"The world has grown wild in the absence of heroes, young adventurer.
No longer can even the lone wolf prowl these dark woods with impunity.
Perhaps, more than any fine blade, you need a fine companion on your journey?"
~ Village Wise Woman of LancedHearts
So, I had an idea while burning to death one California night at 2:30 AM ....
Dwarf Fortress .40 has so many neat new features, you guys. One of my favorite is the retiring of adventurers and having old adventurers being recruited by new ones. To that feature I thought up a new game style and rules to stress test it. Introducing DF Co-op mode:
Players can either request a turn playing an adventurer or building a fortress their turn.
A fortress player, obviously, spends their week creating a fortress. But! Shaymalan Twist! Dwarves are the evil race in this world! The reclusive mountain folk only come down from their mountains to snatch babies and craft impressive artifacts from their jealously coveted mountain riches. Only an adventurer can hope to liberate both from these player made labyrinths of evil.
An adventurer player first creates his adventurer as a peasant or hero, no Demigod, putting in points where they choose. They make sure to write down exactly what hamlet they will spawn in in their post. They pick out and fit themselves with whatever they can find in the Hamlet Lord's various chests and armor stands until they are confident, them immediately retire.
The second adventurer player then customizes themselves the same way, except they make sure to keep randomizing their backstory until they end up spawning in the same hamlet as the first.
The two then find and join each other in adventures! One player will volunteer to play first. If the players want to leave who plays first to chance, I will flip a coin. When a day is up, a player will upload the save to the other player, who'll use DFhack to swap into their character. The players will continue hot-swapping the save for six days, for a total three turns each player, or until one character dies.
The main goal, just like the main goal of any good partnership, is to keep the other player alive on your adventures. If you happen to lose your partner? Your Adventurer is overcome with grief, and must immediately retire when safe, never to adventure again (with you at the controls, at least.) Successful teams can retire together and take up the call to adventure again once the turn list has been rotated through.
Collaboratively role-playing out a story will of course be heavily encouraged, as is DF Stories Forum tradition.
SO what do you all say? Tired of trekking out into the lairs of vampires alone? Want some back up on that next Minotaur labyrinth? Looking For Group to take down the most feared dragon to ever make a nest on one of the greatest player fortresses in the land? See any immediate flaws that wont work with my crazy plan's rough draft of rules? Want to just PTW, FTW, FML, and whatever else I don't understand in your crazy backwards forum moon-speak? Want to get added on the future potential player list? Mak-y with the comments below.