Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 129: What Do YOU Like About Dwarf Fortress?

Episode Date: February 21, 2026

This episode we are reviewing what our favorite aspects of our favorite game are. Dwarf Worlds Website Quickfort Episode Voxellizer Web Page

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfie. My name's Jonathan. And I'm Roland. I'm Tony. So guys, you know how I've always had this pipe dream of building a website where people could upload their community fortress and things be automated? And it tells people to download whenever it's their turn and all that kind of stuff. Yes.

Well, someone has beat me to it. The website is dwarfworlds.com. See, I think it was Rurik from the Discord server told me that over on the main Dwarf Fortress Discord channel that someone was talking about it. And so Rurik pointed us out to him and he sent me an email. And yeah, I created an account on it. It looks pretty cool. Yeah, so there's now a, so everyone get out there and check out dwarfworlds.com. and maybe we'll have to have this person on to find out if he was listening into our podcast episodes

and I inspired him to create this thing. So, so far, it seems this side does not have too many, like, fortresses to offer. I'm honestly considering just uploading my snake fortress because it would be like a nice thing for people to play with maybe because it's like an old established fortress. Oh, cool. That's neat. So it's really in the alpha stages right now, I think, or maybe, I guess it'll be beta since I'm talking about it and it's out there. But yeah, so it's in the very early stages.

I think that there's more development to be done on it. Where I had talked about doing it such that you would have like a group of people who are on a kind of like a team that took care of a fortress. It appears as though with this one, whenever you feel like playing, that you request a lease. And for example, you might say that you want to have. a two-day lease on a fortress where you check out that fortress for two days. And if you don't check it in by the time that your lease is up,

then that lease expires and it reverts back to the save being open to someone else to play. It kind of reminds me a lot of a version control with software. Yeah, it was about to say, GitHub, you could build something like this on GitHub, I think, because then you would have that full

version control. You can't blow away old stuff. Yep. And that's nifty bandifty. It is. So, yeah, I hope that this takes off. I recommend that all of our listeners go out there and, and yeah, sign up and download and check out a little request to lease and check out a fortress and play that fortress and upload it and see if we can help this person bug check his software. Yeah.

Because, you know, the programmer never can find the bugs in the software because they are using the software typically as they expect it to be used. and users never use software the way that you expect them to use it. This is very true. It's the best way to do it is just to put it in the hands of the players and have them abuse your game. Your product. That would be neat. I would love to see it.

I keep really wanting to have an animal kind of animal people fortress, and it just never seems to quite work out with me. Like, I never get it. They are so rare. Roland, I'll get to this fellow's address offline, and I don't see, off the way that you would just upload a new fortress. There's create a new world.

Oh yeah, there it is drag and drop your save here. My bad. So yeah. So do you zip it? Because there's a lot of files. It says drop a folder or a zip file. So it could be either one, I guess. Well, you know, because typically we will unzip the save when you're doing a succession

fortress anyway, you'll unzip it to your saves folder. No. Correct. Yeah. It would be really cool to see. like I would love to see Steam saves built in to the base game. That would be pretty neat. So they sync across devices.

And then I think I wonder if you could put something in as a mod that would, anyway, probably shoot myself in the foot here somehow. But yeah, being able to have it as like a mod that you could get from the workshop and then it would have its own UI and menu. I don't know if we've got that level of mod support. Yeah, that does sound like something that would be in Putnam's realm because it's not core gameplay. Yeah. but it is ancillary to the core gameplay.

Yep. Yeah, and that is one of the advantages of Steam is the cross-platform. Yeah. I'm sorry, the cross-device save. So if they don't work towards putting that into the game, they would not be utilizing one of the main advantages of Steam. Yeah, well, I wonder if it's trying to, if it, well, also it's like, I'm sure they have a huge list of stuff that they need, like,

a huge list of need-to-dos. and so I can imagine maybe that's not high. But I know they're also trying to support itch users too. And so I don't know if that then breaks feature parity or something like that. I'm not sure. I bet there's more complexity there. Oh, I'm sure. Do they hire on a third coder?

Yeah, his name's Claude. Oh, good. Why? You want to be the third coder? No. There you go. No, I've got enough business in my life already. You could plow through code too.

Blum-pump. Oh, nice one. Thanks, I'll be here all week. To those who that made no sense to, before we started recording, we were talking about snow plowing. Yes. Okay, so yeah, dwarfworlds.com, check it out. Check out a fortress, play it, upload it, see if you can break his site. I'm sure that he appreciates that.

