Dwarf Fortress Succession Game - Year 1, Update 2

[Myroc]

"Losing is Fun."
-Unofficial Motto

"I have no idea where anything is. I have no idea what anything does. This is not merely a madhouse designed by a madman, but a madhouse designed by many madmen, each with an intense hatred for the previous madman's unique flavour of madness."
-Andreus, Failcannon Succession Game

Greetings, I am Myroc. If you aren't completely new to this community, you most likely know who I am by this point (or at least know of my existence): An angry swede who frequently procrastrinates, likes videogames, and spends most of his free time on the internet ranting on and on about things of utmost insignificance. What you may or may not know, is that I am also a huge fan of Dwarf Fortress, which is why I've decided to host a succession game of it for the Cutstuff community.

What is Dwarf Fortress?
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood - Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, or plain simply Dwarf Fortress is a "roguelike" simulation game in development by Tarn Adams (aka ToadyOne), and co-developed by his brother, Zach Adams (aka ThreeToe) that aims to be a fantasy world generator, simulating entire procedurally generated stock fantasy worlds, from nations and history right down to individual characters and creatures. The game is known for being notoriously complex in simulation, keeping track of hundreds of thousands of characters with stunning detail, not only names, skills, profession, and the like but also things like layers of skin, nervous systems, and individual teeth. If a person has had his third tooth from the lower left knocked out, the game knows when it happened, who caused it, WHY he caused it and where the tooth ended up.

Did I mention this game is in alpha?

This game is ridiculously realistic in that aspect (as far as fantasy can be, at least). Combat isn't about hit points or damage rolls. Not only does where you hit someone matter, it matters what weapon you're using, how you're using it, what the weapon is made of, what armor he's wearing, what that armor is made of, how thick his skin is, what material the skin consists of, and so on and so forth. There are no healing potions. If someone attacks you with a sword and chops your arm off, that's it. You're not getting it back. In fact, your opponent might even pick it up and beat you to death with it. And, if you somehow manage to survive that, you're likely to just bleed to death. Or die to an infection. Should you at all odds survive all that, you're still spending the rest of your life without an arm.

Did I mention it does all this while rendered in ASCII?

Okay, we get it, it's very very detailed. What's the game about?
The game currently features two modes of play: Adventurer Mode, where you delve into a generated world as a random adventurer, and go exploring. Far more popular, however, is the titular Fortress Mode, in which you guide a band of seven short, bearded fellows as they found a new settlement in the middle of fucking nowhere. The mode plays like some sort of unholy hybrid between Dungeon Keeper and The Sims, if all of your sims were mano-depressive alcoholics: You manage everything from food, building layouts, shelter, workshops and production, military defense, and more. The goal is simply to stay alive; the game cannot be "won", and will only end when your last dwarf alive finally submits to the inevitable and perishes, or if you decide to purposefully abandon your fortress.

The game is known for being very challenging and unforgiving. You have only one savefile, and there is no reloading (you can of course, in grand roguelike tradition, savescum by making backup saves, but you're obviously above that sort of thing. Aren't you?), if anything happens, you will have to deal with the consequences. Did your favorite dwarf die? Too bad, he's not coming back, much like the arm you lost earlier. Mourn him and move on. Dwarf Fortress' learning curve can be more accurately described as a learning cliff, covered in barbed wire, decorated with skulls, spikes and magma falls, and thousands of corpses strewn all across the plain in front of its imposing and dreadful stature, all whilst taunting you and calling your mother rude things.

That sounds incredibly masochistic.
It is. But it's also Fun! (Hence the motto.)

Fair enough. So what is a succession game then?
Dwarf Fortress is usually a single player game. Succession games, however, consist of several players that take turn guiding a single fortress through its many hardships. One player starts a fortress, plays for a pre-determined length of time (usually a single in-game year each), before passing the save to the person next in line, who then plays his year before passing it on, and so and and so forth, all the while detailing the various events and interesting things going on in the fortress. These tend to be come more and more hilarious as the fortress grows older, as things devolve into madness and overseers struggling to remember which lever irrigates the farms and which engages the lava flooding device.

Wow. That sounds pretty awesome, but I don't really know how to play.
Don't worry, I'll be playing the first year, which will set up the more basic things needed to survive, and hopefully serve as a small tutorial of sorts for fledgling overseers.

