Also, on topic: My sig should get across just how thoroughly DF has invaded my daily life.
My girlfriend regularly makes fun of my Dwarf Fortress habits, at one point prompting a long discussion where I had to explain to her the depth to which the little dwarves (I use a tileset) have their own little story and whatnot going on, and that it's better than a book because you firstly interact with it on a puzzle-solving and planning level, and second the same level of imagery arrives, and in my head I can see the bustling dwarves going through their forced mishaps daily lives, and fighting their epic battles. After a few examples, she conceded that it wasn't as silly as she thought.
I've had similar conversations with people that has actually left several impressed with the whole concept and even gotten a couple others hooked on the game. The only reason my dad didn't pick the game up was because it's just too dense for him.
My best example of the dynamic narrative was a time where I had a pretty good fort going with a barony and proper guard and everything, but during an attack one or two goblins managed to get past the guards and into the fort proper. They didn't actually do that much damage on their own, only one or two casualties, but the big problem wasn't how many they killed it was who they killed. One was a forgettable chump, but the other was apparently
everyone's friend. The death of this one dwarf made a lot of other dwarves unhappy. Now for most this wasn't that big a problem, but in expanding to a Barony so fast I'd not spent as much time working on other smaller details of the fort. So a couple of my lower-class workers, already a little unhappy due to near-homelessness (I was short a dozen housing units or so) and mediocre work, start getting really upset, throwing tantrums. Now, these tantrums aren't normally that big a deal if the fort is in good standing, since usually an angry dwarf will go to their bunk and pout it out there. Except these dwarves didn't have a bunk, so they start throwing their tantrums in the halls, the forges, the stockrooms, and the dining rooms. Some of them get upset enough that they punch another dwarf. They feel a bit better, but then they remember that they're homeless and jobless and their best friend just died, and now the guy they punched is also in a bad mood. That guy then punches someone else, who punches someone else, and eventually someone punches someone who's holding a crossbow.
After the civil war... the baron, the dungeon master, and seventy other dwarves were dead, while in the middle of the carnage, brother slaying brother, one of my young dwarves, on the verge of adulthood, entered a creative fugue, locked herself in a workshop, and crafted the artifact Glimmeralderung, a horse skull scepter! When all was said and done the population was decimated, several workshops were demolished, and every shop, save one, had been torn down in anger. Almost every dwarf remaining was a wanted criminal for multiple murders. A few more migrants dared to settle there, knowing it oculd be their tomb, but after a couple unfortunate drownings in a failed well building the place was declared a wasteland and no more migrants would come. The halls, built for hundreds, were just too empty for the couple dozen remaining, and those who were left abandoned that terrible place.
Okay, that sounds like a happenstance, one in a million moments that could happen in almost any game if you're willing to read into it, but these kinds of emergent narratives are
common in Dwarf Fortress, a confluence of graphics that are just good enough to tell you what's happening and an absolute overflow of data behind everything.
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Topic: DF has invaded my mind. (Read 4640 times)