It is a very fresh side, too. just, you know. Yep. It still has the wrapper on it. Yep, yep. That fresh website smell. Yes. It's tallades.

This segment has been brought to you by Sarnanagan's interior design and mildly dangerous decor. From tasteful statue placements to doors that open, most of the time. Cernanagan believes every fortress should surprise its inhabitants. Sarnanigans, where form, function, and chaos meet in the hallway. Warbears. is still kicking. It is I think that they started with year around

33 or so. I went back and tried to find what the very first year mentioned on the thread was, but it's like 333. Now there's something at like 345, 346. Okay, that's progressing. Yeah, and it's still going strong. It started off, if you recall, back in November, and it

is still being run to this day. And right now they're talking about trying to figure out how to drain the volcano. You can't drain a volcano, I thought it's just infinitely spawned lava. Well, you know what? It does, but if you drain it fast enough.

Oh. And build walls, magma safe walls in there. Yeah. And the lava would only spawn into certain places. So I don't know. Yeah, they were discussing that and to see how that would work. I've been trying to think about a possible. of with my fortress. I've got the reinforced walls and then I was going to put water.

Then I was going to put another row of walls. So I'm thinking like theodotion walls kind of thing where you've got one row and then another row separated by kind of a gap. And then I was going to fill that gap with water. So if they dig through one set of walls, I'm hoping that all the water will rush out and then disrupt. Is that likely? I mean, could you please elaborate on the term theodotian walls? Right. Okay. So, ancient Constantinople was protected for a thousand years by this really cool set of walls

that were considered impenetrable until they invented cannons in which case So they were penetrated, yes. It was over. But these walls stood for a thousand years and they were these huge, multi-step, very solid walls. And there was like one on the outside and then there was like a big gap and then there was another one on the inside and then they had a moat so i mean it was it seemed like you kind of weren't getting into constantinople and and that was that was true until it wasn't and yeah

so that's that's what i'm thinking like two stages of walls but in this case when you break through the first set of walls there's water behind them so the water comes flooding in gotcha and you go oh i've made a horrible mistake i don't know if this is going to work i'm trying to do it actually Thinking about it, it could work. You just need more water. Now consider the amount of water that, you know, more water and then like double it. You need more water. You also need pressure because the water shouldn't tickle out, right?

Otherwise, yeah, it'll just trickle out. So let's see. What you could do is essentially make a water tower. You know, then you pump water with a pump stack up into a large reservoir. And that puts, because everything is like walled off and has floors and ceilings, the water can't escape. So the pressure stays. But as soon as the lower walls of breach, the entire reservoir is going to push down with its own force, like gravity, and push everyone away from the wall that just got breached. Well, that's a similar thing to what Warmbiers did with the magma death tower.

So they would open the gates on the lowest level of the magma death tower, and the magma death tower was pumped full of magma. And whenever they opened those gates, magma poured over the sides and shot out all over the ground. It was pretty destructive. So I guess that fluid dynamics comes into play, right? If you have... Yeah. Does the pressure of the water depend on how tall the tower is?

I don't know if that makes a difference. I can only tell you that the amount of water is going to make a huge difference. So I would say that maybe three levels above the actual double wall, and then the reservoir starts, and then you make it very large. maybe, let's see, 20 by 20 blocks, six Z levels up,

that should be enough water. I'm just eyeballing it. Yeah. I was kind of wondering if you had a tower of water that was 30 units high filled up to the top, if that would give you more pressure

through the two square opening than one that's just, you know, six levels high. I don't know how how realistic the I mean and there's going to be at some point there's going to be a point to where the drag

of the opening balances with the pressure behind it so that you can only get so much so much of a stream out well that's going to be a real test of that of its water simulation I think that could be kind of fun because I was I was going to start it off

and just fill it but I think you're right Roland I think it'll just open it'll be a trickle and they'll just look at it and go, oh, now it's muddy. But if I put the water in a tower above, I wonder, this is going to be more complicated. This is my science. This is what I like doing. Yeah. I mean, but I'm also not that good at the game to be perfectly on fuel. None of us are. I'll just, I'll just be, yeah. After all these years, Roland is still our resident expert, so. Oh, clearly. Yeah. I wouldn't know about that. Oh, boy.

