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[Immortal-D]

Amidst all of the !SCIENCE! & Engineering, I never stopped to think about why I grin when reading such accounts.  I am curious if you all have ever pondered the philosophical implications of what we do here.  Does simply having the tools turn otherwise ordinary gamers towards pursuits like Shotguns & Child Care?  Or is sado-creativity inherent in the gamer, who is thus drawn to the freedom offered by Dwarf Fortress?

Rather a 'chicken or egg' conundrum I realize, but still one for which I am now quite curious to hear the thoughts of other Dorfs.

[contheman]

When we play the game, I think we all become so tired of having to manage the lives of so many pathetic alcoholics whose home is always teetering on the edge of destruction. That apathy leads to boredom, boredom to sadistic creativity.
After seeing how thoughtless and foolish these ascii people are, we think of ourselves as gods who have the power of life and death. Who we use this power on depends upon the person playing: some terrorize invaders by forcing them to brawl to the death in arenas; others atom-smash their own people for fun.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Some of us care for our dwarves as though they were our own demented children.
Just last night I was completely distraught at having to execute a haggard mother and her new born child. She kept causing fights and I guess the guards would have hammered her eventually but after being sentenced to 25 days in prison for another fight, her victim died of his wounds. It was the last straw and time to simulate the lynch mob.
I built a platform for her to stand on over a handy natural pit leading down to the third cavern. She had no idea what was going on, and of course kept hold of her baby as a lone carpenter diligently removed the block holding her up.

Somewhat horrifically she survived the fall. All battered up with no hope of rescue she slowly drowned having just about enough time to notice and react to the smashed remains of her child.

I stayed with her in the darkness until she was gone.

[Robsoie]

Even if you're good natured, caring about your dwarves and wish the best for them, there's still things like that happening and tell a bit about dwarven nature.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hmm, looks like the expedition leader did something very bad





Yeah, looks like he really did





The expedition leader killed a fellow dwarf, butchered his corpse to take his bones and made an artifact figurine about another dwarf that had been killed by a titan...

[Zuglarkun]

contheman makes a good point pointing out the apathy of overseers, or rather the apathy that develops from having to babysit every damn whiny bastard of a dorf in the fortress. I figure not every overseer wants to do so, nor do they  necessarily have the time or patience to do so.

But I don't think its fair to put it all down to the overseer themselves or the propensity of violence offered by DF. I think we'll also have to look at which narratives the community as a whole are more accepting of. There's also a clear discrepancy between the entertainment value of violence and well, non-violence. The most famous tales of DF that I am aware of are well known for their madness, magma and monsters. I mean like would you rather read a horrendously amusing disaster of a fort or a stable fort without any conflict, unusual happenings and magma! It's like the difference between watching an action movie or a boring ass documentary, I mean which would you rather watch? So its rather more likely that those are the sort of narratives that are reinforced and reproduced by us as a community. I just think that as a community we haven't really thoroughly explored the peaceful side of things yet, nor has there been much incentive to do so. Heck, we advocate the motto, 'losing is fun' as a community, not stuff like 'live long and prosper' or 'make peace and coexist with your neighbours'.

There is also the point that we are playing as drunk ass dwarves, not sober tree hugging hippy elves, and I would like to think that most of us folk are just playing up to what would be considered acceptable norms of dwarfish behavior and turning the dial up to 11.

[Bakaridjan]

I've actually often felt like dwarves have a strong bent away from the sadistic. Even in the example of the fell dwarf, look at all of the other dwarves reactions. They're Horrified! When your brave military marches out to defeat the oncoming goblin horde in glorious battle, the dwarves inside, whose very lives are being saved by their valorous brothers and sisters, don't throw a big victory party in their honor afterward. Rather, if they go outside to clean up the mess, like a bunch of bleeding-hearted liberals, they're going to be horrified and break down at seeing the corpses of the enemy piled up at their gate. Sometimes I'm surprised they haven't tried to sentence my militia commander for excessive use of force (cause I do have one who more often than not removes every appendage from his foes before finally decapitating them).

I think most of the sadism in DF comes from the player's side, but I'm not sure I can explain exactly where that comes from. @Zuglarkun is certainly on to something. I'm sure their is a whole body of philosophy that ponders the pull towards the sadistic and why it has such high "entertainment" value.

[Henry47]

I think over time most players become desensitised to all the violence, and stop really caring about their dwarfs. I know when i first started playing i did my best to try and prevent my dwarfs from dying, making sure they all had high-quality bedrooms and so on. But as my fortress grew and more and more deadly events occurred, i stopped caring about individuals dwarfs. Instead of thinking of the typical individual dwarf as a lovable, unique character with their own little quirky traits; i started to think of most of my dwarfs as just another useless idiot, and when they get killed by some random carven creature i just think, "one less nitwit to deal with", and spare it no more thought.

 In addition to this, something else i have noticed is that as my fortress has become increasingly safe and secure, i am starting to long for chaos and madness to liven things up. While in the early days of a fortress it is difficult and therefore entertaining to just try and survive(with this closeness your fortress is to destruction also making the life of any one dwarf more valuable), in later years you reach a point where food and booze and dwarfs are abundant, and your military can easily wipe out conventional threat(A squad of legendary melee Dwarfs armoured and armed with high quality steel can easily take out sieges full of goblins without losing a single man ). Alas, after a while success becomes boring, and you begin to wish for something interesting, something FUN, to wipe out your fortress in a dramatic matter, and having this happens becomes a lot easier if you are reckless and careless.

