You're just gonna have to live with the fact that Dwarf Fortress isn't going to appeal to everyone. It's a sandbox game with an insanely hard learning curve and painful vanilla graphics (at least for those players who aren't used to roguelikes, like myself). I still play with modified tilesets, and expect I always will.
What I would advise is find the geekier ones amongst your friends (the one's who play obscure games, or just a lot of games for instance), as they'll be the ones you have the best chance with. Actually send them a file with a graphics tileset already set up, maybe even with a save already active so that they don't have to go through the arduous task of choosing an embark location and skills. Link them to some of the better guides on the wiki and give them the wiki website. And then leave them to it. They may get the hang of it eventually. I know I went through quite a few failed forts and gave up on the game numerous times before I finally got the hang of it. I'm pretty sure I was in double figures for embarks by the time I actually had a fort survive more than a few years. (And that was in 2d). Link them to some of the better community forts too (Boatmurdered as many have mentioned already, and Nist Akath too, as well as any others you may like). Finally ask them not to delete the file, in case they feel like coming back to it sometime. I think quite a lot of players will dip into and out of the game a few times until they get a feel for it.
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Topic: Help Convincing Friends to play Dwarf Fortress? (Read 12010 times)