No, that's, okay. Yeah, no, I've got a mission. I still don't get invaded very much. And like this time, with this fort, I'm building gold statues and just putting them all around the front of the building. Come get them. Come get us. Just like, here I am. Here's gold.

Look, here's a gold walkway right up to the drawbridge. I mean, I'm just trying to make it as obvious as I can. Hello, we've got money. How many people do you have? Everything short of being in the Epstein files to show that we're like loaded, you know. But I'm bomb. How many citizens do you have? Like 150?

That should be enough. But they're all, a lot of them are entertainers, which is kind of annoying. Oh, okay. Too many damned entertainers. So you've got gold statues, gold pavement, lots of entertainers. What are you? Like, Dwarven Vegas? Yeah, basically it's kind of the great Gatsby, I think.

It's kind of what's going on here. Yeah, but nobody's taking the bait. So we'll figure it all. You do have goblins, like, close to you, they're not on some island, right? Yeah, no, they're close. And they're just, they're just wimps. Like they don't, they just, there's one, there's one fortress that has like a pretty small population.

But obviously it has a demon there because every time I send a crew in, they disappear. So I think something bad's happening in that one. I should probably do an adventure mode thing and go invest in a gate. Hmm. Do you guys ever do that? Go in with, uh, with your adventurer to try to see what's going on in some of these places. Stir stuff up. Yeah, just like kick my ridish.

Yes, but I do it on a separate save file because I don't like, like reclaiming my own fortresses. I don't like when that happens because then everything is like not put into place anymore and items are all over the place and water spawns weird and suddenly something is flooded and I'm like, ah. Yeah. I agree. That is a problem.

Yeah. And then if you, yeah, yeah. So you retire, you copy the fortress, and then you retire it, and then you join as an adventure in the retired. Either that, or I extract the history first to look at legends, and then I start the adventurer, so then I have everything, everything, literally, because I can like check on the history, where do I have to go, where is this creature? And then I never get there, because I'm terrible at adventurement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had so many sad things of like traveling across the whole village and then dying of hunger, right? When I get to my destination, that's a classic for me.

I don't know that anybody is good at adventure mode. Or reclaiming my fort and then having my people just die at some troubles. I've had some sadness. I brought panda bear people into a fortress, a whole bunch of them. I like did a bunch left them, did a bunch left them. Did a bunch left them. They came back in most of them today. You hate to see it.

it's actually funny that you mentioned the water physics and how you want to build the double wall with water inside it because my current fortress is so close to what you're doing I had this weird biome where it freezes and then unfreezes right I mentioned that that's where the water freezes unevenly on the river exactly and oh that's so weird exactly and it gets like very close to my entrance and it freaked out

every year since I've played, it got worse. Every year the water froze and then every year when it unfroze, the river became stronger. And the water roged closer and closer to my fortress. So before that, it was just a nice, neat little river with two waterfalls. Now it is a raging current that is even completely filling up a second mode that I dug around to the right side. I don't know what's happening, but the entire lower floodplain

of my map is now almost filled with water. It is crazy. I do, however, very much like how it looks. My computer does not like the game right now because I am losing FPS faster than in my like

300 people fortress. So that's a thing. Oh, water can do that. I've got one where I've got a waterfall in it. I hadn't even realized because everything's just moving really slowly in the fortress, even when it shouldn't. I mean, yeah, I'm playing under emulation. Okay, so that's already a bit of a barrier, but not that bad.

But yeah, I spawned into a place with a waterfall, and that just decimates the FDS. And I don't know how to fix it without starting over again. Huh. Hmm. Maybe he's got any ideas there. Please tell you. I'm not ready to.

say goodbye to this. How tall is your waterfall? Tall enough to constantly make mist, which is what I think it's... I think that's the, I think the mist simulation is what's making everything tricky. Absolutely. Yeah. Smoke does that too. Makes everything, yeah.

It's pretty taxing. That's honestly a reason why I try to stay away from mist generators. I know that a proper one does not generate like millions of tons of mist every second. but, you know, I do like my FBSS untouched. Thank you very much.

Do we still think they make a difference? Absolutely. Like, is it? Yeah. I do, yes. Is the juice worth the squeeze? So my favorite mist generator happened when I built a grate into the floor of a temple. And I dumped water from levels above through the grate into levels below.

