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[Thadius]

Dwarf Fortress is some sort of crazy mind virus, I swear to God Murphy ARMOK.  I scrolled down through the LP Archive and read the sagas (occasionally while they were still in the making) and went 'Oh that's awesome-sounding despite the ASCII, but eh, I don't really have time to learn crazy physics and a whole new game.'

Then I went to Youtube and watched the hilarious videos, my mind's eye supplying what the dwarves must be seeing.  Once more I wondered about the game, but said to myself, 'No, that took a crazy amount of work/patience/sanity, and I'm not known for any of that.'

Eventually I got very curious and Googled for a walkthrough.  Well I didn't find it first off, since such a thing didn't exist at that point, but I did find the wiki.  And the D for Dwarf category, and I laughed my behind off.  Multiple times.  Occasionally I even poked my lurker head in here to read the threads.

And then I DID find the walkthrough.  Once it was all explained to me so nice and simply, I realized, 'Eh, this isn't so bad!  Maybe I should try it on my own!'

Five Ten Numberless forts later, I learned what NOT to do and have nearly perfected the art of setting up and surviving long enough to become a mighty fortress.

...And then I started dreaming in ASCII.  I've been enthralled by the game and I could not break its grip if my life depended on it.

[NewsMuffin]

I don't really remember much. A really long time ago I was surfing the web, and came across the bay 12 site. This was before the site got the graphic overhaul, so yes, it was a while ago. I downloaded 40d, and started playing, not that interested. I got my dwarves digging, but then I got confused, and quit. A few months later, I was some how linked to the bay 12 site again, re downloaded it, and failed miserably at three or four forts. Then I looked up a tutorial, which started the process, but didn't really help all that much. Then I made a fort, and decided I would not give up. After a few screw ups with an aquifer, I had finally made my first successful fortress. However, it was boring after it was established and I really didn't have room to expand.

[Zalminen]

I no longer remember how and exactly when I first ran into DF but I do remember I failed miserably at making a well and went back to playing something else.

Much later I came across Boatmurdered...

[Medicine Man]

I spotted somebody talking about it on Adomforums and then Chaosforge so a few years later I decided to play it,I thought it SUCKED because I thought it had very little features, I soon learned that it was just the MASSIVE learning cliff.I decided to play adventure mode and I pissed off the towns local maceman and he gave me a shiner to the gut I was thinking "what the fuck?I'm nauseous?" and then I started vomiting and I thought "THIS.IS.AWESOME"

I soon found out about the injury system,I have always been a big fan of injury systems and when I learned you could get organ and limb damage I KNEW this was the game for me.

[LizardKing]

One of the guys from the wiki (not sure if they're on here) posted a link on another forum to the Lazy Newb Pack, and one of the replies mentioned Boatmurdered and the awesome Obok Meatgod. It just so happens I was already looking around for a "Build a Fortress of Terror and Fuck Shit Up" kind of game, and after reading about those two I knew it was perfect.

[deoxys413]

For me it started with a friend, probably through TvTropes, retelling me the tale of Boatmurdered when we were on the topic of either Nintendo hard or decent computer games in this day and age. That much hilarity couldn't possibly NOT be inviting so I downloaded 40d and went on my merry way. I half-listened to cap'n duck's tutorials but by about two months after I had begun I had started on my first megaproject and had finished it by the end of winter break.

[Ze Spy]

Forgetting the Team in Team fortress

Really , Dwarf fortress was the Very first link i saw , the game looked interesting , so i downloaded it , RAEG QUIT'd once due to the learning curve , found DF again , Played it again , Got hooked onto the game

[Tyrius]

This.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My entire response can be summed up as "WTF? Ooookay, lets see what the hell he's on about." *reads Ian's explanation post, and clicks on the link to the 'catsplosion' page. then watches the thermonuclear catsplosion video.*

 Ten minutes later after I stop laughing I download the game, read a 'my first fortress' tutorial, and died within about, 5 minutes to rampaging carp. The rest was history

[A-chana]

Boatmurdered. Even if it was outdated and the elephants had calmed down significantly by the time I played, I knew I had to play this game after I read that. I think Headshoots was archived shortly after I started, too, so that helped. I was hecka confused, but I had the wiki and good ol' trial and error to help. My first fort somehow ended up lasting ten years before I got bored and ended it the same way Headshoots was ended.

[Arekis]

I picked up this game several months ago through a mention on Kotaku.  There was a post about someone doing a computer in DF.  I browsed the article and thought "neat" even though I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at or what DF was.  I promptly put this out of my mind until a few weeks later, a different post about the SimCity 3000 Magnasanti video mentioned DF in passing.

That clicked in my mind: I like SimCity so maybe I'll like DF!  I was definitely in for a huge surprise.

While other games try to "streamline" the experience and dilute it to the lowest casual common denominator, DF's complexity and ungodly amount of detail completely hooked me.  A game that requires a 12 hour wiki reading course to understand and play deserves my respect.

[abadidea]

My dear friend Balathustrius got my fiance hooked on it by telling him that he could strangle elf children. Fiance gleefully showed me his piles of dead elf children. (He actually wasn't my fiance yet.) I followed them two's forts/gruesome adventures for a while before I finally started my own. It was on a volcano, there were fire imps in it, chaos ensued.

Apparently saying "Hey come look at this game, it even lets you kill the KIDS!" made me fall more in love  Should get that checked out 

(edit: fiance says his sadistic little brother was the first to discover it and infected both fiance and Balath... and fiance wants you to know that I railed on him for being so cruel to elves until I actually played the game. BURN THE ELVES)

[MaDeR Levap]

Don't worry, you are not alone. My other me agrees. And there is also this voices in head... they are boring, constantly screams something about "killing them all". Headache.

Oh, ontopic: TvTropes.

[krenshala]

A few days before 0.31.11 was released I followed some random comment link off Reddit; I don't remember where it led to now.  That page lead to the /r/dwarffortress101 tutorials (#3 had just been posted), which lead to this forum and the wiki.  Since I've always liked (Net)Hack I just had to try DF ... and then I found a reference to Boatmurdered and spent the next few days reading through that.  Needless to say, the idea of all the "fun" that could be had in DF had me hooked almost from the moment I found it.

Now if only the day job and family (and sleep) left me more time in which to try not to starve/dehydrate/otherwise-end-the-lives-of my dwarves I'd be happier.

[FreakinSatan]

I think I heard about it on a RevRant first, he mentioned Boatmurdered and I looked it up. After reading that I had to download it, but had no idea what was going on, so I gave up. Not long after that I thought it would be funny to make a series of videos on YouTube of me learning without using tuts or a wiki, I ended up cheating alittle bit with tips from someone who watched the videos, but I still got to a reasonable skill level just through playing and a guys tips.

Heres the first video for anyone who cares, its not all that funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7z-2mHiig8

[Mudcrab]

Hahaha, it was just the wiki.

I "played" the DF Wiki for weeks...