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I recently started playing Dwarf Fortress and stumbled upon an archived thread of a succession game at SomethingAwful (here for anybody who is curious). I figured that a lot of fun and hilarity could be had if we did one of our own; I know we've got at least a few others here who play, and those who don't can start

For the uninitiated: Dwarf Fortress is a sort of a hybrid between a Rogue-like and Dungeon Keeper. It is free, and can be downloaded here. Yes, the graphics are primitive - if you absolutely can't stand them, custom tilesets are available.. If you're new, you would be well advised to try a couple games on your own just to get a feel for the basics.

Rules:
1. Each person plays one year, from the beginning of spring to the next spring. When your time is up, save the game, and pass it onto the next person.
2. No intentionally running the fort into the ground. If something completely game-breaking happens (Ex, Permaflooding the entire fortress), we'll just revert to an older save. Try to avoid this though, because a lot of the entertainment is in overcoming the setbacks.
3. Each person must write a narrative of their exploits for the year and post them on the forums. (Added later)

That's about it, I think. I was contemplating adding a rule about exploiting, but it's a bit hard to define what exactly an exploit is. As a general guideline, I think things that completely remove the challenge should be avoided. If you want to participate, post or PM me, and I'll put you down. Once we get enough people for a few years, I'll start it off and pass it along to the next person. If we run out of people, we'll just keep going in a circle.

Participants so far:
Exonerate
Covenant?
ColonialAdmiral
General Schatten
Nephtys
Cincinnatus

There's some rules on the DwarfFortress Wiki about good succession games, but this could theoretically be a lot of fun. We'd want some ground rules--some of the ones on the Wiki had rules like "no breaching past the river until the Mayor arrives" and such to slow down runaway expansion. Otherwise, I think it could be interesting. Surely wouldn't be all that hard, and if we documented it online like MrDod was then we could have an interesting AAR thread.

I've been burned by Succession games. We had a great Venice MTW2 succession game going but the mod killed it because one player didn't do his turn (wtf?).

I'll join in if there is room.(Seeing as how the dwarf fortress game on SDN died)

As will I, however, can I be an AxeDwarf with the Shield skill?

General Schatten wrote:As will I, however, can I be an AxeDwarf with the Shield skill?

Well, it's a succession game, not a RP thing like the other DF game... but I suppose we could get each person who plays to pick a dwarf and name it afte r themselves. So far I think we have 5, 4 people who have expressed interest?

Oh, rule 3: Each person must write a narrative of their exploits for the year and post them on the forums.

where shalt we start then?
For a challenge we could do a sinister glacier
I'd prefer not to do the first year, and if possible i'd like to do the third...

ColonialAdmiral wrote:I'll join in if there is room.(Seeing as how the dwarf fortress game on SDN died)

HEYHEYHEY!

NICHT BIST!

I'm updating tonight, I just had a week or so of busyness.

Ungrateful bastards.

I've been a bit quiet on the DF End, waiting for the next couple of versions to come out... but hey. I'd be up to take a crack at one year of our DF game.

ColonialAdmiral wrote:where shalt we start then?
For a challenge we could do a sinister glacier
I'd prefer not to do the first year, and if possible i'd like to do the third...

Well, you're in luck, since you appear to be the 3rd person to sign up

5 people should be enough to start... perhaps we'll get others to join in later on. I'll start it up tonight.

I have been offered a position to lead an enterprising colony that is just starting up in The Helmed Green Towers of Clobbering. The weather's pretty nice, and although I am slightly concerned by the surrounding wildlife, I have been reassured that it is actually less than terrifying. I set out next week for Blizzardcloisters.




We arrive with two proficient Miners, two proficient growers, a novice mason, carpenter, and woodcutter. A breeding pair of dogs accompany us, and will (hopefully) serve to produce a litter of vicious warpuppies in the future. One of my farmers has expressed doubts about inbreeding the dogs, but I'm sure we'll get some material for the gene pool when migrants arrive... if you know what I mean.


We soon arrive, and immediately start digging. An initial survey of our surroundings by our woodcutter show they are more hospital than I dared to hope for - zombie and skeletal groundhogs, yes, but still naught but groundhogs. Perhaps this place isn't that bad after all.

