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[Cruxador]

One of the many reasons I love this game is for it's gritty and dark atmosphere. I personally hate most cliche "sword and sorcery" games and media (eg Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft...) Dwarf Fortress is like Conan The Barbarian crossed with The Silmarillion with a little bit of Watership Down thrown in. The games is ruled by cold steel, brute force, rotting syndromes, and plenty of Magma  I'm looking forward to the next release which will bring unpredictable and macabre necromancy, dwarven vamps, and were-beast to the table. I'd love to here your guys opinions about my thoughts, and Id love to hear what you think DF is most like

A point of semantics: D&D and WoW are both high fantasy. Conan is solidly Swords and Sorcery. Silmarillion is arguable in either direction.

Saying "I don't like the tone of D&D" doesn't make D&D bad, it makes D&D suitable for a different audience.

Actually, the fact that that can be said and isn't ludicrous makes D&D bad. It's of a very limited thematic scope, despite claiming to be suitable for diverse settings. 4e is actually somewhat better about this, but it's still pretty bad. 5e might be better, but with Monte Cook I wouldn't hold my breath.

I hate pretty much all high fantasy and D&D is close to top of my list, but I see my friends have fun with it all the time, so it obviously isn't bad.

Just because it's possible to have fun with something doesn't make it a good game. Especially with a group thing; their fun comes from the shared group activity and jokes and interaction and whatnot, they'd have more fun (or would have the same fun more easily) if they were playing a better system.

[RanDomino]

The cartoon of the player tearing boxes of fun out of the still-beating heart of the beast that just devoured it, then building a throne out of said beast's skull, captures the feeling pretty well.  Like in the Conan the Barbarian setting, mortals are basically the future (mostly due to sheer birthrate and economics rather than heroic merit or divine sanction, especially since the enemies of civilization ALSO have powerful and very much real gods... not that yours care if you live or die), but there's still plenty of gore to wade through and civilizations that will collapse before they're in control and the leftover magical beasts and evil humanoids are extinct... and it might not even be in this age of the world... or the next one... or the one after that...

There's not even anything heroic or glamorous about it.  Some people grow food; some dig or make things; some slaughter hordes of ravaging monsters that time forgot.  Failure means the destruction of everything worth defending.  Success means you get to do it again tomorrow.

[MaskedMiner]

I go with the "Player make up their own tone while playing DF" . Thats why I find it hard to read community stories, they never fit my imagination of what DF is like.

That's interesting. How does others perception of DF (gained through reading community/story forts) differ from yours? Do the others always seem similar?


I don't think DF is that dark, it depends how you play. You could be throwing every child born off the edge of a pit in sacrifice to Armok or just play a peaceful farming settlement with invaders switched off. There probably is something noble about the dwarf militia defending their kin, and I've always thought the mayor had a twisted sense of humour when he demands impossible items just so he can have someone beaten. It's a survival city-builder in its finest form. But DF is great in that you can shift it to be what you want it to be depending on your idea for the game.

Well, my perception is out to change in future when dwarf fortress gets new additional features and more magic, but at the moment its basically like real world with fantastical creatures. Sometimes things go great, sometimes things go down the gutter. In fortress mode, its a long trek to unknown lands and making living there and maybe doing some great things in process, maybe you get overwhelmed by the monsters or invaders and die. In advanture mode you are some young person going in an adventure to become a hero, maybe you actually succeed, maybe you get hit by realism of getting ripped apart by night creatures. Some people seem to have rather dark idea of DF, like Boatmurdered and other bloody hilarious stories, but I just see it as normal life sort of the way. Its hard to explain.

I don't see dwarfs as stupid mad geniuses who play with magma devices and !!science!!, just stubborn people who happen to be natural alcoholics, I don't see elves as hippies, just people who are immortal and happen to live in "naturalistic" way including having no problem with eating other sapient beings, kinda like animals don't have problems with cannibalism, etc. With exception of maybe demon masters, I don't see the setting as standard fantasy setting of good vs evil either. I'm not sure if I'm able to explain it well what I mean ^^;

[Aspgren]

DF has a tone alright.

It's dwarfy.

[darkrider2]

DF has a tone alright.

It's dwarfy.

[Marty Smunstu]

There's not even anything heroic or glamorous about it.  Some people grow food; some dig or make things; some slaughter hordes of ravaging monsters that time forgot.  Failure means the destruction of everything worth defending.  Success means you get to do it again tomorrow.

