My thoughts on the paper:
It's about the narratives in and around the game, what types of architectural elements induce emergent narratives and how the community uses and supplements those to created even more meaningful narratives.
It's pretty readable - even for someone unfamiliar with the game - everything is well explained and context is given about specifics game features influencing the narratives.
The paper analyses elements from three different forum stories (of those, I've read two) and the way all those in-game and out-of-game elements play with each other to create those layered and complex narratives. As I'm an avid consumer of the game for its open-ended narrative style and am also reading a lot of the stories on the forums it's pretty interesting to have it all deconstructed and analyzed.
Some details about the in game elements driving the narratives: there is almost no 'plot' elements programmed (just a couple of hacked exceptions in old versions), only a complex bunch of potential actors/agents with all their own agendas... all stories and narratives emerge from the different procedural systems influencing each others. Hence the game creates a kaleidoscope of 'tellable moments' and creates a somewhat un-structured story: the fortress' life. Players have an indirect control of that story, they can plan, structure the space, but they can influence the agents and actors only indirectly.
Of some note (and pretty unique to Dwarf Frotress): the agent/actors themselves (seemingly) create their own story for their own sake: they will choose their own memorable moments and will engrave them on the wall, on their items, make statues about them, etc. Legends mode digs deeper in the world own 'story' and the adventurer mode can be used for creating specifics stories or experiencing the world's stories recorded by the world inhabitants.
Out of game: People actually create narratives of those moments in many different formats, leitmotivs and memes are shared by the community, fortresses are shared and "lived in" by the participants (not players per se, but something of a mash-up of co-narrator, quasi-player and reader), players hack the game to ensure specific narrative outcomes etc. Stories are about the fortresses engineering, the lives and deaths of the dwarves, justifying the game systems (and its bugs and quirks).
A lot of the narratives is done in the minds of the readers and writers of those narratives: lots of holes to fill, lots of conversation to imagine, lots of drama to write. The game having a very abstract look actually re-inforced this.
As the game as no plot per se it's very interesting to see how people come up with ways to use the game elements (religion, nobility mandates, dwarves' personality, actual hacking and modding) to create stronger plot-driven stories. Transcending the game-driven (mis)adventures of your dwarves to create a meaningful revolt, or religious segregation, etc.
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Topic: Master's Thesis Based on DF??? (Read 2253 times)