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[Disgrunt]

The thing I’m trying to keep in mind is that nothing can do what Dwarf Fortress does as well as it already does it.

The DM makes the game in the end. A DF system would just be a way to make adventures set in the universe with supplemental features that help you gain immersion in the DF universe. I think a lot of the down-to-the-nerves detail would have to be replaced with a great sense of creativity on the DM’s part. For instance, random encounters are pretty garbage, but a DM replaces the need for what the code of DF does to an extent.

Say I have 7 players roll up dwarf characters who are exploring the ruins of a fort. I’m not going to procedurally generate the entire fort, I’ll have it planned out. Maybe I plan for something catastrophic to go wrong, like for instance a wandering horde of Goblins appears on the horizon and one of the players spots them through an arrowslit. Maybe they just found some loot. Now the seemingly random events planned by the DM have then conflicted on A) how to get the loot out and B) how to deal with or pass by the goblins unnoticed.

The real question is, since none of us are professional tabletop developers, what game could a third party supplement theoretically be made for, and what kind of changes and additions would best fit the spirit of brutality, randomness, and FUN that is Dwarf Fortress?

[Pvt. Pirate]

i hope this doesn't count as advertising, but we play our tabletop(s) at https://roll20.net/
if you need an actual material tabletop, that's not as much of help though, but one could still use the systems to manage chars, szenarios etc.
DF converted directly into a tabletop with all the internal rules applied would most likely make every GMs head explode within the first few IC-seconds

[Robsoie]

Technically any system can do if it comes to modify it to fit a specific universe, adding more tables to roll on every hits or critical hits to simulate the more or less serious damage taken or limbs flying or bruised isn't too hard regardless of the game system.

Now regarding DF random encounters being garbage.
That really depends on the version as the randomness wasn't that random actually.
In past version of DF when you didn't saw "ambushes" marked on the map from afar so easily and that factions reputations mattered a lot more, you could have characters being basically hunted by a faction and random encounter were in fact part of that faction narrative.

By example in older versions of DF, i had a character that was hunting a bandit group, and after doing some damage , i became said faction major target, leading to interesting story happening to my character, one i wrote there by example :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132314.msg4704807#msg4704807

Now i think whatever the system, the randomness of some situations that are so random actually and made DF famous in all those "romanced" stories you can read here and there, makes it so that it's not easy to find a way to reproduce that even with random table rolls .
By example this story happening in my fortress that i reported about a Forgotten Beast that came from the depth of the world and ....
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102839.msg3039523#msg3039523

That was hilarious to witness and so completely unexpected next to some more grim&gritty DF scenes.

Without mentionning the carps that in even older versions of DF were going to have a "special" role that even Toady hadn't thought about, leading in fortress in which going to fish or simply crossing a river was an epic adventure of cataclysmic proportions (and leading Toady unfortunately to rework how those carps worked in further versions of DF).
Or the bugs that even if actual bugs could lead into interesting (but devastating) situation, like the giant mosquito count getting out of hand in a fortress map in some past version, leading to desesperate fight for survival for your dwarves.

It's always something going to be hard whatever the game system, as DF can generate the most grim tragedy situation right next the most hilarious and nonsensical one.

[Pvt. Pirate]

yes, or the FB that ran into the 2nd layer caverns of my previous fort just to hunt Trogs and set all the trees in fire just to die in the flames itself. i just meant if the actual detail of combat actions would probably be too much to actually take 1:1 to be done as a GM.
he'd need a hell of a dice-throwing-machine

[Disgrunt]

I meant that in most tabletop games, random encounters are kind of garbage. DF’s are excellent

I agree that the stories are what really draw me to DF - do you think that a 3rd party supplement for a game like the one ring would be best? I think the combat system is loose and narrative, and that the details of DF’s combat system can simply be baked into the abstractness of wounds and endurance maybe? They already have an insanity/corruption mechanic as well. It’d be simple to switch it to reflect dwarven insanity. Occupations and races could be homebrewed as well. It plays very narrativey as well, and is low magic.

