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[cibbuano]

Recently, there was a forum thread called 'And then there was ONE', which gave me the idea for a Dwarf Fortress challenge: The Agatha Christie "And Then There Were None" Challenge.

Objective: To recreate the world's best selling English murder mystery using Dwarves. The story: 10 dwarves are stuck on a grand estate on an island, with each of them getting murdered, one by one.

Method:Create a fortress consisting of a grand, magnificent dining room, 10 bedchambers, a kitchen, a backyard filled with trees and a woodshed. The fortress is to be an island, so it should be walled and protected by a moat.

A single bridge can connect the fortress to the 'mainland', where you can have a trade depot, just to trade for enough food to survive the game.

The dining room should be loaded with masterworks, including 10 alcoves. Each alcove contains a masterpiece rock statue, supported by a lever controlled support.

Each bedroom has a 'secret' entrance to a back corridor, with locked doors. Bedrooms could be connected to each other with glass windows. The back corridor has a dangerous, wild animal... an elephant or a unicorn in a locked chamber.

After the first wave of immigration, use all the dwarves to build the fortress, then pick 10 strong dwarves, and rename them, with correct genders, to the characters in the book. Give them each a bedroom. Using wikipedia for a reference:

Wikipedia on And Then There Were None.

Each season, lock each dwarf in their bedroom, then unlock the secret doors to the back corridor and the animal holding pen. Let the vicious, snarling beast maim one of the dwarves at random, locking the other doors to prevent it killing more than one.

Let all the dwarves out. Hopefully, they've heard and seen the atrocity. Let them discover the body of their loved one, murdered in his/her sleep. Let them moan and curse their horrible fate.

Pull the lever on one of the statues, causing it to fall below. Now there are 9 little dwarves. And then there were nine.

Carve an engraving on the wall representing this event. Let the dwarves stew and go about their business.

Repeat the events until there's just one little dwarf left, then, hopefully, he'll/she'll go insane and kill himself. If not, have him/her engrave one last image, then commit suicide. And then there were none.

Hopefully, by this time, you'll be left with a 9 (10?) pane engraving detailing the murder mystery, and a strange island estate with a dark cloud hanging above it. Write up the story and post it here!

Extra Fun Stuff: Additional tasks/things you can do:

- have the dwarves eat only red herrings
- keep the creator of the legendary statues in the back corridor, so they go insane when the statues are destroyed. Then they can do the killing, which'll be a little more terrifying.
- Super bonus points for killing the dwarves in ways similar to that of the book.
- Give the dwarves exactly one chance to escape: Hide a bonus prize in a labyrinth. The first dwarf that gets it has an escape tunnel in their room opened, allowing them to run under the moat, to a small paradise house, safe from the cruel games of DF players.
- use a different monster for each murder.
- Give the dwarves professions similar to the characters in the book, including use of nobles, sheriffs, etc.

Realization: I've been playing DF for a long time, but not very wholeheartedly, so I'm not sure if all of this is feasible. If anyone has suggestions, comments, please point them out. I'd love to see different people doing the challenge, writing up their experiences.

Murder Mysteries are fun!

[umiman]

A lot of it is impossible. Falling objects can't kill, for example. And just 10 dwarves to build all that, including masterwork items (especially when 8 out of the 10 are nobles?)? It'll take forever, not to mention at the end of it, all your dwarves will be super-ultra legendary. Now, try killing super-ultra legendary dwarves with wild beasts. It won't happen.

And besides, those dwarves are more likely to engrave pictures of cheese or their civilization logo than recent events, as many can attest (it seems they work on a simple randomizer), so that 10 pane engraving will make no sense.

It would be far more feasible to do this without all the masterwork stuff or the mansion that would take real-life weeks to make, but then, I'm sure practically every single DF player has done that.

Personally, I consider people who issue elaborate challenges without any financial backing, support, prizes, or even attempting the challenge themselves are quite absurd, trying to get other people to do his job for him for free, but that's just a personal viewpoint.

[Okenido]

If I remember right didn't

[Spoilers!]
2 people live?

[ May 20, 2008: Message edited by: Okenido ]

[Asehujiko]

Falling floors do kill things but they also vaporize the corpse.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Falling floors don't. Falling natural walls do, naturals floors or anything constructed doesn't.

[mainiac]

quote:Originally posted by Okenido:
<STRONG>If I remember right didn't

[Spoilers!]

[ May 20, 2008: Message edited by: Okenido ]</STRONG>

Depends on the version.  In the book, no.  In the play, yes.  The play ending was laaame.  We tried to convince our director we should just come up with our own ending in the middle of tech week (last week of rehersal) because we were so tired of the lame ending.

[cibbuano]

Sorry, maybe it wasn't clear.

Each night, a beast or monster kills one of the dwarves.
The statues are dropped just to replicate the ten little indian figurines in the book, which go missing one-by-one as the murders happen.

I'll get started on this. My current fortress is in the process of being flooded, thanks to reckless channeling on my behalf (I channeled right above my residential block).