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[StrayCat]

So.... they're dwarves?

Think you forgot something. No alcohol dependence.

Definitely not dwarfs.

Dwarfs don't really -care- about the trees they cut down, or bitch about mining things out. That's what happens for them. That's how they live. A dark-elf is something that used to see that as utterly reprehensible and worthy of death- a dark elf glorifies and lives to do this.

Think of dwarfs as... Lawful neutral, on the whole. They aren't doing what they're doing because it's wrong. They're doing it because that's what has always been done.
Dark Elves? Either neutral evil or chaotic evil. Evil for survival or evil for evil's sake. It seems like it turns to evil for evil's sake at the end.

[CJ1145]

Dwarfs

Lawful Neutral

Are we thinking of the same Dwarfs?

Killing nobles?
Kitten food-supply?
Flooding the region with magma no less than twice a year?

What part of that sounds lawful to you?

[Taritus]

sic

...Think of dwarfs as... Lawful Chaotic neutral, on the whole. They aren't doing what they're doing because it's wrong. They're doing it because that's what has always been done...

Fixed your error.

[Eita]

Really, these dark elves are just coming across as whiny little prats. They're the Professor Chaos of DF basically. Someone mocked them so they flipped out by saying, "You know what? Fine! I'll cut down my trees! And make my own species! With martinis! And hookers!".

Okay, so the ending devolved into Bender, but get the picture. It's just that there are so many worse things going on as the norm that players might actually like Dark Elves better regular Elves. I mean, if you take this to the logical extreme then Dark Elves would think that eating their foes is morally abhorrent.

Basically, your Dark Elves are looking like really emo Dwarves who want to look cool. To call South Park into this again, they're the vampires from the recent episode that thought they were awesome because they wore dark clothes and fangs.

[Marlowe]

Ooh! Harsh!

I'm actually more concerned over the way he hasn't clarified any game mechanics yet. It's looking like he's just writing DF fanfiction.

[NUKE9.13]

Where to start?
First, I think, I should clarify my defintion of dark elves.
They are not dwarves. Whilst dwarves in DF do tend towards the nutty professor kind of semi-evil, this is because (I believe) they are the standard [CIV_CONTROLLABLE] race, and most DF players are sick bastards, who think kitten diets are funny, and can't deal with noble's outrageous demands. Not that I disagree, bring on the cat tallow roasts and the noble room w/ lava flooder says I.
But If you take a look at the dwarves' raws, you will not find the tags [KITTEN_CARN] or [ETHIC:KILL_NOBLE:ALWAYS]. If you see what I mean.
Dark elves are like.. a goblin's mind in an elf's body (DF goblins, that is). With a few bits and bobs added. Plant mutilation is not a common feature of dark elves, but the 'normal' elves in DF's extreme anti-plant-harm lead me to put that in.

Ooh! Harsh!

I'm actually more concerned over the way he hasn't clarified any game mechanics yet. It's looking like he's just writing DF fanfiction.

Well, this is the Community Games & Stories section. I do want to build a fortress, but a little (big) bit of story is needed to make a fortress intresting enough to be woth reading.
The mechanics are not very impressive. I made a new race called DARKELF, a copy of elves, to which I added various personality modifiers. Then I made a new civilisation in entity_default, from scratch, adding weapons and clothing I think are dark-elven. I added all trapcomps, because you can't have fun without screw pumps and spike traps. They got normal clothing only (because they haven't had time to farm cave spiders etc). I messed with the item improvements, stuff_prefs and religions. They got pretty much every animal tag, and every job. Most of the world-wide things I just copied from the elves, unless they effect DF mode. I set the max starting groups to 1, and the max population 120 so that they would get wiped out within a few years. Ethics are basically the same as the goblins (almost everything acceptable). Logical extremes can stuff it.
I also moddified the kobolds, so that they wouldn't insta die. I made a pretty big mistake there, see below. I also gave elves the [SIEGER] tag, and made them active at the same time as the goblins (all seasons, Progress trigger 2).
Not exactly 1337 modding, but as I mentioned before, you don't need [KITTEN_CARN] to be evil.

Now, fortress proggress. Things were going swell. I had all the pictures and story I needed up to mid summer (why build a depot if everyone hates you?), and was just chugging along, looking for interesting stuff, when the screen jumps to the edge. No announcement. I hit a, but nothing's there. Oh well. Unpause, 5 seconds later: Stray wolf pup (tame) has been struck down! (I brought wolfs)
FTW?
I go to the meeting area, see what the wolfs are doing, and I see them tearing the kobolds walking around there apart. I check the unit list, and sure enough, all kobolds have jumped to hostile.
I suspected a thief must have entered the map, causing all kobolds to become tagged as enemies, explaining the jump to the jump to the edge.
No worries, I thought. I can work this in, easy. Recruit all elves, move them to the surface (kobolds were spread out over the map, meaning most were up there). They start tearing kobolds apart. They easily overpower the site leader, a master swordskobold. I think, thats that. But no! Apparently, rangers are all legendary+5 wrestlers. And only the hunter has a weapon. Icemi gets killed, several get injured enough to run to their beds to rest. I finnaly managed to kill or chase away the rangers, when suddenly:
An ambush! Curse them!
Oh yeah. I turned off [ITEM_THIEF] in kobold raws, but didn't give them CAN_SPEAK. The good news is the ambushers are hostile towards the remaining kobolds, the bad news is that my three remaing upright elves will have to either kill 20 odd kobold warriors, run back and somehow find the cave river before the resting elves die of dehydration, or I'm gonna have to savescum. Oops, can't do that, I saved at the beginning of the kobold war.
Although, as I write this, I consider a third possibilty. A most In-Charecter one. Wall off the exit and live underground. Screw the surface. Find the cave river, start a tower cap farm, breed a bit, then re-emerge after a while to begin the prophesiced world conquest.. yes, that could work.