What are your thoughts on a loose unified setting.

What am I missing here?

[Pvt. Pirate]

no idea, we have a nice GM (he has some custom rules to not ruin too much FUN) but i don't know too much about all tzhe things he has to roll in th different settings we play, which are "warhammer only war" and "pathfinder".
only war is one of the easier ones as you always have to roll lower than your skill or your chance on a 1d100. also insanity is in there too ^^.

our last session was funny and hardcore:
(i made a small textfileso i never forget what happened that evening - i try to translate)
my char is in fieldhospital but the story is real hardcore

he has a huge hole where his right eye used to be.
he got hit to the eye, exiting right, but that didnt seem bad enough, so a second shot from that salvo hit him straight to the righthand side of his forehead, exiting to the right temple, ripping quite the hole.
He then screamed to his comrade "make it whole again!" which then barely rolled a 21, which was exactly low enough to do the first aid... and began doing stuff:
doing the best he could, he washed the wound with his field flask, whipped in his aftershave and then my char only saw a spoon with canned meat approaching  and went unconscious, while his comrade kept using that spoon as a spatula to fill the skull with canned meat, before picking me up and bringing me backwards to the medic.
I was laughing in disgust and hiliariousity (i guess i just made up that word ) while our GM explained what happens

[Disgrunt]

Ahahaha, brilliant. If you can nab any rules or homebrew your GM uses that would be great - if they’re willing to share their secrets of course.

[Pvt. Pirate]

well, he had a rule for pathfinder for leveling-up-HP so the player could either just take 10 points (1d20! so it's 1 below medium) or chose to roll the dice as the rulebook says. so you can either have a mediocre or chose to take on your chances and fail or win big. which is nice expecially on the first few levels - but every GM needs to find out their own set of rules to apply to the party, set and setting to make it fun for all players while not giving away too much mercy for foolish decisions.
In the pathfinder campaign two PCs were so incompatible and everyone did great RP, so during the boss-fight, they fought eachother - so instead of killing the enemy of the group, one decided to kill the other, leading to the death of yet another member - which left my cleric and that brute the two only survivors and in quite the ethic dilemma. it's always good to stick to your characters' aptitude and (mostly) ignore what you know about whats best for them.
one important thing as a GM: never decide how the group will react to a situation. give them hints etc., but if they decide to kill a certain important NPC, have something prepared, just in case. even if no sane person would react this way, be prepared that one of them will still do it.

[CyberianK]

well, he had a rule for pathfinder for leveling-up-HP so the player could either just take 10 points (1d20! so it's 1 below medium) or chose to roll the dice as the rulebook says. so you can either have a mediocre or chose to take on your chances and fail or win big. which is nice expecially on the first few levels - but every GM needs to find out their own set of rules to apply to the party, set and setting to make it fun for all players while not giving away too much mercy for foolish decisions.
In the pathfinder campaign two PCs were so incompatible and everyone did great RP, so during the boss-fight, they fought eachother - so instead of killing the enemy of the group, one decided to kill the other, leading to the death of yet another member - which left my cleric and that brute the two only survivors and in quite the ethic dilemma. it's always good to stick to your characters' aptitude and (mostly) ignore what you know about whats best for them.
one important thing as a GM: never decide how the group will react to a situation. give them hints etc., but if they decide to kill a certain important NPC, have something prepared, just in case. even if no sane person would react this way, be prepared that one of them will still do it.

As both a player and a GM I always hated the old roll based char creation/leveling in D&D/pathfinder. Both for attributes and for hitpoints. It creates a situation where if a player rolls bad they are way more useless than a medium or better rolled stat char and this leads to consequences both for the player handling his char and the group interacting with him. As a player it also encourages letting your character die and rolling a new one. Sure decent and experienced players don't let that really affect them much but it will always do so a tiny bit.
If they are bad rolls then you can let them re-roll as GM but this just opens a can of worms and compromises your position. When you allow the first re-roll then pretty soon you are re-rolling more and more or players are campaigning for or sweet-talking/debating you to allowing re-rolls. And there is just no perfectly neutral system to when you allow it and when not.