And as it went through the grate, it created mist in the, in the, in the, temple that worked very well and i don't know that uh it it didn't fill the room with mist i think that it may have created the effect that you're kind of looking for tony you might try that yeah it just drizzles on them basically yeah yeah yeah i think i've done that before yeah i'm not very good at pump stacks i got to spend some time getting created with pump stacks i didn't use a pump stack mike's video i didn't use a pump stack no i who didn't i channeled a underground aqueduct from the river to a point where I could control the channel of water with a floodgate. And I built the temple below the level of the river,

and then I drained it into the caverns. So it went from river level. So, yeah, it was gravity fed. It wasn't pump stack. Of course, you know, pump stack, it still feeds with gravity. But, yeah, I didn't have to do a pump stack. I just let it go from the level of the river downward. Okay.

That's nice. That's a good solution. I've also seen that kind of thing happen where somebody used an aquifer, so the entire fortress was still enclosed. And then the aquifer had its own level where it just drained slowly into and like drip fat the mist machine. You know, I need to stop cheating and I need to start playing with aquifers. You know what? I did one. Kind of did it by accident. And I thought, well, it's going to be a happy accident.

It just slows you down. I don't know. I'm sure it's cool. and I know that if you use the Dream Fort, it's kind of designed to take advantage of that. So maybe I should, like, I don't know, this was my plan, was to try to use just to try to fully embrace Dream Fort. Dream Fort's pretty darn cool.

It's pretty cool. I already use the bedrooms that it has. I use a lot of... I like using their stairs, just even if nothing else, just use the stair template to delve down deeply as I practice my alliteration. confused by that. Yeah, well, I think it's a great I think it's a great tool. I love

me some quick ford, I guess. Yeah, QuickForce the tool, DreamFord is the example. It's the tool, DreamFords the map. Yeah. Yeah. If you haven't tried it, this is the chance. This is your chance. Do it. And check out episode mumble, mumble, mumble, because we

had the creator of DreamFord on here, and we discussed it in depth for a couple episodes. Heroic. Some episodes ago. That is episode mumble, mumble, episode. Link in the show notes. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Ring that bell.

Enable notifications. This episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable is made possible in part by the Great Garzini's Fortress Consulting and Unplanned Outcomes. Build one thing and get three unexpected results. Whether it's a tavern brawl that becomes a religion or a cat that becomes a legend. Garzini guarantees emergent gameplay every time. The Great Garzini. You meant to do that.

So our main entree today is going to be us talking about the things that we like, our favorite things about Dwarthress. All right. Let's talk some turkey. What do you, what's your favorite aspect of Dwarf fortress, Tony? What do you like to do? I am really into the machines, the evolving stories of never knowing quite where you're going to go. I don't know. I kind of like losing, to be honest with you, because it's funny. You know, it's usually my fault. And when I say usually, I would almost think always my fault for making a mistake, but it's, but it, but it, but it, but it is kind of funny to see it sometimes.

So I like that. Yeah, you know, I, I love the, I love the, I love the fact that at no two playthrus are ever the same. That to me is like, that's, well, well, it sounds to me like from the theodotion walls project that you, you, you kind of like, uh, uh, dwarven science as it were. Little dwarven science. Yeah. I mean, I'm truly inspired by people doing, like, like the Dwarven mine cart, shotgun, like that, that was art.

I do really enjoy the fluid dynamics whenever I'm doing the science. Yes. I will sit there and just get hypnotized by watching a stream of water slowly fill up a large room. As the, I will watch with the depth, the depth indicators on. So I'll watch the numbers go from one all the way up to seven very, very slowly. And I can't look away until they all say seven. you know what there's also a real satisfaction in setting up the soap factory and then making clear glass like just these silly things like that it feels good i'm like yeah

yeah and then have the automated systems and the manager order set up and then you do nothing and the the dwarfs start dancing and like doing stuff soap comes out it's great i like it dogs go in soap comes out it's cool Yeah, soap is a little, it's a little challenging to set up automated orders for because they don't actually have soap, general soap, as something that you can build. So you have to like do an end around. So it's like make soap whenever the number of bars are less than so and so. And then you have to go check the type of bars. And yeah, so it gets a little convoluted creating automated orders first.

making soap. But you definitely can do it. I got a hack for that. I have it. Make soap anytime there's tallow. You can do that, yes. But if you're not careful, otherwise they cook it. If you're not careful, you will have, you know,

tons and tons and tons and tons of soap. And you're wasting dwarven time. That's not even too bad because that just means your dwarfs are more likely to use it. Because, for example, I stored in bins and then

the dwarf can only act like one dwarf can only access one bin at a time right also additionally if you have like billions of bars of soap you can sell them fairly well they don't weigh too much

yeah but what's the use of selling them whenever you don't need anything on the carts anymore I don't want to let any tallow go to waste that's my also that otherwise they Cleaning the world.

