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[Immortal-D]

Good evening Dorfs.  Per this recent discussion, I've been thinking about themes for a Succession Fort that would make it i entertaining to both old and new players alike.  Just spitballing here, so any ideas (including mods, turn rules, etc.) are welcome.  Here's what I've come up with at work today:

Tree Fort: Embarking in a heavily forested biome, the Fortress would be a constructed tree, with all aspects built inside it and on branches.

Beach Fort: Embarking alonside the ocean to do... fish things?

Mod, Fortress Defense: Adds a number of different invaders & critters.

Mod, equipment (various): There are a few plug-and-play mods which add new gear.

Volcano Fort: I think we've had like 5 different version of this SG now, with varying degrees of success.

Lake Fort: A body of water must be centrally located in the embark, with land on all sides.  Possibly more of a pond fort than a lake.

Mod, Masterwork: The literal proverbial elephant in the dining hall.  Running a SG with this would require extreme coordination among all participants to ensure that we all have the same launch options enabled & disabled.

Cavern Fort: My personal favorite challenge.  Everything must be done inside the Cavern zeds.

Challenge: An automated system which releases Clowns at a random interval once per year.

Surprise Fort: The author will generate a world, set embark & supplies, and write some goals or rules.  Catch is, none of the players who sign up will know any of the details until the game has started.

Special goals/projects: I think these are best dictated based on the embark.  i.e. We're not likely able to have a magmafall in the tree fort.

Thoughts?

[TheImmortalRyukan]

After reading your other thread, I agree, I do see the decline, even though I am relatively new.

I am planning a NEW fortress after Gloomdiamonds, not a sequel that drives people away from fear of an archive binge, just a vanilla fort.

I was thinking a Good Biome embark within range of a a tower and all civs. Not many lets plays on Good Embarks, a fort defended with War Unicorns... and pixies XD

[Ironfang]

I have a particularly strange formation that a succession game can be built around. The standing magma tube.

[Immortal-D]

Aligned biomes are definitely an option, don't see many of those.  I actually have a personal WorldGen I use to create Good & Evil adjacent to each other, split down the middle.  Ironfang- I read about that, but I'm not sure how it would be any different from a traditional volcano.

[MDFification]

A succession fort succeeds or fails based on the people it attracts. People who write funny or imagination-gripping content, update often, and interact with each other frequently in public create long lived and frequently read succession forts, or even series of them. I think a good succession fort is more about building a community than it is about the central plot premise or gameplay challenge, though those certainly aren't irrelevant.

I feel like we're just not producing succession forts like we used to, though that might just be nostalgia, and it's hurting my desire to play. I blame sequelitis - the typical 'really good' succession fort sees the initial clique the played it gradually run out of ideas and attention span over the course of threads, leading to forts that update at the pace of continental drift and communities that are increasingly less appealing for someone who wasn't in on the original fort to join. Of course, the close (or adversarial) relationships between players are what produces good content in the first place, but without new blood succession fort groups become victims of their own success and their players slowly stop participating.
Back when I did succession forts, I loved it (and was motivated to spend time tediously gathering screenshots or trying to be funny) because like the people I was doing it with, and felt like we were producing something people read. Our group kind of fell apart as people gradually stopped participating (one guy even got banned by Toady) and the motivation died.
Succession forts are about the greatest threat to any fortress - a squabbling horde of players more concerned about creating an entertaining writeup for their year than they are the future of the fort. The key is attracting and maintaining a good horde.

I'd say that if you want to start a good succession fort, or see this subforum produce a few more absolute gems per year, the way to go is to innovate in terms of how players interact with one another. Why not try to get this subforum an official discord or IRC for content creators to hang out in? Why not ditch turn lists in favor of letting anyone who wants to do a year, and then vote on which one is 'canon'? Why not x-post succesion threads to DF communities on other sites to see if any fresh blood wants in? I think that'll be much more likely to make a memorable fort than a gimmicky start or megaconstruction project. I mean, I've literally watched a player embark without anything but the 3 logs his wagon spawns on deconstruction, on a reanimating biome with no natural resources at all besides a river. There isn't really much novelty go around, it's all about the storytelling.