When I was GM I always used points systems for attributes and HP was average+0.5 so 4 for d6, 6 for d10 etc.

[Pvt. Pirate]

well, allowing redistribution of some points from one attribute to another is a nice thing to counter misrolled chars.
the medium + roll thingy is dfferent. the player can chose if they take the medium or roll. so its up to them if they take the risk and it's only for when stats change on lvlup.

[Disgrunt]

Would DF Tabletop do randomized generation linked to careers like Warhammer Fantasy? How do you feel DF’s characteristic’s and attributes would transfer over to the tabletop format? Would condensing some skills compromise the feel?

[Xyon]

I feel like TT DF should let you assign dwarfs on the fly to jobs/professions  based on whatever whim/desire/need that comes up, of course dwarfs who have experience or matching attributes would do better at the task, but any dwarf is generally capable of filling any need and can grow in skill with time.

[Pvt. Pirate]

I feel like TT DF should let you assign dwarfs on the fly to jobs/professions  based on whatever whim/desire/need that comes up, of course dwarfs who have experience or matching attributes would do better at the task, but any dwarf is generally capable of filling any need and can grow in skill with time.

say you got a max o 10 for each skill.
from 0 to 1 requires 10 positive rolls for that skill (equaling 10 critical hits, because you got no skill and it's that difficult to get it right at all) to level up.
from 1 to 2 it would require 100
2-3 1000. that way it is not impossible but unlikely to levelup a skill and it takes longer to get from no skill to mastery.
maybe there's better counts for leveing up, but this way you only learn from doing it right.
other systems give you XP in a skill for every use no matter if you failed. then again others only give you XP when you failed, making it harder once you've got some skill.

[Xyon]

One thing I would think is needed to be hammered out is the scope or length of a single "game" of dwarf fortress.  Do you want the board game to be something where you put it away and come back to it another day because it could take 40+ hours to finish a single game, or do you want it to be something where you can play a single "game" in 10 hours? 8 hours? 6 hours? 4 hours? 2 hours?

Do you want it to be like a... new-style risk game.. i forget, but the new version of risk? Where 'global' events happen at the end of each game and you take out cards or stickers or things that permanantly change the game in some way before you start the new game.    So maybe a game lasts 2 hours, but its the same 'world" and maybe you have some dwarfs carry on, or events, or artifacts, or whatever, that carry on from the last game to the next game?

I'm just bringing this up because, are you really going to have 100 'successful' events in a table top board game to level a dwarf up? Is that realistic for the time scale of a single game?  Is it more realistic if you have a dwarf carry on from game to game?   

Do you have a pool of skill points available to 'assign' to dwarfs on a given turn of the game, and maybe you have a "pool" of dwarfs,  so maybe you can assign skill points for all your tasks on a given turn because you are 'grabbing' dwarfs from the pool of available dwarfs who might have those skills, so instead of tracking individual dwarfs you just have a nebulous pool of resources that represent the total skill level of all possibly available dwarfs?

These are things to think about.

[Disgrunt]

So, let’s say we do use One Ring as a foundation for a Dwarf Fortress supplement/campaign.

I figured it would be like DnD where you carry out a campaign over the course of many sessions.i imagined it as an RPG-like game.

TOR is divided into two phases - the adventuring type phase, and the fellowship phase. The adventuring phase is pretty self explanatory, but the fellowship is an abstract legnth of time in between either campaigns themselves, or different stretches of whatever quest you’re doing. I think that in a DF system, this time is when Dwarfs would be able to add to their skills either based on experience gained during the adventuring phase, or as a part of training undertaken throughout the fellowship phase.

(The game you’re talking a out is Risk:Legacy which is a fucking blast) Personally I think continuity is preferable. A short guide to creating your own DF world without computer generation, but with options to use DF to make it would be nice. I thought the game would be more of a traditional approach, with a party of characters each controlled by a player.

This isn’t going to be a hard port of DF to tabletop, but more a supplement or RPG inspired by it.