Think about it. You get to clean the world. You are allowed to now gift the humans a lot of soap because they're stinky. And then you go, shoot. Now take it and leave. I think that's funny. Do elves like soap? Will elves be mad at you about soap because they're made with ash?

Or, you know, if it's dog soap, they're going to be cranky about the dog part. Well, their carnivores are. right? They don't care that you, do they care that you kill things? Yeah, they seem like they'd be vegans. No, they're, they're, they're, they eat dwarfs, right? In world generation only. Yeah. In world generation only.

Oh, okay. I always pick them as like vegans, you know. They're more like eco-terrorists. Okay. I'm not kidding, because they only eat people that they killed in their warfares when they're fighting like humans or goblins or dwarfs and then they eat what they killed to make

sure that you know nature reclaims that is at least my perspective on it yes just like pluribus you know back back to the soap bit at one point in the past you could use soap as a building material so you could build towers of soap

oh yes I wish that they would reenable that let's do a soap one well yeah Soap forts Soap chairs There was probably a technical reason that they had to remove it because Tarn isn't one to remove aspects of the game Unless it's a good reason that they need to

I wonder if soap deteriorates fast No it didn't You know that's a fun thing about building materials They don't For example if you go and you pick ice Then you now get like a water item, which for some reason can, is counted as a drink. So your dwarfs will just put it into a barrel and you're like, why are you drink?

What? Oh, no, they put ice blocks and it didn't. No, no, no. There's a new water item. And there is ice and ice is a building material. So you can make a wall out of ice, but that wall out of ice is not going to melt. So you could, for example, make a nice ice palace and like live like live. like the ice queen inside it.

Really? I thought ice always melted. That's why I never used it to make walls, because I thought, oh, walls will be great, and then my whole fortress will fall apart. I thought so, too, but I... Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, how do you make an ice block? Ice block? I don't know about that, but...

If you dig ice out, it just makes ice holders. Does it? Which they'll then, yeah, which I think then you could turn into blocks. I didn't see that in the option menu, but I tried exactly that in my current fortress. I dug a little bit of ice, and then I placed ice in the lower part that is warmer, and then I just waited until something happens,

and it stood there for like two years. Wow, I now have something for my dwarfs to do in the winter. Yeah, I didn't. I thought it would melt. I would figure, too. I never tried it because I thought it was futile. Huh. Wow, cool.

There you go. You learn something every day. Awesome. Yep. Well, there we go. That's my... Roland? The more you know.

What about you? What is your favorite? aspect of dwarf fortress? What do you like to go back

to time and time again? I think what I like the most is what we

call emergent story simulator where the story that you perceive

is not really generated by the game. It just happens. And to

properly give like explanation, I think I have to make an example. We all

remember the drunken syndrome period right the the legendary bug report cats lick themselves when they walk through a bottle of alcohol to clean themselves then they imbibe the alcohol they get drunk that is this emergent story but something that I also had I'm trying to find a screenshot of it but apparently I didn't and I used to have a an engraver.

Okay. And this engraver was legendary, double plus amazing dude. There was just one problem. I didn't like what he engraved because pretty much every second to third image that he engraved was some, I don't remember what it was,

like some, some shape, triangle, do decahedron. I don't remember. Some shape. And he would do it again and again and again. and half my fortress was just this shape because this dwarf was so fast, so

unbelievably fast in engraving that he would be much faster than all the other engravers and just go like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and put his shape everywhere. And why am I telling you this? Because it changed. After a while where he lived in my fortress,

he found a girlfriend. He found a wife. They married. They had children. So sweet. then on he never engraved the shape again but he started only engraving stories of his wife and children and you know they i'm pretty sure the game doesn't really tell these this singular dwarfs that you know now you have a personality and a change and now it's only like your family but something

happened in the code and now we have this this beautiful story of this lonely engraver that is obsessed with this, this like mathematical shape and whatever. And then he finds his small dwarven princess, right? And he makes a family. And that fulfills him now to the point where all his engravings are just his family. And I think that is what is so cool about the game. The stories are not written by someone. If you play World Warcraft and you read a quest, that is written by someone. If you play like Bioshock Infinite, that game is written

by someone. That is still a good story. But the stories in this game, they're not really written by someone. They're just they emerge. And that is why it's like emergent gameplay. And that is why it's so cool. Because you don't know what's going to happen.