While digging in, one of our miners struck an underground river, which proceeded to flood the entire tunnel. Miraculously, both of the miners managed to evacuate before they drowned, and as a nice bonus, the wet ground was ideal for planting crops. The dig continued, and a bridge was quickly constructed to get us over to the other side.



As the founder of this outpost, one of my foremost priorities is to lay down the groundwork for a solid fortress. My first priority was to establish an irrigation system, for planting on the muddied ground would not sustain us forever. As the rooms and channels were being dug out, however, one of the miners encountered a minor mishap...

The idiot for reasons unknown, decided to construct the entire channel first, then connect it to the river, instead of slowly extending it. As the water rushed in, he was quickly swallowed up, and he splashed about uselessly and washed ashore by mere chance. We managed to save his life by digging him out with the other miner.

Our first immigrant, a metalsmith arrived with an anvil late summer. We still haven't gotten around to constructing a forge yet, since we haven't even the most basic workshops up and running yet. Apparently this region is home to more than groundhogs - while out cutting down trees, out woodcutter ran into an undead macaque. Quite an aggressive one at that - it chased him all the way back to the outpost, where, fortunately, two dogs quickly dispatched it.

Our miner yet AGAIN managed to moat himself in while constructing a floodgate for the irrigation system. It's official - dwarves do not mix well with any liquids aside from alcohol. I shudder to think what will happen when we breach the lava float.

Man, you stupid piece of-

Right before winter, we received our first batch of immigrants. Nothing exciting, really. Two masons, so I told one to practice engraving until the entire fortress was smoothed. Among them was a trapper, eager to prove his worth, who set out to bring home some meat. After bringing down a groundhog or two, he decided he really wanted a trophy and went after a cougar. A skeletal cougar, no less. We didn't even know this area had cougars at all. He somehow managed to bring it down by hammering it with his crossbow, but suffered a mangled limb in the process and had to be carried back. He went without water for several days, since nobody had the foresight to build any buckets and apparently barrels were too heavy to haul around. He now rests in the temporary communal bedroom.

The bones from the cougar kill were never retrieved.

The miners kept digging deeper and deeper - they hit the chasm, bridged it, then finally hit lava. Thankfully they exercised a bit more discretion than they did with the water.

The makeshift bridge over the chasm was torn down in order to make space for a larger one that would accommodate heavier traffic in the future. Unfortunately, one miner was stranded on the other end of chasm. A mason was quickly assigned to construct a bridge to allow the hungry and thirsty miner to cross, but halfway through the construction, the mason decided he wanted to take a nap and wandered off. The miner was so fed up he decided to build the bridge on his own and barely made it back, with a critically high percentage of blood in his alcohol stream and starved.

More expansions were built, and temporary workshops were torn down as they were relocated to a more permanent and strategic location. The irrigation system was finally completed, after our clueless mechanics managed to screw up the linkage several times. My time is up, but I feel that this has been a productive year - no casualties, and we can look forward to the new year with a plenty of room to expand and barrels stuffed with food.

Overview
Edit: Whoops, I forgot to include the save file. It's here
Notes for my successor:
The center large room would make a great location for a barracks. Carve some fortifications, stick in a few ballista/cataputs/marksdwarves, and build a drawbridge.
The top lever controls the inner floodgate, and the bottom one controls the outer floodgate. Or was it the other way around?

I guess that means it's my turn! Let's see if I can get this working properly. How long are we playing? A year each? Two seasons?

BTW, megaupload says the file is temporarily unavailable. I'll wait until it's grabbale. What's that big ol' top tunnel for anyway?

Okay, now it'll let me get it.

A year. *Smacks Covenant for not reading*. The tunnel is just another route for dwarves to take, I guess.

I'd like a crack at running Blizzardcloisters, if there's still room on the list.

Cincinnatus wrote:I'd like a crack at running Blizzardcloisters, if there's still room on the list.

There is. And you'll be getting an interesting fortress to boot! This is certainly an unusual setup. We've already hit Magma, but we have no bridge over the chasm. I have no idea how those miners got over there.

We umm, tore it down so that a bigger one could be constructed?
I've already got ideas for my turn.

EDIT:
What do you mean, there is a bridge over the chasm. I guess they are kind of the same color so it's hard to see but...

Oh for rules...
Are we allowed to use the they are on break so draft them into the military then undraft them so that they don't take a break and instead do worthwhile building projects exploit?

