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[Jude]

Lots of replies! Thank you for all the help.

Dwarf Fortress is rated TDH (Too Damn Hard) for 8/9 year old kids to learn, what with the interface, regardless of any mutilations that take place.

This simply isn't true. We've played it as a whole group twice and they are already prompting me with the correct key to press. I'll also be on hand but I'm pretty confident they'll be ok.

Actually I just realized what with decreases in plasticity and stuff, kids would probably pick it up better than adults.

Anyone want to raise their kid on DF like I was raised on Master of Orion and Monkey Island?

[Borgin]

I was brought up on violent games and am a huge pacifist. But like Kagus said...

Still though, often the most traumatic part of a child witnessing something like this is the reaction of the parent.  We apparently spend many years of our life making sure that stick is lodged good and tight up our arse.

It may be better to find a different "sim" game than DF. Dwarf Fortress is a game where its players revel in violence and bloodshed. Certainly not a bad thing... if you're older than about fourteen. If you don't mind catching flak when parents try to get you fired (which most likely will phail), then carry on. I know I've learned a lot about inventive engineering and geology (not to mention environmental biology) playing Dwarf Fortress, and I consider myself a pretty big n00b.

[illiterate]

Why not go back to the oregon trail well?

It's not like you're taking any steps backward in UI. 

[KaelGotDwarves]

Why not go back to the oregon trail well?

It's not like you're taking any steps backward in UI. 

What I learned from Oregon Trail is never ford any rivers and dysentery kills everybody.

I shudder to think if we have unmodded DF in schools.

[tigrex]

Dwarf Fortress is a game where its players revel in violence and bloodshed.

Really?  I see DF as a sandbox game where a player's objectives are incredibly varied.  There's interesting stuff to do that is non-violent, and years can go by without seeing a large invasion.  There is also a grey area, as far as violence is concerned: is hunting violent?  Fishing?  Eating vermin?  What about when your guards fire off a couple of arrows to wound and chase away the goblins?  What about drowning? 

More importantly, people will always find something to be outraged about no matter how considerate you are.  This plague of political correctness has drowned most forms of entertainment.  I think that you should (figuratively) give the parents the finger, and show the kids pure unadulterated DF, with all the non-vomit chunks, non-slime blood and very very mortal dwarves who lose it and beat their wives to death with their childrens' severed legs.

Being a settler was very nasty in many situations, so portraying the experience as a painless one is inaccurate.  Also, I think it is more important to show children that sometimes due to mistakes or just bad luck bad things happen.  And DF is all about creativity, which is stifled if some possibilities have been removed.

[Jude]

As much as I like the idea of using a kinder gentler DF as a way to teach kids, I'd have to go with the people who are warning that anything that can go wrong will go wrong and some parent will find a reason to try and get you fired. Aside from the fact that kids drive me nuts, the litigation-craziness of today's society is the biggest reason I don't want to do any work with kids...

[Tenebrais]

You say you're teaching at a UK school? What kind of settling are you trying to portray here? I'm mainly wondering whether it's a sort of British colonial effort or the early Angles/Saxons/Celts that came over here thousands of years ago. I also wonder which is more closely modelled by the game...

I also think it would be awesome to, say, play as a Saxon clan, trading with local Angles and having to fight off the occasional Celtic seige, or something. I always wished I knew more about Britain's ancient history.

[Fossaman]

Dwarf Fortress is a game where its players revel in violence and bloodshed.

I've been playing this game for months, and this is definitely not the case for me, and, presumably, for some others. I always play with invaders off, and typically don't even bother with a military. I find playing DF as an economy and engineering simulator to be more entertaining. Usually the only things that end up getting killed are butchered animals and the occasional fire imp.

Anyway, as long as the changes to the language files are made, and invaders turned off (artifacts too, probably. That's the easiest way to get rid of strange moods), I don't think DF would be overly objectionable. I mean, if they're having middle schoolers read 'Lord of the Flies'...

