like a daily calendar than a monthly. 100% of the profits should be donated to Toady and/or used to purchase the rights to this image (or something equally badass) to be the game's official icon.

[EDIT:] Added the thing about it being a straight-down screenshot. [/EDIT]

[Bumber]

Considering the sunset mentioned, I was picturing a perspective view drawn out in ASCII art but with objects represented by their DF tiles.

You'd draw out a reference landscape, then convert the terrain to slope and ground characters of appropriate color (might go outside the default colors for clarity.) Trees turn into DF2014 trees as might be seen from the side. Creatures turn into their character symbols afar, but might be crafted in ASCII up close (e.g., a dwarf's nose of slopes, his eyes dwarf symbols, pupils masterwork, his teeth boulders, and his beard cloth/thread symbols. He's eating a plump helmet made from little plump helmets.) A fort stands on the hill crafted of various wall symbols. A sun of yellow masterwork symbols rises in the distance, with the empty space tiles of the sky bathing in the colors of dawn on the horizon.

[Dirst]

Great, everyone had a different thing in mind when saying ASCII art.  I meant the dozen or so characters that serve as a title and cryptic illustration for a Three-Toe-style story.  Or actual Three-Toe stories if the dev team is on board.

[Bizzledorf]

I would like one with a collage of Tody's crayon drawings.  I always loved those things.