Dwarf Fortress

What is it

This is a construction and management simulation indie game, which has a cult following. Gameplay is open-ended and provides text-based graphics.

Motto: "Losing is fun!"

An important part of Dwarf Fortress is that it relies heavily on procedural generation.

Succession Games

One of the amazing phenomena that has grown up around Dwarf Fortress is the idea of succession games, in which different players hand off fortress to one another, for multiple generations, in succesion. These are then narrated with a storyline.

Boatmurdered

Here is the storyline for Boatmurdered, a famous succession game: https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/

StarkRavingMad

StarkRavingMad: https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Update%201-11/

To begin with, all of our fucking workshops and trade goods are sitting outside in the fucking rain. One of the previous Overseers must have been some sort of shallow-dwelling skygazer because having our production out here is just inhumane to the poor hoopleheads who have to stand out there. I almost went fucking crazy having to be under the goddamn open sky for the whole trip out here, instead of in a nice safe cavern, and some of these poor bastards have been working out in the open for four years now. Four years standing out in the rain, or even worse, under that horrifying yawning expanse of blue open sky.

Room full of levers, I don't know what any of 'em do and I'm not going to try and figure it out. With the way this place is set up, any one of them could make the whole place collapse in like an accordion. Armok help me.

The dwarves working here are the laziest bunch of hoopleheads I've ever seen. If they aren't drinking, they're sleeping it off. Or "Storing an item in the stockpile, boss" which seems to be code for "fucking around carrying things from place to place instead of doing some real work."

I have six fucking carpenters, I asked for this workshop to be built 3 months ago, you think anyone gets around to it? It's a ten minute job, but they're too busy to do it. Busy doing what, I don't fucking know, since without the workshops up they can't carpenter anything either. I have 4 miners, two of them apparently sleep 20 hours a day, one is so injured he can't walk, and the last claims to be the Retired Ruler of this place but he's the only guy who actually does any digging.

Apparently the Craftsdwarf union rules preclude me from directly asking for anything specific, including the fucking mini-forges that our beloved broker storms into my office every day and demands. The best I can do is tell them to make "toys" and hope they happen to figure out that means "mini-forges" and not boats or hammers or axes or puzzleboxes or all this other shit that I am now buried under, and not a single mini-forge, and so the broker is pissed at me and there isn't shit-all I can do about since I wouldn't know how to make a fucking mini-forge to save my life. I need a drink.

The brave military men of Boatmurdered assemble by the front gate, and they brave themselves for a rush at the mighty elephants.

And it was about then when the fucking dwarven caravan arrived. I ordered the military to hold fast. Let the caravan guardsmen get themselves slaughtered by the elephants before we do.

Which was also right about when a goblin thief jumped out and got clobbered by a stonefall trap

So the merchants arrive to see blood and vomit everywhere, us hauling corpses en masse to the graveyard, a couple rampaging elephants

WELCOME TO FUCKING BOATMURDERED!

Hope you like miasma!

I've started project "Fuck The World", a top secret attempt to funnel magma to the outside. I'll kill those elephants. I'll kill all those fucking elephants.

The place isn't a total loss, just so long as you, you know, don't open the front door. But you may be able to muster up enough of an army to overcome it, or do a lava flood of the exterior, or just pray a human caravan with some badass swordsmen comes through. Aside from the whole goblin and elephant siege, the fortress is in pretty good shape, there's plenty of food, sleeping space, and production for survival. It's just a matter of clearing the exterior. Right now you're going to see a lot of error message spam, since some dwarves are trying to do things that require going outside and there's no path to it. Good luck no matter what you decide to do with it.