[Tormy]

I've just begun teaching a class of 8/9 year olds and we've actually been playing DF for a few hours to show how people settle in a new area.

All I can say is...wow! 
Warning: These little kids will be ASCII fanatics! 

[Rathen]

We use an interesting variation on the national curriculum that doesn't actually call for a specific period, though if pushed I would relate it to the saxons as they settled as we're trying to represent the very first settlement in an area.

As a quick update, we had our last 'play as a group' session today. They know the basics, they know what they need to build and how to do it. Amusingly, today our hunter drowned. This caused a bit of a panic and a "OH GOD HOW DO WE GET FOOD NOW". So now they're working out how and where to make a farm. I love this

[webadict]

Ah, now don't tell them they can plant in soil without irrigating... Have you made your mod yet?

[Kagus]

You might want to consider doing some tweaking on the standard plants.  As it stands now, farming in Dwarf Fortress is ridiculously easy and profitable.  Aboveground crops can grow year-round, as can underground plump helmets.  You will also be able to harvest multiple times a season, even more so with the plump helmets.  Not exactly what one might call "realistic".

There is a [GROWDUR:~] tag (can be seen on the plump helmet entry) that defines how long a plant must grow before it can be harvested.  There's an archived page on the wiki that has information on what the particular GROWDUR values are, but it's a bit late in the evening for me right now and I've got my own projects to attend to.

That tag will let you tweak certain plants so that they require three seasons of growth before they can be harvested (plant in spring, grow through summer, harvest in fall).  Also note the [SPRING][SUMMER][AUTUMN][WINTER] tags, which determine the seasons a plant can grow in.  If it has all of them, it can grow year-round (note:  I believe it is possible to make plants require multiple years of growth.  But I've never tried it for myself, so I don't know).


Quick question though...  How exactly did your hunter die?  It was obviously some strain of the dreaded Tarditas virus (often fatal, and believed to be hereditary), but I was wondering if it was more closely related to the piscis or the insilio strains.

In other words, was your hunter eaten by a fish or did he just dodge into the river when a groundhog nibbled his foot?

[MetBoy]

Well, there is interest in making a mod... http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=25606.0

Here's what I posted there, but it seems like it would be more relevant here:
What will this "Teacher's Edition" be teaching? How will it be used to teach those things? It's something we should think about. So, to that end...

Industrial Theory: Where do the nifty things we use and want come from? Disabling traders might help make this point more strongly; If you can't simply go down to the store and buy something, how do you make it from scratch? Cut trees, dig for stone, dig for ore... Mining, Masonry, Carpentry, Metalworking

City Planning: Why are city streets so complicated downtown? Because those streets were designed by cows!

Food: Everybody's gotta eat! So, do you forage for native plants to eat? Til the soil and plant crops? Hunt wild animals? Tame and raise a heard for meat?

The Risk of Being a Pioneer: You're going out there, and there won't be any help. So that means you need to make EVERYTHING you need yourself. These people knew the risks, so why did they go?

[Jude]

Tbh, I revel in violence in bloodshed when I play DF, mainly because that's the primary way things can go wrong, and it's FUN when things go wrong.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy all the other aspects of the game - designing, building, maintaining, experimenting and so on - but you can't deny things get the most exciting when seiges show up repeatedly or your dwarves start getting dragged into the chasm by horrible creatures.

[Tormy]

Tbh, I revel in violence in bloodshed when I play DF, mainly because that's the primary way things can go wrong, and it's FUN when things go wrong.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy all the other aspects of the game - designing, building, maintaining, experimenting and so on - but you can't deny things get the most exciting when seiges show up repeatedly or your dwarves start getting dragged into the chasm by horrible creatures.

Yeah, I also love the violence in DF. Its just fun, hell no its FUN with big letters!  .. but again maybe its not for small kids, even if its graphical violence only.