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[Drunken]

This is quite a big suggestion, please don't point out that it is a lot of work and Toady has more important things to do. I just wanted to throw the idea out there and maybe discuss it.

I want to have a tool for dynamically generating worlds in as much detail as possible as a setting for tabletop role-playing games. Dwarf Fortress already does this better than any other software. A few relatively minor changes to the interface and game flow could make it the perfect tool.

Basically I am suggesting a new mode for DMing and storytelling within the DF world. The user would require access to all legends, preferably in as simple a way as possible during play, eg. like the fortress mode access you have to each characters background and skills and personality. The user would also need the ability to spawn creatures and items into the world, to travel instantly anywhere, and to change various settings and variables like attitudes, wounds, date, time, etc. So basically a god mode for adventure mode, or a world roaming version of fortress mode. Kind of a hybrid of the two modes with a few extra features.

I think that the development goals for the near and medium future are all very much in line with this new mode, especially the loosening of single site restrictions in fortress mode. It would also require some tweaks of it's own. If this idea interests people, I would love to see it at least kept in mind as a possible later development.

[RockBiterSon]

I don't really understand how the ability to spawn a bronze colossus in the middle of the human hamlet would add to the game from a roleplaying perspective. I mean, you can allready gen a world and use that as inspiration for a D&D campaign or whatever. That would be a really cool tabletop game, but you don't need to change the game at all to be able to do that. Basically I don't get how adding arena mode powers to adventure or fortress mode relates to storytelling.

Merging dwarf and adventure modes is always cool though, and I can't wait to have an adventurer found a fort, and then years later perhaps taking control if one of the fort's champions to set off on a new adventure.

[NW_Kohaku]

Since you're going to be playing a tabletop game rather than DF, anyway, why would you need Legends in Fortress Mode, when you could just use one of the Legends Viewer programs, instead?

Also, I don't see why you'd want to spawn in new creatures in DF, if you're using it just to generate terrain layouts or histories.

If the point is to have a game make up the terrain for you, but you were still playing a tabletop game, then when you don't like the terrain or where the bronze colossus lives, DF doesn't need to reflect that - just change it in your own telling of the story for the tabletop game. 

[Scoops Novel]

I think you're asking for the ability to play previously tabletop roleplaying on DF (initially on the same computer), and for that, i will shamelessly bump this. Even as it stands, this could be very useful.

[DVNO]

*Quirks brow*

Dwarf Fortress can already do what you're already asking - I should know, I got lazy one night DM'ing and outsourced all that pesky 'Worldbuilding' to DF. It made a great starting point, and generic enough it was easy to fill the fantasy holes.

I think what you are really asking for is a sandbox mode - Arena mode, but on a world scale and unisolated. This may very well happen as a by-product from Toady de-bugging adventure mode. Maybe. It'll never be an intentional bullet point on the dev log, but if the developer also needs to know what would happen if a troll attacks a hamlet, or what would happen if variable X or Y were raised or lowered he would make the tools. Whether you should get even get them is another question.

To quote Yatzee from Zero Punctuation;

But then again, part of the appeal of building is the effort required to gather materials. That eighty-foot golden c##k and balls wouldn't be so satisfyingly turgid if it weren't for the entire continent you had to turn upside-down to find all the ore. And that's what sets it apart from other creativity toys like Garry's Mod. If you can just clap your hands and summon fifty explosive barrels to pile ragdolls around, then the spectacle is as fulfilling as eating your own snot.

Dwarf Fortress is a responsible parent. It knows you'll swiftly get bored of your golden c##k and balls if it just gives you one, so it pays you five dollars a week to wash its car so you can save up and gain an appreciation for value. And when you finally have your golden c##k and balls, you'll love it all the more. Until Dwarf Fortress sends the goblins to demolish it, because you also need to learn that sometimes life will just s##t on you. As it will when your boss finds out what you spent your entire workday on.

You See, If you invent a 'gimmie everything' mode, what's the incentive to play on anything else?

[Scoops Novel]

Oh, you mistake me. Imagine tabletop D&D or hell anything else. Imagine the group huddled around a computer, telling you their actions. There's a good chance DF will be able to accommodate all their actions one day. Use DF to create a world, leave the number crunching up to it, make some NPC's, and suddenly you have a comprehensive world simulator to play in. All you need is the ability to control multiplle adventurer's at once, and mod tools as quickly as possible.

I'm not the only one who's thought that at DF 1.0, tabletop RPG companies could well pay Toady to use his engine?

[Putnam]

Much of the appeal of tabletop RPGs is the living, breathing DM who can make rational decisions. Having DF do the rolls and the decisions for you is kind of losing that appeal.

[Scoops Novel]

Hey now, who says the DM wouldn't control the world? You could write dialogue, create enemies out of the nether, and generally shape the world to your interests, but all the GURPs level simulations are in the hand of DF. More on the lines of a hand-built arena mode, then a completely random world.

On the other hand, one of the big things for me would be having a realistic feedback loop. Every now and then, the system can throw out reactions you weren't expecting, or long-term effects even the GM hadn't come up with, and you could choose whether or not to keep it.

[Gargomaxthalus]

The concept here is starting to look less like having DF give you a frame of reference and more like using DF to play a table top game with more graphical elements than nornal. The "having people crowd around the computer" line seems to have confused people. I'd say to imagine having people on a network or the web using linked copies of DF with one of them having full administrative access being the DM. Now that does sound cool, the thing is that Wizards of the Coast was toying with with and online version of true DnD and that seems to have died so........ well nothing ventured nothing gained so they say.

[Timeless Bob]

Ah.  What the OP may be looking for is a Neverwinter Nights 2 Persistant World based off of a world generated in DF.  Legends mode would be an invaluable resource for updating a persistent game world with continuations of history, allowing PC heroes to experience a "living history" unfold around them.  Toady's update will let us live such an environment by continuing the world generation as we play too.

[Scoops Novel]

Yes, that's more like it. Make your world in df, use the systems, edit where appropriate and voila one of the most fleshed out systems available. Gurps would have nothing on it.