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[Droggarth]

..Or how I can lock a vampire in my colosseum and drop captives in there to fight to the death, and after years of death row I consider the vampire "forgiven" and throw them on eternal patrol duty in the surface to fight off the horses of goblin, human, and elf ambushes.

I found that way too much hysterical to read than I should have, probably a minor thing for everyone else but reading that and trying to imagine it text-to-text. I know it's supposed to be "forces of goblin" but "horses of goblin" in the surface?
I mean, I don't even... paint a tangible picture yet. Hysterical to even begin trying to make sense out of it! XD

This is basically also what I love about DF; unknown arse-backwards scenarios of randomness incarnate with AI minds of the truly disturbed at the controls of an RNG-machine and each mind overriding or attempting to override each other's sense of insanity.
I'm not sure if Dwarf Fortress even qualifies as a 18+ ESRB game anymore as it's more like an hardcore R rated lovecraftian madness in ASCII, probably best anyway to avoid seeing what demented horrors and bloodbath can the game show.

If others just knew what's on the other side of all that ASCII at the first glance...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It is terrifying.

[Fleeting Frames]

To get your vampire to patrol in a surface to kill the horses of goblins, elves and humans:
1) Make them a marksdorf (ideally with something like 1000 wooden bolts in a quiver, if you find a way to stack em), then cage your vampire.
2) Find a surface wall with no floor above it - this commonly happens with trees, or by obsidian casting below downstairs. Surround it with fortifications.
3) Pit the vampire from above, through a retracting bridge or forbidden hatch.
4) Whenever attacked, select squads, select the individual vamp, select from list, select all horses and give the kill order.

Enemy bolts will break when hitting the wall your vampire is in, but vampire's bolts will be free to be placed in front of wall - in fortifications. Meanwhile, vamp can't leave cuz fortifications are not walkable.

Haven't tested it yet, though, but should work. Vamp might go insane though, unless perhaps if you replace fortifications with grates for happy thoughts.

[Z49000]

Fun fact: We're mentioned on Tv Tropes' Nightmare Fuel for DF. The first bullet, no less.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/DwarfFortress

[Thisfox]

A few weeks ago, I was trying to work out why my baroness wasn't happy (no issue now, of course: She and about 80% of my previous population are dead, due to the combined efforts of two forgotten beasts and about 25 goblins, but that's another story...  ) and digging through all the text just working out what her favourite gemstones were.... One of my friends looked over my shoulder, and said, with obvious surprise "Oh, my god, it's text based!" and I explained it all to him. Apparently he had thought I was playing a graphical game like The Sims, but with a fantasy element. He watched all the text flow past me, as I ordered a few more tables and thrones for a dining room, and got them decorated and installed, but he didn't want to play. My favourite of his lines was "I didn't realise how much of a geek you are. That's awesome!" ... He approved. But as someone else already pointed out, us SCA folk are of a different philosophy to that of the general public.

[Caz]

I showed my friend DF once. Tour of the fort.

 'here is the dining hall, here are the bedrooms, I just finished smoothing them, these red ~'s are blood from the recent invasion from the caverns... oh no there's cat legs in the hallway, the purple clouds are the haunting smell of death, oh and now my dwarves started going berserk again. one sec'

'yeah we're taking you to the doctors'

[pisskop]

That's one thing I don't like about the community. The elf hate. Why? Yes, they're only useful for bringing fruit and exotic animals, but that's still a use. Nowadays, you have to deforest the whole embark in a year to break the tree cap. Elves don't bother me and I don't bother them.

Might I suggest some supplementary reading?
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140842.msg5727725#msg5727725

Behold why you should hate elves.

[IT 000]

I don't know if DF has an image problem. I would argue that it has an obscurity problem. A lot of DF's grandkids are running around and have respectable followings, and I think a lot of those people could potentially enjoy DF as well.

A big problem however is that this is nearly impossible to do for DF. You either use word-of-mouth which is effective on an interpersonal level but going over to another forum and saying 'hey guys come check out this game I think you'd like' looks like a pile of shill. So in mass media we have to resort to different methods. The most popular way to do this: Let's Plays. However, anybody who thinks on this for a minute is going to realize that DF is a terrible let's play game.

Really our best method is to create more Boatmurdered-tier stories and the like. Posting these stories and hosting these let's plays on more visible communities such as reddit and somethingaweful or other let's play forums could accomplish this. Try to get as many new eyes on the produce as possible.

[Fleeting Frames]

That's one thing I don't like about the community. The elf hate. Why? Yes, they're only useful for bringing fruit and exotic animals, but that's still a use. Nowadays, you have to deforest the whole embark in a year to break the tree cap. Elves don't bother me and I don't bother them.

Might I suggest some supplementary reading?
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140842.msg5727725#msg5727725

Behold why you should hate elves.

I found no reason to hate elves in that story?

[pisskop]

because its fun to cast them into the light of uslessness

because they eat their enemies.  not a whole lot of reconciliation possible for the eaten's family.

because they are  conniving little cheats who will hoodwink you but get pissy when you use wood to cook a stew.

because they stick their nose into politics that do not concern them.

because they dont care about the people whose politics it is the concern of.

they would happily release zombies to kill a noble warlord and let the local populace suffer at the hands.

because they live forever but cant stop crying tears that cause numbness.

because the archeotype of an elf is an uncanny valley corruption of a hu-man

[Fleeting Frames]

*shrugs* All of those but the second and last one were done by you, so not exactly a reason to hate elves in specific rather than you in particular. And the last one isn't true by raws.
Besides, most elves I've seen never killed anyone, whereas players may try to kill them for a height crack or not accepting the crafts made from their homes/gods. If one is to hate a group for it, it'd have to be goblins with their kill neutral:required.
Unless you really dislike eating people, I suppose.

Nah, I think for Armok the best reason to hate elves is their trade goods and war equipment being relatively pitiful, animals aside, though the occasional divine material is neat.

That said, I'm probably not the most receptive to this meme in the first place :v

[pisskop]

Most dwarve,s humies, goblins, and trolls have never killed anyone.
Most zombies have never killed anyone

:igmeou:  you cant use that as a justification.  DF is a game about combat, logistics, and industry.

All antithesis of the elves.



elven hate probably goes far back into Tolkien.  the dwarven elven rivalry.  Now imagine that most boys like the warlike foulmouthed and get-er done attituide of the dwarves.  They like humans, they build grand cities that get invaded by fire demons, and they outdrink whole bands of humans.

[TheFlame52]

I don't really have anything to say. Neither of us is going to convince the other. Read Yonali Smithwings.

[Xyon]

I tend to get a look of "thats a difficult game" from people who know about it but have never played it or only tried to play it, most other people at this point haven't even heard of dwarf fortress.

[BlackBronze]

I low-key had forgotten about my little forum post more than a year ago. Reminds me of if you've ever had a plant, but then you forget about it or decide not to check it for ages and you suddenly find it in that pot that you shoved behind a stack of boxes, and instead of wrinkling up and dying it's seemed to have grown better than it ever could have if you had taken care of it....I suck at taking care of plants

[StagnantSoul]

The only reaction I've ever gotten on mentioning DF was a guy on a forum asking me to tell him some of the stories DF has given me... Apparently on the gaming forum he was a part of DF is seen as the ultimate story generating game.