[Baffler]

-snip-

I think you're right about pretty much everything here. It's practically self-evident that quality content attracts the most interest, and there's only so many times you can rehash the same old stuff (see my post here.) But I don't think Discord/IRC is the answer, except maybe for edge cases like players who've set out from the start to create more of a storyfort than a succession game and need a place to discuss things that could potentially spoil it for people following. Activity in the thread/board is pretty much always a good thing and moving the meat of the discussion off somewhere else is going to do much more harm than good outside of huge communities that can afford to take the hit. Maybe we'd be better off having a metathread here though, like roller's block in FG&RP.

Why not ditch turn lists in favor of letting anyone who wants to do a year, and then vote on which one is 'canon'?

Now this is a good idea. If someone worked out the logistics and genned a good world I'd probably sign up.

[exdeath]

Since there is a comunist fortress, i am curious to see how an anarcho capitalist would be.

[Derpy Dev]

You can do a bunch of cool stuff with DFhack that could add a fun and unique challenge. Embark anywhere would allow you to make a fortress on top of a tomb, but larger structures such as vaults would murder the FPS (believe me, I've tried!). Additionally, you could use a spoilerific command called HFS pit at the start for an interesting challenge (I'll let you guess what that command does).

[Sanctume]

How about some sort of Sim City / Sim Tower fort?

On Day 1, designate max size zone on the same space in the middle of the wagon: a tavern, a library, a temple for generic deity open to all. 

You must build around this zone, walls, stairs, ramps. 

No farms.  So you must feed the citizens via herbalist, fishing, poultry/egg, hunting/butcher, or trade. 
So booze would be a bit difficult, honey/mead anyone? 

Water source would be convenient if there is on the surface, but if it's not, then you dig and pump and pipe it to somewhere. 

No raising bridge locks, no moats.

Each citizen and inn rooms must have their own house, minimum 2x2 with bed, cabinet, chest, and door.

Must build around and up the center zone, then can completely roof it after z+3 ceiling.

Maximum basement is z-1. 

Must have a proper building a least 3x3, as entrance to dig site for caverns and mercenaries.

Just thinking out loud.

[Sanctume]

An idea. Let's call it goal-challenge-fort.

OP provides a world gen, with some preference to size and history length by would be challenge participants. 
A blurb on history of remaining civs, and maybe monarchs and deity.  Nothing too lengthy. 

OP provides some names for the founder and migrants, perhaps with preferred labors.  This one seems to help authors (like me) spin out stories from what happens during gameplay. 

OP creates a list of arbitrary goal and points.  This will set the theme and direction of what to build instead of free form, and wait for something to happen. 

[Derpy Dev]

An idea. Let's call it goal-challenge-fort.

OP provides a world gen, with some preference to size and history length by would be challenge participants. 
A blurb on history of remaining civs, and maybe monarchs and deity.  Nothing too lengthy. 

OP provides some names for the founder and migrants, perhaps with preferred labors.  This one seems to help authors (like me) spin out stories from what happens during gameplay. 

OP creates a list of arbitrary goal and points.  This will set the theme and direction of what to build instead of free form, and wait for something to happen.

That sounds fun. But what does OP stand for? Yes, I know it's a stupid question, but I've never been in a succession game before.

[Immortal-D]

'OP' has 2 traditional expansions: 'Overpowered' and 'Original Poster' (the one who started a discussion).

[Derpy Dev]

'OP' has 2 traditional expansions: 'Overpowered' and 'Original Poster' (the one who started a discussion).

Got it. Thanks!

[gchristopher]

Every succession/community/challenge I try dies. I really wish other people had finished the Hermit Challenge. That one told a wonderful story, where the game constantly hinged on the little bastard taking breaks at the worst times, an early-game cat-based defense strategy, capturing a female cyclops and being confused because that was his only female contact for a decade, and eventually capturing a web-spinning titan and knitting titan-silk socks. I never even got to post it because nobody else finished.

I've thought of a challenge where 4-6 players rotate the turns and control physically separate mini-forts across the map, keeping their dwarves in their own section via burrows or blocked paths, and during the current player's turn, the other player's mini-forts are left to run without new orders, so most of the time, each mini-fort is on autopilot. You'd need a carefully set up initial state so everyone can get their forts running, and at least some rules to prevent obvious, boring forms of sabotage. (including some FPS preserving measures.)

I think the loss of ambushers and the unreliability of invaders hurts newer versions of the game in succession forts, too. Getting enough interesting enemies to show up in the vanilla game is a big problem.

[nuget102]

I plan on either doing a story fort or a succession fort using a random creature generator. My reasoning is I now know basically every creature off the top of my head. So populating a world with purely random creatures would be highly entertaining.