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[KaelGotDwarves]

[FluffyToast J]

... I am in awe. Thats terribleIFIC.

[Armok]

@OP: Seconded

@stories&image: AWESOMNESS!

[Rainseeker]

Like, if I'm playing Lord of The Things and I get to the level where my wife ditches me because she finally realizes the full extent of the Ebay addiction, then yeah, it's a well voice acted scene and all, but it's scripted. I can replay the level a dozen times and get the same effect.

Where can I play Lord of The Things?  It sounds fantastic!

[Sysice]

The best part of this game, the part that keeps me coming back, is how you can never know exactly what will happen. Randomness is awesome, and I've never seen a game as random as DF.
Very nice drawing, by the way.

[expwnent]

(picture of dwarf surfing on baby)

EPIC WIN!

[Pandarsenic]

I love the little things that happen so much because you know you'll probably never experience them again. There's a distinct uniqueness to what happens.

[Demetrious]

Whereas if in Dwarf Fortress, my mayor is hit with an arrow and dies and his wife commits suicide... that wasn't  scripted. That was something that only happened to me. That was something I could've prevented, and my game will just have to live with the ramifications of that.  And I think that makes the game feel a lot more real than if I knew I was just playing the questline where the mayor is shot.

This, right here, is a tremendously important point to make.

Half Life Episode I, with the developers commentary mode on, makes it 100% clear just how finely you are manipulated, with the players thoughts and even direction of view manipulated in order to make you notice and appreciate the vast number of scripted scenes. This is vital, since the whole game consists of you being ushered through a carefully arranged linear railroad designed to amuse you.

This mode of storytelling might have it's advantages, but I personally find it's seeming dominance in modern gameplay to be anathema to they way I like to play games. One of the most memorable events I remember in gaming is the day, on a spring morning in 1918, when German triplanes came screaming down on my aerodrome. As I scrambled from the airfield, I recognized the lead attacker as none other then the Red Baron himself.

Wrong fucking aerodrome, bitch.

That was a random event in the game, but I remembered it years later.

Games need not be sandbox to allow the player at least some freedom. Dungeons and Dragons "Dungeon Masters" have a similar problem as game devs- you need to make many choices, but are constrained by resources (time.) So you use the "dungeon," rooms connected by hallways, and events in one room effect conditions in the others. This makes a "flowchart" for the adventure, which allows for several possibilities, but not infinite ones. 

This is how Deus Ex was designed.

Get on board, devs.

[Cardinal]

It's not randomness, it's emergence (Sometimes, when it's baby-surfing, it's incredibly creepy emergence).  Just like bees building a complex piece of architecture based on simple rules, Dwarf Fortress produces stories based on the creation of relatively simple interacting elements.  That's what I find most interesting about Tarn's roadmap, that he seems to be focused on having emergent narratives.  I'm not saying I'm against traditional linear narratives but if you could dissect the stories and isolate their foundational characteristics (Either by reading Campbell's "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" or just surfing tvtropes.org) and then create a space where these things can occur, then I think that would be amazing.  The fact that DF already does this on a small scale is what I find so addictive.  That and channeling magma...

[Xgamer4]

Anyone who likes games like this and have a penchant for strong ecosystem and genetic simulations should check out Creatures 3.
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/creatures_exodus

The entire game is raising little creatures called Norns in a big world. The things that actually make this interesting is the simulation and modelling aspect.
Like this:
http://aigamedev.com/open/highlights/creatures-ai/
And this:
http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/creatures_more.php?id=460_0_6_0_M27
And this:
http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/cdn/cdn_more.php?CDN_article_id=42
All of these:
http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/cdn/cdn_category.php?product=creatures3&category=genetics

And the enviroment is modelled only slightly less realistically.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Games need not be sandbox to allow the player at least some freedom. Dungeons and Dragons "Dungeon Masters" have a similar problem as game devs- you need to make many choices, but are constrained by resources (time.) So you use the "dungeon," rooms connected by hallways, and events in one room effect conditions in the others. This makes a "flowchart" for the adventure, which allows for several possibilities, but not infinite ones. 

This.

The thing is, if you have a sufficiently broad space (large map) and sufficiently rich population of cool things (detailed map) and players have a sufficiently entertaining range of interesting choices and tools (equipment, magic, skills, and just plain old environmental interaction) you can leave the railroad for good.

But let's say you have a city. The DM has to determine what happens in the city, the actions of all these little people. It's a huge burden. So either nothing big changes (snore and railroad), big predefined things change (railroad), or the DM goes crazy with work.

It's easier if there are far fewer actors for the DM to juggle. This is why a wilderness works so well.

I think the benefit of randomness, even within constraints, is the idea that "anything can happen". If you play a game once and see all the cutscenes, the only way this is going to be new to you is if you don't play it for a few years and forget things. But after two or three playthroughs you'll never forget it enoughfor it to be fresh.

People want sequels because they want the same thing, with minor tweak improvements, but all new content. They paradoxically want the same thing but completely different. The quality of sequels is dependent on how well they capture exacty what the original captured without rehashing the same content.

Randomly generated content that is variable enough to surprise you guarantees that it will be a new experience but solidly of the same style and type as the previously generated content.

Spoiler: EDIT (click to show/hide)

EDIT: And by this I mean if you could generate Morrowind over and over again getting wildly different terrains and backstories and quests and NPCs, I would learn to mod it and never buy another game again until MMO graphical DF comes out.

Imagine regenerating Morrowind and getting, effectively, Skyrim instead. All the work of creating a procedural system results in the ability to generate many different games.

From a game designer's perspective this is especially attractive. You could even procedurally generate models and textures using randomized inputs, rejecting if they fall outside commonsense constraints. Then you step in and add the overarching story that ties it all together.

Once that software is made, you generate a game and sell just the generated game minus the generator. When people clamor for a sequel you hit the "generate game" button again and tweak it hands-on. You could see development cycles drop from several years and two hundred employees and managers to one month and a team of six.

With the money you make, design an engine for a flight / space / sailing / driving sim with randomized procedural generation. Push button and begin selling. Shift your huge dev team to the RTS game engine (hexagonal please!). Then the big dev team gets split into support for the three engines to keep them up to date with graphics advances, compatibility, and efficiency.

Can't be done? FUEL did.