Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[TapeNoot]

I've been thinking about running on, or joining the other. Any advice? How do you write -great- stories? How DO you juggle playing with notemaking and screenshots? Is it difficult?

Etc, etc.

Yeah. Basically, I want to do/join one of the things that makes DF such and awesome game to play and read about

[kaijyuu]

Find some friends to play it with and go crazy.

Emphasis on the crazy part. If you just play to "win" it'll be boring.

[Girlinhat]

Basically: You don't.  A succession fort is meant to be chaotic.  Levers get abused and designations ruined.  That's the fun of it!  And you don't "make an epic story".  You just allow it to happen.  If it is epic, then you win.  If it turns mundane, then at least you had fun, right?

[Rentorian]

The biggest thing that succession and community games have going for them that leads to the infamous insanity you always hear about is mainly the level of player involvement.  I'm not talking about just that there are multiple people playing the same fort but that each person will have a dwarf that is their avatar.  In most cases when I play a normal fortress things tend to run efficiently, with each dwarf being given what he needs and nothing more.  I was the invisible overseer that ruled all and all that happened was under either my judgement or that of the RNG. 
However in succession fortresses you aren't a formless overseer, you usually are one of the dwarves. In my first succession fort I ended up making a large dining room, bedroom, office, and tomb all for myself with everything that could be made of steel, made of it.  Steel thrones, tables, and statues.  A steel sarcophagus, chests and cabinets.  All because I was the one that kicked steel production into high gear and I felt that I had earned the right to that steel covered room.  That sort of thing rarely happens when a single person holds continuous sway over the fort. 
There's also the fact that each player want's their turn to mean something.  This makes them do crazy and irresponsible things that they wouldn't normally do, all for a chance to be able to have every player thereafter say, "Hey, Rentorian did that.  Friggen moron."  Each player hurries to make their superweapon, their monument, their spic tomb, even at the detriment to the for as a whole.  Completly disregarding things like failsafes, safe working environments, and proper testing.
Community games don't have the same level of individual participation but as long as the person running the game is constantly taking input form the community, and possibly even making sure that each player's avatar does things that the person wants them to do, the same level of insanity can be achieved simply because the fort is once again being run by multiple individuals instead of just an invisible entity.  Each with their own agenda that may or may not have the fort's best interests at heart.
All in all this has just been a long way of saying you don't have to force it.  As long as you get people to participate the madness will build and build until either death or sheer awe at your creation is achieved. 
With the awe followed shortly by death of course.

[Sutremaine]

How DO you juggle playing with notemaking and screenshots?

I personally play for a couple of in-game months, take screenshots and give them a file name with the date and a description, and very occasionally take notes for things that can't be covered by a screenshot. Then I write up the entry in Notepad from memory with the proper formatting, using the file name instead of a proper URL for the pictures, and then finally I upload the pics and sort out the links. I just use Paint for the screenshots. There are undoubtedly more efficient ways of doing it (I think FRAPS allows you to take screenshots and store them all up for later use), but this works.

Great stories just happen, to a certain extent. Don't force it. Just write what you want.

[Carnes]

Rentorian, i think you describe it very well. 

So far i've only been involved in one succession style game via DF:MP and it was very much like that.  Eric Blank designated a mansion for his dwarf to live in that almost doubled the size of the fortress.  He then died to a mining accident during Girlinhat's play.  I was one of the first DangerRoom'd soldier's and did well until running into a titan.. who i killed but he broke my leg.  Infection!  Someone was eaten by a croc that crawled into the well and ate one of Eric's children.  It ended with the pulling of a sword.  There was talk of a reclaim but i don't think it happened. 

It was a ton of fun.  I also enjoyed the intense arguments over designations.  For the most part, everyone was in agreement about what to do.  They usually chose the most brutal and efficient option.  Tonight is a "Drink, chat, play!" event but i don't think there are any plans on what exactly to do yet. 

Back to the topic! TapeNoot, i think there would have to be a historian or secretary of sorts to make it a recorded story.  Perhaps a bookkeeper noble is amongst us?