Well, you know that in the tavern of your fortress, there's going to be a couple dwarves sitting there talking and saying, yes, even though we both have an Urist engraving in our quarters. I have an original pre-marriage urist shape.

It's before he got happy. His work just went way downhill whenever he got happy. That always happens. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So your mind starts filling in these gaps, right? You imagine it. You use your creativity

to place details or information where they really isn't much. But then dad becomes this beautiful story. That's nice. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really, can feel a bit like magic sometimes, is how there, is like, is it a coincidence or does it, like, how does it, how does it, how does it, how does it do some of its generative gameplay?

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Christopher Harris, turning simple problems into magnificent, irreversible solutions. So somebody asked me what I like. Hey, hey, hey, what inspires you or keeps you coming back to this crazy, freaking, Well, thank you for asking, Tony. Well, you're so welcome, and thank you for coming up with this idea for the episode. For me, it's the aesthetics. I really love a nicely patterned floor. I love a very interestingly shaped room that gets carved out.

I've never actually completed a megastructure, but the idea of creating a wonderful megastructure inspires me in this game. I want to, there are tools out there. A lot of them are like for 3D printing where you can create voxelized shapes. You can like take a 3D model and you can get it voxelized so that you can, it will be created out of blocks and blocks of squares. I think that I've pointed out one of the websites that you can do that. But I once made a giant toroid.

in my, outside my fortress. Okay, what's a toroid for those of us? A toroid, it's like a donut. It's a donut. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's, so it's, it was placed upon three, uh, blocks to keep it up off the ground.

but it was a giant Torroid that was somewhat hollowed out so that you could have dwarves to be inside the toroid meaning not in the hole, not in the vacated the hollow center part,

but inside the donut. You know, where the jelly filling. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, and there's, there's, sorry, I'm just going to keep thinking about donuts. Beg your pardon. Donuts, yeah. I haven't really had.

enough to eat the breakfast, I guess. But there's a castle that is on the Dwar Fortress Wiki that comes up occasionally on the homepage of the Dwar Fortress Wiki. And I have always looked at that and thought how beautiful it is and how I would like to be able to build something like that someday. My toroid, it turns out that they're really ugly whenever you use Stone Sense to take the picture of them. They're really ugly whenever you don't make them out of a uniform, colored

block. So I got to where I would put stockpiles of blocks near my construction, where I would have one stock pile of, you know, microclime, one stock pile of bauxite, one stockpile of jet, so that I could kind of see what colors that I had to make my creation out of. And of course. Yeah, I remember our attempt to be shared for it and how artistic your work was. You were like doing pixel art on the floors. Exactly. It never occurred to me and I thought it was very cool. Yeah, I like doing pixel art on the floors in Twelf Fortress. Yeah. One time I found a

kind of, no, it wasn't that. I didn't find a kind of cross stitch, but I took a line drawing of a skull and put it over graph paper and graphed out where the hollowed out lines would need to be. So I hollowed out a great big room. I mean, it was This was almost a level large of a giant skull. And inside that skull, I place the dwarves temples. That was pretty fun. That's what I like. That is cool.

Love me some stories like that. Yeah, I always want art. My things to look better. And then inevitably, I mess up and put the wrong color of something in. Then I just tell. Well, it does take some, it does take some dedication to the cause whenever you want to do that sort of thing. because it's not easy. The game doesn't lend itself well

to having uniform, uh, color schemes. No, not so much. You have to really try to do it, but, but I enjoy trying.

And my dwarfs could give a crap less, but, but I care. Yeah. I also think that yeah, sometimes, you're the inspiration for me now always putting floors into rooms and taverns and

walkways. Mm-hmm. Um, because it's, it just makes it so cozy to look at. It's also a great way to increase the value of a room if you're trying to get from a workshop to a beyond workshop or whatever. Just plopping in some gold bars on the floor.