Eita: Actions speak louder than words. The reason emos and vampires are mocked by SP is that they have many words, but no actions. These elves have many actions, and many words.

[CJ1145]

"You know what? Fine! I'll cut down my trees! And make my own species! With martinis! And hookers!".

*AHEM* It was actually Blackjack and hookers. For shame 

Also, could we have a casualty list? When reading this stuff, I like to know EXACTLY who is being slaughtered at any given time. Better visuals 

[Marlowe]

Where to start?

Meaningful information would be nice.

Well, this is the Community Games & Stories section. I do want to build a fortress, but a little (big) bit of story is needed to make a fortress intresting enough to be woth reading.

I've always believed that's in the sense of "story FORT". Certainly you won't find a lot of threads in here that aren't backed up by some game account.

The mechanics are not very impressive. I made a new race called DARKELF, a copy of elves, to which I added various personality modifiers. Then I made a new civilisation in entity_default, from scratch, adding weapons and clothing I think are dark-elven. I added all trapcomps, because you can't have fun without screw pumps and spike traps. They got normal clothing only (because they haven't had time to farm cave spiders etc). I messed with the item improvements, stuff_prefs and religions. They got pretty much every animal tag, and every job. Most of the world-wide things I just copied from the elves, unless they effect DF mode. I set the max starting groups to 1, and the max population 120 so that they would get wiped out within a few years. Ethics are basically the same as the goblins (almost everything acceptable). Logical extremes can stuff it.

 Every job? Every pref? Sounds like overkill. How about allowed items? Do they have picks? Do they have axes? If you've given them [METAL_PREF] that means they get steel, but if you also give them [WOOD_PREF] that means they start with wooden equipment. The two write each other out. Do they have underground farming? Do they get crossbows or bows? If bows, did you fix the names of the other races missile troops? Can they settle in just evil areas? Just neutral areas? Good areas?

Also, I've never seen Kobolds "insta-die". And starting in a cave seems to carry a lot of hardwiring that goes against your "world-conquest" ambitions.

In short, more information?
 

[filiusenox]

awesome race and keep the story up.

[StrayCat]

Dwarfs don't kill nobles. Dwarfs controlled by players kill nobles. Dwarfs go to get hammered for crazy noble demands without our interference- because the noble demanded it. That's lawful neutral.

Killing kittens? There is no difference to a dwarf to eating kitten than there is eating horse, or fish. It is an animal. Animals serve multiple purposes. One of which is being eaten by the hungry. They're cuddly and fuzzy? Oh, that's nice. They're still meat, and those dwarfs are still eating vermin, which is not preferable to un-diseased meat.

The average dwarf leader will not flood the countryside with lava. He will logically evaluate the benefits and opportunity costs of flooding the countryside with magma, calmly, logically, and near-mechanically, taking into account elven politics, resource loss, the danger that the incoming threat poses, and what other alternatives are available.

The humans behind the screen, on the other hand, will gleefully answer the question of "why destroy forests full of log supplies and animals for eating and breeding with lava when we could send in the military for a much smaller net loss?" with "Why not?"

Because we enjoy this opportunity to unwind. And some of us like to imagine the screams of everything in the path of the unstoppable lava. Or so I heard...

[CJ1145]

Ah, but let me make a comparison, if I may, of Dwarfs to Americans. (Not trying to get political, just making a point)

No matter what any average American is like, no matter who they are, the actions of America on a whole is decided by the government (i.e. the "players") and thusly, they pull the strings, and all those who interact with America must at least on some level base America on the actions of its leaders, correct?

So, shouldn't the same assumption be made on Dwarfdom as based on the actions of the players? When combined with all the other people who play [Dwarf Fortress], the actions of Boatmurdered and the Hermit Dwarfs alone make Dwarfkind as a whole the most cynical, Chaotic race of bastard children of all time, no?

[Mephansteras]

But those are only some of the stories. My dwarves are pretty lawful good, all around. I try hard to make sure that civilians are not killed, noble demands are met, and that my soldiers get a chance at honorable combat.

I don't think it's fair to try and judge all dwarves or all players by the actions of a few. And if we were, we'd have to go off of Toady's vision and Threetoe's stories, not Boatmurderd. And even thinking about famous stories, Nist Akath isn't played with particularly evil dwarves either.

[StrayCat]

* StrayCat throws up the horns, as he does whenever Nist Akath is mentioned since he's heard of it.

THE CAPTAIN.

But yes... I tend to play my Dwarfs as "for the good of the many". Lawful, but they'll take down a noble if their actions are too great to compensate for their status no matter what deeds they have done in the past. For example, a baron must kill one legendary crafter before having an accident, a count two, a duke three. Kings get five, tax collectors die if the economy turns things for the worse overall, and so forth. Everyone is ranked. Everyone is worth so much. Anyone can die for the good of the whole. I'll lose a legendary miner to flood four simultaneous sieges in magma. I would not do the same for a single ambush party.

And once more, they're not dwarfs because there's no booze reliance

Hooray for Dark Elda- Er, Dark Elves!

[CJ1145]

See, you speak about good  "for the whole", thus I am judging them as a whole. It is merely averaging. I believe three Lawful forts make up for the actions of the average Chaotic fort (not for their worth, but for their total actions), and if the tales of this board are something to go by, the Dwarfs are rather Chaotic, if not outright Evil. And wouldn't Chaotic forts be more productive without all the laws of the nobles anyways? Think how much more your fort could produce if the nobles didn't kill your legendaries bi-weekly?

And a bit of a side-note, how many Lawful creatures do you know that carry babies into battle as SHIELDS?

[Marlowe]

Any that are subject to common-sense-defying game bugs.