Dwarf Fortress

Deflun

Today I will talk to you about a game I really dear that is called Dwarf Fortress

Fortress mode is the most popular mode of gameplay in Dwarf Fortress and what most people are thinking of when they talk about the game. In fortress mode, you pick a location, then assign your seven initial dwarves some starting skills, equipment, provisions, and animals to bring along. After preparations are complete and your hardy explorers embark, they'll be faced with the fortress site you picked down to every detail, from geologically appropriate stone types to roaring waterfalls to ornery hippopotami. Rather than control individual dwarves, you design everything and your dwarves go about implementing your designs on their own.
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Dwarf_Fortress

Basically Dwarf Fortress is Sim City in steroids, it has such a depth in detail you can actually make soap out of animal fat, dwarves have livers (oversized), varied organs, eyes, arteries, nerves, and every creature has it's own personality and appereance, combat is gruesome and often after goblin sieges you'll find yourself picking up lots of teeth and limbs on the floor, everything is made out of a material and they have properties like density and boiling temperature, having a dwarf fall in a pit of magma will release a lot of dwarf steam, not kidding.

If you manage to get past the scary OPTIONAL ascii interface (or opt for a graphic pack, like I did ) and then beat the initial disorientation and agoraphobia you'll be rewarded with lots of minecrack-like joy


Now to add some fun to this silly article I will propose we sign up for a succession game.
In a succession game a set of players sign up in a list, then the first player in that list starts a fortress, then takes care for it for one game year while reporting every now and then in the forums with screenshots and all, he will be allowed to build a residence/tomb (though tombs are more orthodox) for himself, and name a dwarf after him, and use him as an avatar.

And at last, for a good example of the level of random crap that can happen in this game you can check out a "very famous" succession game called Boatmurdered:

Boatmurdered was a succession game of Dwarf Fortress on the Something Awful forums from 2007. From this spawned an epic tale, incorporating hordes of belligerent dwarf-eating elephants, floods of biblical proportions, flaming puppies, and more hilarious pranks. After many goblin raiders and elven traders were fried with floods of lava, there was a brief period of tranquility. Then one of the last few dwarves went mad and slaughtered another while on fire, causing a tantrum spiral that eventually destroyed the whole fortress. To be fair, he'd given plenty of warnings that he was becoming unhinged, such as attempting to drink from the magma river and making numerous engravings depicting dwarves on fire, elephants killing dwarves, and a carving of a carving of cheese. How many other fortresses manage to create artifact caskets?

EDIT


Links:

DF + IronHand graphic pack (the one on the screenshot)
DF with normal ASCII interface

Blnukem

God damn.. These spoiler things are annoying as hell..

Alviss

Beat you too it Deflun.

http://www.the-construct.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1886&highlight=Dwarf+Fortress

I REALLY hope you've read this comic. It's actually a really amazing illustration of what CAN happen. Theres an even better one out there, [STRIKE]but ill get the URL later.[/STRIKE] here we go http://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace/

Deflun, i would TOTALLY be down for a succession game, sign me up. But i'd probably have to get the graphics pack so you guys can actually understand what my screenshot's are depicting, because i play with ascii, like a pro.

It's actually hella wierd that i read this, i just turned off DF because i had spent 8 hours playing it (3 and then 5)... It's my day off, dont judge.
Anyhow, i have a neat story for all of you.

Deflun

Very well!, now we have 2 people down for it, I think we need at least 6, and yes, dwarf fortress spawns shitloads of funny and odd stories, it's very fun and odd!