Sigged!

[Cruxador]

The cartoon of the player tearing boxes of fun out of the still-beating heart of the beast that just devoured it, then building a throne out of said beast's skull, captures the feeling pretty well.  Like in the Conan the Barbarian setting, mortals are basically the future (mostly due to sheer birthrate and economics rather than heroic merit or divine sanction, especially since the enemies of civilization ALSO have powerful and very much real gods... not that yours care if you live or die), but there's still plenty of gore to wade through and civilizations that will collapse before they're in control and the leftover magical beasts and evil humanoids are extinct... and it might not even be in this age of the world... or the next one... or the one after that...

There's not even anything heroic or glamorous about it.  Some people grow food; some dig or make things; some slaughter hordes of ravaging monsters that time forgot.  Failure means the destruction of everything worth defending.  Success means you get to do it again tomorrow.

But is that not heroic in itself?

[TSTwizby]

If you choose to define 'heroic' that way, then yes.

[NonconsensualSurgery]

The damage system makes it really unique. There are plenty of other games out there that try for an equally grim atmosphere and a few simulation games with comparable insane detail, but none of them do what DF does.

Look at Skyrim. Why can I not cleave heads from bodies and collect skulls, or stab people in the throat and then watch from the shadows as they bleed to death? Dragons hit you with balls of pretty flame but you can't bleed to death from your wounds or see you fat melt off and you don't need to run for a river or roll around in the snow. The damage system in most games is completely unchanged since I was a little kid, so shooting an enemy in the knee with an arrow means nothing. I demand meaningful progress in making games more gory and tragic!

'Course, this would keep the kiddies away because they'd get shot in the knee and then have to restart. I think I'd steal Planescape's plot to explain why the player character can eventually recover from any wound. Yes! Planescape's sequel!

If I were a major game developer I'd brazenly steal Toady's addictive concept, shoot all lawyers and marketing people who tell me it is impossible to sell a gory game because of Christian vermin, and immediately start work on the best-selling and most horrifying RPG of all time. The things you could do... the spells you could create...

*NonconsensualSurgery claims a computer*
*NonconsensualSurgery scribbles pictures of a game development team*

[UltraValican]

The damage system makes it really unique. There are plenty of other games out there that try for an equally grim atmosphere and a few simulation games with comparable insane detail, but none of them do what DF does.

Look at Skyrim. Why can I not cleave heads from bodies and collect skulls, or stab people in the throat and then watch from the shadows as they bleed to death? Dragons hit you with balls of pretty flame but you can't bleed to death from your wounds or see you fat melt off and you don't need to run for a river or roll around in the snow. The damage system in most games is completely unchanged since I was a little kid, so shooting an enemy in the knee with an arrow means nothing. I demand meaningful progress in making games more gory and tragic!

'Course, this would keep the kiddies away because they'd get shot in the knee and then have to restart. I think I'd steal Planescape's plot to explain why the player character can eventually recover from any wound. Yes! Planescape's sequel!

If I were a major game developer I'd brazenly steal Toady's addictive concept, shoot all lawyers and marketing people who tell me it is impossible to sell a gory game because of Christian vermin, and immediately start work on the best-selling and most horrifying RPG of all time. The things you could do... the spells you could create...

*NonconsensualSurgery claims a computer*
*NonconsensualSurgery scribbles pictures of a game development team*

I'd appreciate you not calling people who follow a certain faith vermin.

[kaijyuu]

I honestly haven't considered DF any darker than, say, Sim City.

To me, "dark" has to have some cynical atmosphere. In dwarf fortress, losing is fun. If you don't subscribe to that notion, then I guess I could see it: every fort is doomed to eventual failure or being forgotten on the hard disk.

[Urist McDagger]

I'd appreciate you not calling people who follow a certain faith vermin.

Yeah.. Atheist here and it still stuck out..

[FearfulJesuit]

Dwarf Fortress isn't dark and gritty. Well, it's dark and gritty and violent and all that, but with a large dose of Dadaism poured into the stew, which renders it hilarious.

[NonconsensualSurgery]

I'd appreciate you not calling people who follow a certain faith vermin.

Don't get between me and my sins and it's all good.

[JoshBrickstien]

I'd appreciate you not calling people who follow a certain faith vermin.

Yeah.. Atheist here and it still stuck out..

Indeed. Way to try and alienate the Christian fanbase of DF, there. And for the record, no, I don't make peace with elves and give free addy blankets to kobolds.