[Psieye]

I'd say a key reason is that the game is detailed enough to be engaging while being different enough from reality to not invoke revulsion at the details. The standard gamer is naturally disposed towards 'minmaxing', i.e. optimising procedures and numbers. A lot of the 'sadism' we do is really just optimisation at its heart. We then happen to notice the details around that afterwards and laugh once we try putting ourselves in the shoes of an in-game dwarf. The tags in raw files make it clear what we're actually dealing with (structures of data pretending to be living things) so we don't trigger our conscience.

In other words, "this is a make believe world which is convincing in some ways but clearly isn't our world. Let's do what we do normally in other games. Now let's process the details this world gave us and laugh." It's not like we don't do 'sadistic' stuff in other games as we optimise, but their lack of detail makes it difficult to smile or empathise.

[Shurikane]

Back in the days of 40d, it was ridiculously easy to see dwarves as sadistic: 99% of the little guys would "take joy in slaughter" if they happened to kill a goblin.  Or even if they somehow killed somebody by accident in a fight.

It's a lot more punishing these days, and there are some dwarves I've taken away from refuse and burial duty since the shock of seeing a room full of decomposing bodies (even if they were the bodies of objectively evil creatures who lived solely to kill you) sent them completely over the edge.  Up until recently I had an engraver who went through a 6-year depression stint solely because she came across a few goblin corpses every now and then.

That said, I try to keep dwarves alive when I can.  I prefer to cope with fussy nobles than kill them off in unfortunate accidents.  If their demand is impossible, I don't give a damn: a few tasty roasts later and they're back to their super-happy state, no problem.

I see the dwarves as taking care of each other, but being utterly pitiless against their foes.  You mess with one dwarf, you mess with their crew.  And if there's one thing dwarves are good at, it's making up crazy-ass contraptions that can be retrofitted in a jiffy to deliver excessively cruel and unusual punishment.

[PatrikLundell]

I'd say most or all of the sadism in the current DF version is squarely on the player. I execute prisoners, since there is no other choice. I kill enemies using the most efficient methods available (the min-maxing mentioned above. I'm not above sneaking into a castle to get the loot and the XP for the quest in an RPG, only to slaughter everyone on the way out for the additional kill XP and the much larger loot of their equipment...).
However, I try my very best to keep every single one of my dorfs alive and provided with the best and widest booze selection and masterworks living quarter furniture, as well as engraving said quarters. (The exception to this are dorf posing non dorfs, who are removed through some suitable execution method (usually atom smashing)).
I also agree that the attachment to the dorfs diminish as the fortress grown, from individuals to roles (which is partially the reason I keep the numbers down by a fairly low pop cap).
Danger is one of the routes to an interesting fortress. Another one is trying out more or less stupid/pointless/over complicated mega projects.
However, at some point I just stop playing the current fort, either because the FPS drops too far, or all challenges set out at the start are met. After a while goblin sieges become not a source of tension, but another chore to deal with (in particular the cleaning up afterwards).

[Urist McVoyager]

It depends entirely on the circumstances of the Fort. If it's meant to be a regular big fortress, then I might get sadistic a little. Although it's more carelessness than anything else. If it's a natural growth fort (soft cap keeps migrants out and hard cap allows a lot of children) then I'm more fussy about protecting my dwarves and their emotions.

The worst I've gotten was a relatively recent fortress where I designated specific dwarves as victims and dropped them down a pit to train the medical staff. Which then got overflowed when an export ban got violated and then a Dragon burned the surface so I quit because of FPS issues.

[Sanctume]

There is difference between enjoying sadistic events resulting from player actions versus results from random game play. 

I've read many community forts, and overseers come in many flavors and game styles.  Some I would say have matured and improved in their writing.  Some focus on science, or mega projects, or role play plots.

For me, it is not about enjoying sadistic acts; but rather, exploring or exploiting game mechanics.

[Dunamisdeos]

My dwarves are given every opportunity to succeed and thrive. It's enemies that are treated without mercy in Avuzestun.

[sirvente]

Dwarves are the least sadistic race in the game, no other race treats torture as being unthinkable in all circumstances. Adventurers and PC fortresses however are possessed by the spirit of Armok, who demands blood and doesn't care about his host weeping as his body cuts down everyone he knows and loves or reducing living thinking creatures into barely acknowledged cogs in an engine that vomits magma and death across the landscape.

[omega_dwarf]

I also tend to play small forts. However, even then, there are the potash maker migrants, and the potters, and the wax makers... Hauling duty or some such, yes, but they still idle while others toil. They still eat. Still dart out when the accursed smoke is at large. Min/max says to kill them. I don't min/max, at least not in that manner. I do not kill dwarves, ever, except out of stupidity. I avoid killing animals unnecessarily. I do not send suicide missions. Etc., etc. My dwarves may be in rags because I don't have time to clothe them, but that does not mean I mistreat them. They are as safe in my forts as any of their own.

Nor are merchants mistreated, but that's a separate issue.