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[Kreydurst]

Though it's made me a HUGE hipster. If Dwarf Fortress does somehow manage to leak into the mainstream, I will be amongst the first to say "I played Dwarf Fortress before it was cool."

Playing Dwarf fortress Requires some sort of brain. Hipsters have no brain, they are giant undead sponges with a mob mentality.

[FrankMcFuzz]

Though it's made me a HUGE hipster. If Dwarf Fortress does somehow manage to leak into the mainstream, I will be amongst the first to say "I played Dwarf Fortress before it was cool."

Playing Dwarf fortress Requires some sort of brain. Hipsters have no brain, they are giant undead sponges with a mob mentality.

Isn't being an undead sponge an achievement in and of itself?

[sal880612m]

I don't have a story about introducing someone to dwarf fortress, but I was introduced by someone. For a time it sat on my computer unused then I got a graphic set for it. So while I prefer the graphics I have reached the point I could cope with the ASCII for the game. Never would have got into it without them though. Seems like it's easier to cope with giving the dwarves orders if you aren't also trying to decipher the screen.

[majesty327]

Minecraft has bad graphics

Sir, you are playing Dwarf Fortress.

Composite issue.  I played Mario and NetHack, along with MUDs back in the day too, because that was the best there was during their development, but they were interesting.  I've also played games that were as boring as knitting yet beautiful to watch go by, so I played them through.  *shrugs*  And honestly, without the graphics packs that some of the great folks round here have put out, I probably wouldn't play DF either.

I'd argue that you're playing Minecraft wrong. Minecraft isn't 3d Terraria, and it isn't even close to Dwarf Fortress. It's, like you said, a box of legos. The real fun in the game comes from megaprojects and art, not to mention redstone contraptions. And it's not that the graphics are bad, it's merely the artstyle of the game. The game itself is pretty capable of high-res textures. You having a Dungeon Keeper (one of my favorite games btw) avatar should at least mean that you'd feel nostalgic, because mining in Minecraft is like mining when you possess an imp.

[Legionaries]

I've had a few friends try dwarf fortress after telling them that I built a "goblin suicide tower" (a defense structure I create sometimes because watching gobbos kill themselves amuses me.)

"You built a what?  What do you mean by Goblins can't resist killing themselves for a kitten?"

So I show them the 30 z levels of stairs leading up to to a narrow platform with lots of weapon traps and a path to a kitten behind a wall.  When a siege comes, they can't resist trying to kill the kitten, climb up, up, up, up then dodge off the platform, exploding after a 30+ z level drop.  I've also used that trick to make a back entrance when migrants come or you need to let a ambassador out.

That usually gets them to try the game.

[Ramaraunt]

I showed it to my brother and he said he doesn't want to have to take a college course to play a video game.

[LMeire]

I just showed it to my cousin, not sure if he'll go through the whole learning process, but he seemed interested when I described it as "complicated", "impossible to win", and having "hordes of zombies that might not even have heads to shoot" so I figure it's only a matter of time.

[Dampe]

My friend asked me about what I did in my free time, asides from art and hanging out with her.
She is what I would refer to with the utmost politeness as a "casual gamer."
How the hell do I explain fucking Dwarf Fortress to someone who has never played a video game that hasn't been on an iPhone?

[EDIT: It actually went better than I expected it to. Does this mean I can e-mail her the PDF version of Boatmurdered in good conscience?]

[Tenderroast]

@dampe, this is someones sig, but i think it works perfectly for you.

Dwarf fortress in 50 words:

You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bones.

[Arcvasti]

I remember I tried to get one friend into DF. I explained how it worked and encouraged him to start a test fortress. He said he would at home. Next time I saw him, a month later, I took a look at his fortress. He hadn't unpaused or touched the save. And then he did, after much prompting. Blood started raining from the sky. He hasn't touched fort mode since.

Although afterwards we ended up having a contest to see how many sleeping citizens we could kill in adventure mode before being zerg rushed to death by dogs or cats or other domestic animals. His record was 114. That adventurer died from passing out from overexertion after too many 1HK's on sleeping people and getting his head ripped off by a duck while he was down.

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

I usually just tell them "you can rule the world with an army of zombie polar bears"

[Nyxalinth]

Introduced the game to my young nephew. Several days and forts later he could feed his dwarfs and so move on to greater challenges. About a week later he came to tell me that he had thought of the best mod to help his dwarfs survive, firebreathing dogs, and promptly modded it in.

I asked him how it went. His reply:

"So much fire...."

Your nephew is awesome.  I hope he never grows out of it.

[pisskop]

I got a person to download it, and shown my mother it.  I forgot she has a hatred of small blinking things though, so the game ended up confusing her.

Too many people want CoD action.

[TheFlame52]

Introduced the game to my young nephew. Several days and forts later he could feed his dwarfs and so move on to greater challenges. About a week later he came to tell me that he had thought of the best mod to help his dwarfs survive, firebreathing dogs, and promptly modded it in.

I asked him how it went. His reply:

"So much fire...."

And that's why I made fire imps playable.

[Dunamisdeos]

I like to tell the story about my Fiance and Dwarf Fortress in threads like this. Sorry for the wall of text.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I introduced her to the game about two years ago, but She refuses to play. Instead, She has developed a real and serious emotional attachment to my our dwarves. Any dwarf that distingushes themselves gets a name, and their doings are closely monitored. Think about someone you know who loves a soap opera, and how those are real people to them and don't you-dare-tell-them-otherwise. We now have a core cast of favorite dwarves, with a surrounding group of friends, family, and children. Nights out to eat always begin with a report on how her dwarves are doing, and did they finish this thing they were doing and have they had any kids or gotten married?

Her favorite and most important dwarf, Mr. Beard the Captain of the Guard, has an entire thread somewhere around here devoted to him marrying his love interest, Ginger the Chief Medical Dwarf. It was a big deal, somewhere on the order of the royal wedding of England. I think we celebrated with ice cream.

There was also the time that Ginger's assistant Doctor Ralph (First name Doctor, last name Ralph) had to do some major life-saving surgery/bone setting for Mr. Beard's protege, William (Married with a set of triplets. Each has their own name and important social life). It was like watching someone take in an entire medical drama in the space of 10 minutes. Her food got cold while She waited for me to finish telling her that the patient was saved.

Now, my fiance has a disposition and personality that is more suited to My Little Pony than actual reality, let alone dwarf fortress. Neither She nor our dwarves eat rabbits, deer, sheepies, cats, dogs, or horses. Her first goal in our new married life is to get a Chinese Dwarf Hamster because their little chubby cheeks are that cute. People around the world should not fight, and why can't we just be nice to each other like She is to everyone?

Now with that in mind, it is the scariest thing I have ever f*****g seen to see this woman describe (using the same level, bubbly tone with which we describe the bunny in our backyard) in explicit detail the punishment by death that should come across every goblin, troll, or giant in the universe of Dwarf Fortress for daring to consider injury to her darling little beard-midgets. These include dismemberment, bleeding, slow and wasting necrosis, falling to one's doom, impalment through the gut and/or disembowelment, being fed to a blood-soaked grizzly bear named Fuzzlewumpus, and suffocation. There is no maniacal gleam to the eye, or angry quiver, just matter of fact horror and death. Cause and effect.

Dwarf Fortress is serious business.