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[Armok]

yay! ^_^
*hugs dwarfguy2*

[dwarfguy2]

yay! ^_^
*hugs dwarfguy2*

*hugs armok for letting him worship him*

[Armok]

[dwarfguy2]

you're much better than cthulu in that respect.

[h3lblad3]

What is Armok?

Arm_ok.  Arm_ok says that yes, an arm is attached.
It has to do with the fitting of things together.

What is Armok?
Armok is the raws.

[Umi]

My interpretation of Armok is similar to a lot of the above posts.

As said above, blood has many, often contradicting, conotations.  Ultimately it is the spirit of the game.  It is the RNG, it is your dwarves.  It both builds your forts and tears them down.  Every event is a piece of Armok, every Fun moment.  It drives us to continue playing while never letting us win.  We think we are the master of our forts, but really what are we doing but responding to the game as it changes around us.  We think we are the master, but really we are slaves to Armok, we just don't know it.

I know I didn't explain that well, but I hope someone understood what I meant.

[Jualin]

The spoilers are necessary. I tend to ramble. I take several side paths which may not interest everyone. As such, in the interest of making it readable...

Spoiler: Response to Umi & 2 quotes I agree with (click to show/hide)

My interpretation of Armok is similar to a lot of the above posts.

As said above, blood has many, often contradicting, conotations.  Ultimately it is the spirit of the game.  It is the RNG, it is your dwarves.  It both builds your forts and tears them down.  Every event is a piece of Armok, every Fun moment.  It drives us to continue playing while never letting us win.  We think we are the master of our forts, but really what are we doing but responding to the game as it changes around us.  We think we are the master, but really we are slaves to Armok, we just don't know it.

I know I didn't explain that well, but I hope someone understood what I meant.

I disagree, but only because I do not see Armok as a god of creation. Neither do I believe the RNG or the creatures, dwarves included, are Armok. Both are tightly bound by the rules and restrictions of the game itself, and I do not see Armok as purely a contribution from the game or the player. I believe it is something else that arises when player and game interact with each other. I believe Armok is something that does not always obey the conventions of either the game world, or our world, but both, along with the ability to freely move between the two in ways we know not. I see it more in line with the quoted below.

he's more a deification of our desires to do crazy and/or mindlessly destructive things, which in itself makes things fun. Or Fun. Depends on what happens.

I like this. Armok isn't the game, OR the player, but the actual process of playing the game.

Spoiler: What I see Armok as (click to show/hide)

If I had to choose an analogy, I would choose Death, who did not have a personally defined ambition or goal so much as a job or duty tied with its very being.

I see Armok as being the agent that comes when all is lost, but Armok does not prevent or ensure loss itself. It is a god of death. But not a god of the dead. It does not preside over the dead, it presides over their moment of crossing. But it is not just a god of individual death, but also the death of the entire structure that we call a fort. It not only has a hand in each dwarf's, goblin's and elf's demise, but also in the demise of an entire fortress (and not just the fort as an actual presence within the game, but your ambitions for the fortress, your dreams, your disappointments, your surprises, etc.).

Armok is not necessarily there only when we are at any given moment, but Armok tends to be where we will be or have been. Armok has no fixed place in the timeline of a game, and can freely exist anywhere along the timeline. The only prerequisite for Armok's presence is that you are in some way aware of an individual thing's end, even if only in hindsight (including kingdoms, items, creatures).

Spoiler: The Player (click to show/hide)

Armok must be differentiated from the Player though. Even if Armok is, in some way, a part of the player, the player is not in full control of Armok. The Player is a god in her/his own right too. Through the Player comes two things: the initial embark, which can some times even occur if there were no dwarves before you embarked, and the ability to teach.

Spoiler: Why I consider the Player a teacher (click to show/hide)

You do not construct things so much as show dwarves how to construct things for you. I consider it teaching, and the only reason your dwarves cannot employ your teachings is they cannot learn what you teach, it's too complex for them. All they can learn at the moment is how to construct one block, one mug, one bed. Sure, they can make very well crafted beds, but their learning is so restricted to the concept of the individual production of any given type of object that their big "eureka!" moments are essentially finding out how to make one object of a certain type in an unusual manner, rather deciding to forgo beds, cabinets and the like altogether and making forks, or finding out how to mass-produce stone beds.

[cowofdoom78963]

Armok is just a joke Toady made about violence in video games. He is not acctually part of the game.

[Umi]

I knew I phrased it wrong.  :\

I don't see it as the creatures themselves, but to steal another person's word, the process.  It is not embodied by the other parts of the game so much as the interactions and processes used in the game by either player (For Armok himself might be considered the other player.  He is after all, your opponent if this view is to be believed).

[PTTG??]

Spoiler: The real story. Beware disillusionment (click to show/hide)

In an early Toady One game, there was a variable that stored the status of one's limbs. If your main arm was unharmed, ARM_OK would be set to one. This is the origin of the God of Blood.

[cowofdoom78963]

witch game was it?

[Sensei]

Dragslay

[MaDeR Levap]

La, la, la, I cannot hear you... Armok is player, Armok is player, Armok is PLAYER!!!...

[vlademir1]

*sigh*
It doesn't matter.  Once something like this has taken on a life of it's own, as any concept of deity or character in a story, hell even the story itself, ultimately does, the truth is in the perceptions of those who partake of that thing.  Armok is all the things mentioned in this thread, and none of them, depending on the individual participant.

[Jualin]

Spoiler: The real story. Beware disillusionment (click to show/hide)

In an early Toady One game, there was a variable that stored the status of one's limbs. If your main arm was unharmed, ARM_OK would be set to one. This is the origin of the God of Blood.

I knew. But I even if they share the name, the Armok we refer to and the first to bear the name Armok are two different things.

For example, when we were all talking about Armok, none of us talked about arms or even limbs. Armok has become something else for most people that talk of it.

*sigh*
It doesn't matter.  Once something like this has taken on a life of it's own, as any concept of deity or character in a story, hell even the story itself, ultimately does, the truth is in the perceptions of those who partake of that thing.  Armok is all the things mentioned in this thread, and none of them, depending on the individual participant.

I'll agree... to disagree with you all! Heretics, all of you! There is only one true Armok and he is my God! Suffer not a heretic to live!