Boy, that shapes them up. Yeah, silver and platinum will raise the value of a floor almost as much as gold will. Okay, that's good to know. Steel is the highest price. Steel and platinum are the most valuable building. building materials. Oh, there we go.

I've learned something else. Yeah, it's, that's in the, I think it's under the building materials section of the Door Fortress Wiki, but yeah, they have the listing of what the most valuable components are. Yeah, I don't read anything.

But if it, but when it comes down to it, if it's a choice between value and looking good, I'm usually going to pick looking good. I can always throw a, throw an artifact in a room to lift the value of it. But if the room's ugly, If the room's ugly, then I'm not going to want to look at it.

I like the commitment to the cause. Yep, yeah. So, and that just goes to show you that this game is, is broad enough and deep enough that you can get a lot of different things out of it to play it. It's like the hobby of a thousand hobbies, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, there's a little of something for everybody. Like, I was, over the holidays, I was playing, I was introducing my, my young teenage niece to the game,

because why not? And she had the idea of wanting to build a zoo. Oh, nice. And so she did. And she, you know, she figured out how to, like, you know, dig the room out and then she put cages and chains up. She's like, this isn't very, this isn't very ethical, but whatever. And then, like, found that all the different things could, like, all the different

traders would bring different types of animals. And so she was always, like, requesting. every type of animal that they had. It was pretty cool. Like, she did good. Yeah, I'd never thought to play a game. I'd never thought to build a zoo, and it was pretty neat.

Door Fortress Zoo simulator. Yeah, that's great. What kind of animals did she have? The basic ones, I don't think, I don't think she'd made it to, I think the holiday ended before she could, like, find unicorns and stuff like that or elephants or anything. It was mostly just the ones that, you know, the ruminants, basically. She came up that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that,

Right. Chainable Blonde's. Yeah. No, no Colossus yet. We were still, we're pre-Colossus. But, you know, it was a quick, it was a quick, quick intro. Yeah, that is cool. We never thought to do that. It's a great idea, though. Nope. I can see.

Nope. I know. I want to do that. I want to finish it off. I can see lining the entrance, you decide of it with the menagerie, right? Yeah. I think it's, I think it's. Show off your, uh, probably keep it going. Show off your fortresses, you know, bona fides. And if we can get a new generation interested in the game, that's great. I think the nature of what a video game is is just very different now than what it might have been years ago. And it's just like the idea of, because I don't think, like, I think traditional video games were about winning and about solving, you know, solving some sort of puzzle to finish.

And this is definitely a game where they're really, to a large extent, isn't. winning? I mean, you can win battles, but you're never going to win the game, yeah. Like, there isn't a win condition. Yeah. Yeah, if you go back... So you kind of have to make your own game. If you go back a little earlier to the golden age of video games, those were not about winning either. Those were just seeing how well you could do. Yeah, that's right. Just how long can you not die, which I guess is very... And, you know, in a lot of ways. Suck your quarter out of your pocket. So... Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Wizard needs food. I also think that there is a wind condition

in dwarf fortress I mean Is there? A win condition Yeah, what, uh There is a wind condition Every single elf in the entire world has to be set on fire At the same time Okay

This is an emergent gameplay This is what we're talking about Like you set your own goals It's tough whenever you can't actually order your dwarves To set things on fire One day. One day, then we'll be in the game. One day.

On that note, we're going to wrap up this episode. Let's do it. Yeah, episode 129. Who's counting? Episode 129 at Door Fortress Roundtable is now in the books. Thanks, guys. And we'll be back in a couple weeks to talk more about stuff. Peace out.

Stay safe. Stay warm. Stay dry. Stay dry. Yeah. Um, yeah. Seasonal appropriate farewell. Seasonal appropriate.

But yeah, have a great day. Thanks for listening and see you next time. And that wraps up another episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable, brought to you by Sarnanagan's Unpredictable Decor, The Great Garzini's Emergent Chaos, and Christopher Harris's beautifully overcomplicated traps. Thanks to our patrons for making every fortress stylish, surprising, and just a little bit

bit deadly. This has been the Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast. You can find all our past episodes at DFroundtable.com. Stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarfortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice. If you'd like to contact us by email, the address is Eurist at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-F Roundtable.com. If you'd like to interact with the hosts and listeners of the podcast, you'll find a link to join our Discord server in the main menu of our website. If you'd like to help support this podcast financially, you can find us at patreon.com slash DFRoundtable. This is a conversational podcast.

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