I'm liking this more and more. Where do I sign up?
Just post in this very thread that you'd like to have a turn: You will be put on the end of the waiting list. There are a few rules that you should keep in mind, though:

When playing your turn, make sure that you detail the fortress' current events and your actions in this thread, screenshots are very, very much preferred. You don't have to notify us of every room created, every mineral deposit discovered, or every -chalk bracelet- made, but at least a brief description of important things are in order. Remember, this is a community game, if we don't know what's going on, then that's not really much fun.
Your turn will consists of an entire in-game year. Your turn should be completed, logs posted, and save passed on to the next player within a period of two weeks.
Only sign up if you feel you can play through an entire year.
If during your turn, something unexpected occurs that would prevent you from playing through your year in the alloted time, we can give you extra time if you really need it. If something would prevent you from finishing the year in a reasonable timeframe, play as far as you can and hand it to the next overseer in line. That player will play through the rest of your year (unless nothing of note was accomplished, in which case he simply starts from the previous save), followed by his own year.
If you want to use 3rd party tools that help you keep track of things (such as Dwarf Therapist), please clear the program you want to use with me first. Wanting to keep track of all your cheesemakers is fine. Wanting to cheat isn't.
Don't intentionally destroy the fort, unless you think it would be really hilarious.

I don't think I have the skill/time/patience to play through an entire year. Is there another way I could participate?
Sure! If you'd like, you can always be dwarfed: Just post your preferred nickname, as well as other details like preferred profession, and a dwarf will be renamed in your honor. (Note that in the case of things like profession, I will not guarantee anything. If you want to be a carpenter I'll try to make you a carpenter if I can, but if I need other roles filled then I will likely have to ignore your request.)

Current Turnlist
Myroc - Update #0, #1, #2
King Dumb
Swordkirby
Korby

People waiting to be dwarfed
Magnet Dood Dwarf Dood
Zwergballtoid
Thunderono

That's all I have to say for now. Now, it is time to strike the earth!

[Ceridran]

How long is an ingame year?

[Myroc]

An in-game year is twelve in-game months each consisting of 28 days, or a total of 336 days. A single in-game day passes in about twelve seconds, and a full year takes roughly one hour (give or take depending on your actual framerate). Of course, since the game is real-time with pause, it usually ends up being closer to two or three hours, plus you're going to have to put in some extra time to write down logs of the fortress events. Still, you should be able to easily do it in a single afternoon, two weeks is being extremely generous (and may even be reduced to one week if it ends up being way more time than actually required).

[King Dumb]

I'll need some time to play around in singleplayer to understand mechanics and how the game works, but this sounds like fun.

Sign me up.

[Rui]

Sooooo, a full in-game year takes a few hours and we have 2 weeks to pass on our save? neeeeaaaat




I only usually have weekends for computer time but sometimes I may be on weekdays if my mom feels generous O: so if that's alright i'd like to sign up~

if that doesn't work out then, if it's alright, can i be a cook dwarf? my preferred nickname would be "Rutan "Rui" Von Bunnel Bon" (if thats too long then just Rui would work)

[Myroc]

If you find that you can't actually play your year when your turn comes around, then that's fine. We'll just pass it on to the next in line.

[Orange juice :l]

Put me in the same boat as KD, but I'll take a later position to observe for a while.

I do these sorts of plans, as a relatively broad number of people could tell you.

[Swordkirby]

Can I be a member of the succession game? I only play dwarf fortress, megaman, or pokemon anymore. I really f*cking hate dfhack or stuff like that. And Dorf me, I like swords, Dogs, detest spiders, and is quick to anger and for looks, I am a average sized male  (for once, use dfhack to make me  like that.).

[Darkpaladin109]

Interesting. Didn't know that any of you were DF players. To be honest, I haven't played much of it, so I might not be an overseer. I did make a couple of small mods though, and I know most of the mechanics and creatures.
That being said, dorf me. I only request that I'm male.

[Myroc]

Let's get this show on the road.

(click to show/hide)

And with that, we're inside the game at the main menu. You may notice that there is no "start game" option or similar. That's because we don't have a world in which we can make a new fortress! So we select Create New World so the game can generate a generic fantasy world for us to inhabit.



We're greeted with a few basic worldgen options, which are all pretty straight forward. I could go into detail describing the various steps in world creation, but you're likely not interested in that, so I just hit the "go" button...



Go away to make some tea...



And ten-fifteen minutes later we've got our world, "Lina Yula", which apparently means "The Land of Forever" in some language (not sure which, it's not dwarfish as far as I can tell). World generation can take a while depending on the size/history length of the world you're trying to generate and the performance of your computer. If you have a poor computer, you might want to keep to lower world sizes/short histories (or import a larger world from someone else).

I poked around in the world history and found out a few interesting tidbits. The dwarfish civilization (there are several of them, but I only bothered looking at this one) our fortress are a part of, "The Helm of Creation" also contains quite a number of goblin cities towers, which they conquered from a nearby goblin civilization, "The Fiend of Joys" in a recent war, which means we might see a few goblins coming to the fortress (if not as migrants then as caravan guards or liasions). We also have a general, which, in addition to being a general badass and personally leading every attack and military action for the civilization, is also in the middle of the process of becoming a *spoiler* necromancer *end spoiler*. The game can produce some interesting situations like that, and like I've said before, this is all procedurally generated.