I've gotta re-do this. It's gone all to hell. So many pathing errors over and over and over again. I can't stand it. I'm taking a pass on this round, this is an unhealthy amount of aggrivation. I really do want to play, but I don't enjoy the setup as-is, and there's a lot of really awful things that happened. If I play this one out to the end of my term, it'll be a complete ruin. Zombie cougars roaming the halls, half the bridges destroyed because I wanted to make them adequately large to accomidate traffic but nobody will EVER BUILD THE FUCKING BRIDGE because of pathing errors, etc. Horrible. Either I'm redoing it all, or I'm going to need to pass this round.

I've taken a fort to well over 100 members and done it for years without a hitch. But this fort is kinda a mess. If you want, you can give me another shot at it and I'll reinstall the turnfile... but otherwise, I think someone else should take over and I'll jump in later on.

Guess I can give it a shot. I'm perfectly fine if you want to do a retry though...
Really? Zombie Cougars?

ColonialAdmiral wrote:Guess I can give it a shot. I'm perfectly fine if you want to do a retry though...
Really? Zombie Cougars?

Zombie and Skeletal Cougars, several of them. It also didn't help that when the Human caravan arrived not only couldn't they get the wagons to us through no fault of mine, but they also brought nothing. Nada! Zilch!

They actually came without ANYTHING!

How insane is that?

I strongly recommend whoever makes the next go at this that they dig a hole in the top chamber and install a door instead of that floodgate, since that's just a permaflood waiting to happen. I don't know how that got there, but that's really a terrible design. Also, put doors across the way from the chasm so that monsters do not fly in, and fix the bridge over the cave river. As it is, nothing large can pass over it because of the way it stops short.

You also need to dig out those trees and such in time for summer, and put a new depot outside. Make some rock crafts, we have too many tables and chairs and they won't take them.

Ok, I'll give it a go now.

Anybody else want to give it a go? Everything is just kind of spread out for my taste. I'll check back in the morning, and if nobody wants to take the turn, I'll go ahead and see what I can do with it

ColonialAdmiral wrote:Anybody else want to give it a go? Everything is just kind of spread out for my taste. I'll check back in the morning, and if nobody wants to take the turn, I'll go ahead and see what I can do with it

Told you!

I'll give it a try. I'll do my best to clean up the shops and such, and I plan on collapsing some areas I don't want around. I've got a good idea of what to expect now, having played a year through, so I think I can handle it. Forewarned is forearmed.

Covenant wrote:

ColonialAdmiral wrote:Anybody else want to give it a go? Everything is just kind of spread out for my taste. I'll check back in the morning, and if nobody wants to take the turn, I'll go ahead and see what I can do with it

Told you!

I'll give it a try. I'll do my best to clean up the shops and such, and I plan on collapsing some areas I don't want around. I've got a good idea of what to expect now, having played a year through, so I think I can handle it. Forewarned is forearmed.

In an undead area, unwarned in de-armed.

You idjits should have crossed the River like I did. You're all DOOMED.

MRDOD wrote:

Covenant wrote:

ColonialAdmiral wrote:Anybody else want to give it a go? Everything is just kind of spread out for my taste. I'll check back in the morning, and if nobody wants to take the turn, I'll go ahead and see what I can do with it

Told you!

I'll give it a try. I'll do my best to clean up the shops and such, and I plan on collapsing some areas I don't want around. I've got a good idea of what to expect now, having played a year through, so I think I can handle it. Forewarned is forearmed.

In an undead area, unwarned in de-armed.

You idjits should have crossed the River like I did. You're all DOOMED.

Hey! It's not my fault!

Honestly, this fortress is nigh-unplayable. It's really badly set up. If you wanted to intentionally handicap us you should have just given us like four retarded Dwarves rather than this... it's really a mess. The place is laid out all crazy, and there are so many pathing errors. Why did you take apart the chasm bridge? It's impossible to rebuild. Everyone wants the stones from that side so I can't hardly construct anything. I went balls-out crazy trying to get them to just BUILD A FUCKING BRIDGE over the outside river and they still couldn't do it in time.

Really, we have some seriously problematic things with this, and I'd really suggest making the original fortress setup more bare-bones and designed around defense than this. It's not like you did something heinously wrong, Exo. But the way it's set up... it's a giant nightmare. It'll also be completely undefendable. The second entrance is just asking to be raped twice as hard, especially since the entrance is so damn wide.