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[catpaw]

So what actually is the player in DF?

Some hints:
* The player can give a lot of commands to dwarves, a lot of them they will blindly and certainly followed orders (locked doors, access lists for workshops, job kinds by dwarf to be not done at all)  without any question or resistance from any dwarf.
* The player sees everything any dwarf has ever seen.
* Any dwarf expedition without player support would soon die (dwarves never think of themselves digging into a mountain, and making any building, or be able to trade anything)
* Other than controlling dwarves, the player has no physical interaction to the world, other than locking doors tight so animals don't get through.
* The player cannot die, be ill, or even be seen at all from any dwarf.

So:
+ Is the player a kind a abstract dwarf? Just that he doesn't actually somehow exist?
+ Is the player a kind of dwarven god, that dwarves will listen to?
+ Is the player "the groupmind", however as mind completly unaltered by any individual dwarf?
+ No seriously, What is it?

[BurnedToast]

IIRC Toady said something along the lines of #3, the player is a sort of abstract 'will of the community' of sorts. I might be misremembering though and I can't find the quote offhand unfortunately.

I guess you could think of yourself as a god too, if you like. After all, you did create the whole world (even if it was with the assistance of your computer and instructions from the greater god Toady One) and the dwarves exist only to amuse you.

[Aqizzar]

The hitch in that is mandates.  Or placing furniture.  Or taken to it's logical conclusion, pretty much everything the player does.  Because the dwarves aren't capable of doing anything without being told, no matter how obvious, important, or necessary to survival it might be.

Honestly, while the "will of the community" explanation certainly makes the most sense of any standard idea, I don't follow it.  I prefer to think that the Player is exactly that, and the dwarves are little genre savvy, Tron-like lines of sapient code.  They're too dumb to make any kind of plans on their own, but smart enough to follow the orders from the sky, and sentient enough to be resentful about it.

[Dwaref]

I'm writing up something on this, but it's grown so big that it'll take a while to get finished.

[Pilsu]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Slaves to Armok

[Eater of Vermin]

A God?  Nar, the little runts don't/won't worship me.

Collective will?  Get real... then I'd have a fortress full of boozed up sock collectors.

But, you know the spirits that possess dwarves and send 'em either uber-creative or insane?

I consider myself one of them, but one with a cunning plan...     instead of bending my will to getting one dwarf to create an artifact, I apply a little of my will here, a little there, to influence each dwarf just a little.  "I think I'll take my squad for a walk over there, near where those gobbos are lurking."  "I'm sick of being a Cheesemaker, I want to try my hand at mining!"  "I reckon we could do with a few more sets of platemail..."

Thus slowly influencing a whole civilisation instead of making an Uber "left shoe-maker."

Mwahahahaha!   

[EvilCheerio]

well, in this game i would have to say your their survival instinct, without you they die, but you don't have total control. You have no control over their creativity, but you have control over their desires, weather that be to get food, make beds, or build colossal monuments to scare the shit out of invading goblins.

[Hishan]

Youre in a similar position to the RTS player, but I agree the general "will of the community" seems to be working, you assume the mayor/expedition leader is handing out these orders and the dwarves follow them.

[catpaw]

Youre in a similar position to the RTS player.

Well the first RTS games were mostly futuristic ones, you were depicted as general working in some bunker anywhere (sometimes there was even such base on the map, that will make you die (lose game) once this is removed and you are controlling your units by radio.

"Dune" was AFAIK the first real RTS game. And you still had your hero going from base to base on the map. If he dies, game over. At the beginning of the game you also only could control the very base your were at. While the game unfolded you were gaining psychic abilities, first allowing you to control nearby bases, slowly enlarging your circle of action.

[Tormy]

You control the dwarves, tell them what to do, hell you can even kill the king if you want.
Conclusion: the player is the invisible dwarven God! 

[Captain Xenon]

perhaps the player is the mountain itself? the will of the land? after all, we can 'sense' dead creatures in hidden features now and then...

[Tormy]

perhaps the player is the mountain itself? the will of the land? after all, we can 'sense' dead creatures in hidden features now and then...

What mountain? You dont even need to settle down on [or near] a mountain to create a fortress...

[Jude]

Will of the community sounds good, or you could say "overmind."

Makes sense with how dwarves often resist doing their duties at all costs, such as eating and sleeping when they should be trading or on military duty.

[duro]

For me, nearly the same as Eater of Vermin suggests.

Too often dwarves get possessed by weird spirits who tell them to make great artifacts. Well, I consider myself one of those parasite spirits, but a very powerful one: I don't want just a single artifact, I want more, some kind of monument. Maybe a fortress, but most often something smaller in scale, like a giant temple, a completely automated hydrostatic artificial underground environment, a lavafall, a giant deathtrap, minimal ALUs, etc.

If my possessed dwarves fail to produce my "artifact", they die. If I abandon the fortress, they will abandon too, and leave my and their "artifact" behind to be told about for ages.

[Erom]

I don't understand this desire to justify your existence in universe. You are The Player - why do you need more?