Anyway, I search around for a small while for a place to embark. This site looks promising, with shallow metal usually indicating iron deposits, which are very, very good to have. Along with a nearby brook for fresh water and plenty of trees, this should provide a suitable place for our new fortress (even though it's halfway across the world from the rest of our nation).



Next, I spend some time setting up the skillsets of our initial dwarfs, filling out all the roles that our expedition needs.



First of all, here's my dwarf profile. As you can see, there's a lot of things on this page. From top to bottom, this page describes my current mood (and recent events that impact this mood), my age and date of birth, appearance (mostly going into detail describing your mandatory beard), what things I like and dislike, characteristics, and personality. (Notice the line "needs alcohol to get through the working day"? Everyone has a lot of varying and different traits, but, in true dwarf fashion, everyone has that one trait, and maintaining alcohol levels is crucial in any fortress to prevent low morale.)

As the expedition leader my main skills handle administrative duties, record keeping, trading, and organization, whilst also doubling as the fort's main doctor (until someone more skilled arrives). Since these aren't all that necessary for starting out the fortess, you'll likely see me helping out with all sorts of minor unrelated tasks.



Next is Rui- who, as requested, is a cook and a farmer, and will be working together with DarkPaladin in producing food for the settlement. She's also a brewer, and so is key to sating our universal craving for alcohol.



DarkPaladin is another farmer, and will co-operate with Rui- to work the plump helmet fields. Unlike Rui, he has hunting and butchery skills, and is also an archer. He'll mainly use his crossbow to kill any wild beasts that decide to attack our dwarfs, should it ever come to that (which it probably will), followed by butchering it.




ThatGuy and Raveman are woodcutters and carpenters, and are mainly there to make beds for sleeping in, and bins and barrels for storing things in. Since they also carry axes, they will likely help out DarkPaladin in hacking the native fauna into tiny pieces. ThatGuy is also a mason and a mechanic; masonry will be something that's done by pretty much everyone at some point but for now he'll work on it mostly by himself (and me, since I have nothing better to do). Raveman is also a bowyer, which will probably not be at all relevant, but I had a few points left that I didn't know what to spend on.




Lastly, there are two currently unnamed female dwarfs (I briefly forgot that Swordkirby had signed up to the dorflist when making this, which I will rectify in the next update. Sorry, I'm not using DFHack to change dwarf profiles around, so if you don't want to get stuck with some random dwarf lass, I can just refrain from dwarfing you for now.), which is ironic because they both fill what's arguably the most important role in a new fortress: Mining. Not only are they going to be responsible for all the stone and metal for masonry and smithing, but they're also key in creating the infrastructure of the fortress itself, digging out the rooms and hallways of the fortress itself. One of them is also a metalsmith, although I remember in hindsight that we don't actually have an anvil to make a forge (I traded it in for points to spend on skills), so that's sort of redundant, but oh well.



Lastly, here's an overview of the things we'll be bringing with us. Notice the lack of an anvil (and then cry). Also notice that our supply of alcohol is going to last longer than our food will. Dwarfs.

But anyway, we've done all the preparations we can, so, finally, it's time to embark and found our new fortress.




"Walkedtomb". I'm sure that's not ominous at all.

[Swordkirby]

I hope it doesen't end like BoatMurdered http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/

[Myroc]

I sincerely hope it ends like Boatmurdered! The best succession forts are the ones that ends in utter chaos and ruin. To go out in a glorious armageddon worthy enough to honor the heritage of Boatmurdered is a feat to strive for, not to avoid.

[Swordkirby]

I sincerely hope it ends like Boatmurdered! The best succession forts are the ones that ends in utter chaos and ruin. To go out in a glorious armageddon worthy enough to honor the heritage of Boatmurdered is a feat to strive for, not to avoid.

Ok, I meant a very creative end (not mimicking boatmurdered entirely), Maybe unleashing a bronze colossus in

(click to show/hide)

Hell

would make it more awesome (granted, I don't do much economy and I am terrified of the procedurally generated

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Forgotten beast/ Titan

and it is hard to reach there as you have GCS' and magma sea and have wars with elves)

PS. can you release the map once the entire succesion is finished so everyone can play on adventurer?
PPS. once you make my dwarf, put me into the military
PPPS (I need to say more   ) The FIFTH age of myth!?!?!?!!? HOLY S*IT!!!

[Darkpaladin109]

Yay, I'm both Incredibly Muscular and Mighty. Too bad I have a good feel for social relationships.

[Myroc]

PS. can you release the map once the entire succesion is finished so everyone can play on adventurer?

Sure, that sounds like a good idea. I also plan on uploading the fortress at the end of each year to the Map Archive so people can look at it at various stages of development, although I'm debating whether or not I should do it at the end of each year or after the game has finished entirely.

Also, I will start the game proper the first thing I do on sunday morning, due to being slightly pre-occupied with real-life matters. If anyone else wants to be dwarfed for the first year, now is a very good time to let me know.