Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - In Which Ross of DefyDanger Weaves a Tale of Avarice and Collapsing Towers of Jenga – IX

Episode Date: June 30, 2019

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Hi, and welcome to Dwarf Orters Roundtable, the podcast for All Things Dwarfee. I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. I'm Tony. And today we have as our guest, Ross, the creator of Averous RPG from defythanger.com. How you done, Ross? Doing great. Thanks for having me on. Sure. Thanks for coming on.

Ross, why and when did you come to Dwar Fortress? So I've been aware of Dwarf Fortress for many, many years. I have a friend, Steven, who have known for a long while, who's a big fan of Dwar Fortress and has been playing Dwar Fortress for, I don't even know how long. So I've always kind of like known about it in the periphery for like as long as I can remember, really. And I tried, I remember maybe 2010, I try, but maybe a little bit after that, but trying to, download it and playing it. And you know, it's the typical kind of experience that people have. They just see the wall of s-y text.

And they're like, what is this? I can't figure out anything. And like, I remember at the time, like, I went through the whole world generation process and I set up a site and I was so proud I could get that far. And then like, and then you're actually playing the game. You're like, I can't figure out anything. So I just put it down.

And then it was probably in 2016. I ran into Dest Tactics. YouTube videos where he plays Dwarf Fortress and I was like, oh, okay, he's using a tile set and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, oh, okay, I totally understand what's going on now. This is top down. And I started figuring things out. And then he has a whole series on like just tutorials. And it's, I don't know, like 60 videos longer, some craziness like that where he goes through almost everything possible in the game.

And so I would just like have that on in the background while it's cooking dinner, things like that. And I eventually was thinking like, and that eventually just got me into it. I was like, oh, okay, now I can really like get into this and play this. And then, you know, I just, that's that's where I've been. So I've been playing like on and off since seriously since 2016. What was the name of that, uh, that YouTube channel that you mentioned? Das T-T-T-I-C-T-I-C. I'll put a link on there.

He's good stuff. I used that a lot early on. He's really cool, got a really laid-back style, like doesn't edit out his mistakes. You know, I think there's one where he's building a well or something and he accidentally floods the shaft and he's like, oh, just a sec, let me go fix that. And then, you know, you kind of just, you kind of get that sense that you sort of roll with the punches and that's what I liked about it. Pretty cool dude. Yeah, yeah, and there's a lot, like, a lot of in his videos, he's like, that kind of thing where he's kind of like, he makes a mistake or something goes like not quite his plan and then he just shows you how to roll with the punches and be like, well, there's a dragon now, so we're just going to have to deal with that.

It also cracks me up because he has the, I think it's the mod sound sense going on in the background. And so that, I don't know if you guys have ever used it, but it's kind of a funny thing. I mean, it's kind of cool, the idea, but anytime the dwarfs are sparring or anytime anybody drops a cup or whatever, it sounds like there's a fight going on. So there's quite a few times in the videos and he's like, oh, no, something's out, nope, they're just sparring. you know so like it just kind of cracks me up because i don't think of the game at all as having sound because i play it silently but um yeah it's kind of cool to hear you know just how that mod works if you're ever curious about sound sense i do play with sound sense myself i really like it an interesting

thing about that the voices of the dwarves is voiced by you know i'm i'm sorry i don't remember which one it was. It's either Capintastic or Rainseeker. I think it's Rainseeker. But they were both Capintastic and Rain Seeker were on the original Dwarforker's Talk podcast. And one of them had a stereotypical Scottish accent. You know what? We have talked about this before, and I think it was on episode one before Tony was around. Remember that, Roland? Yeah, yeah, I think so. Sounds familiar. is that cap and like crunch or cap and like captain like kirk that's c a p and yeah so it's like the cereal okay it's the yeah okay breakfast breakfast captain yeah you look up both rain secret capintastic on the on the on the uh bay 12 forums and you'll you'll find plenty of posts from them right on that was just to to say that yeah i i use sound sense i really love it i love the stereotypical scottish Dwarf accents.

Yeah, what else would they sound like? It seems reasonable to me. I figured Tarn should talk like that. And I'm usually surprised to hear who is an American. So I was like, oh, okay. I have some friends who live in Glasgow, and they get really annoyed when I do, when we play D&D, and I do like the Scottish accent for the dwarves. Because they're like, why are you doing that? Like, it's kind of like, it gets on their air sometimes.

Because like, everyone talks like that around, around where they are, and then hear me do it and, like, butcher their accent. they just like they get annoyed you got to go from more of the california valley sound yeah yeah what you have to do ross to really annoy them is to get a uh recording of james doing doing scotty on star trek the original series and play that back to them and say this is real scottish that's the classic i think but you want to stay friends with these guys right in theory okay right so then yeah so At your own discretion, then. So, Ross, you say you play D&D, was that the inspiration to come up with an RPG?

Yeah, so I definitely, like, I have two big loves in my life right now in terms of my media, and that's, like, role-playing games and playing Dwar Fortress. And I kind of, like, got to a point where I really wanted to share that kind of, like, passion for Dwar Fortress with all my role-playing game friends. And you know how it is. like, there's a big learning curve to playing Dwarfortures, and there's a big hurdle just, like, getting new people into it and getting to, like, really understand, like, why we play this,

like, all the really awesome things and getting past the assy and getting past the tediousness. And at the end of the day, it's just like, like, Crug Smash says, it's all about, like, the stories that you kind of pull out of these games. So I wanted to create a new RPG that would tell the tales of these Dwar Fortress stories in the span of, like, three-ish hours and be easily accessible to people

who had never played Dwar Fortress before and who just jump right into it. So that's how Averis. I was like the inspiration to Averis. So you want Averis to be a gateway drug to Dwar Fortress where someone plays the RPG and goes, this sounds cool and then you go,

hey, this is based on the game. Right, exactly, yeah. And I'm like, if you like this fun little fast game, wait until we get to the next level. where you can start deciding like exactly what outfits your military is wearing and you know like let's let's get into this and let's show let me show you where this is really coming from I am intrigued by the fact that you put jinga in as a game mechanic I thought yeah yeah so I've been like noodling with this this concept for years now and at first I started and I definitely wanted to have it as okay this isn't a traditional D&D style RPG where you're you're representing individual characters this this is where you're representing like entire clans or sections of the fortress like you're controlling a populace not just one or two people i started the design with like a very focusing on the nitty gritty details and a lot of it to be no other way to put it like the tediousness

of some of the dwarf fortress stuff i was like okay you know you to dig out stone and that could you rock and then you use that rock to build a workshop and blah blah and there's still like a little bits of that in Everest now, but I moved away from the tediousness and like the the keeping track of individual things. I moved away from that and made it much more abstract. So, you know, when you play Dwar Fortress, you have a computer keeping track of all this like little stuff. Dwar Fortress is so amazing. One of the reasons that's so amazing is because it really utilizes the power of an electronic processor in your computer to be able to track the details, like the really, really deep details on all these thousands and thousands of objects.

So when I created adverse, I wanted to create something much more abstract and really get to the heart and the emotional experience of dwarf fortress. And one of that emotional experiences is the fact that like you can never win dwarf fortress. Like the best you can ever do is just like coast for a while and eventually every single fortress falls. So with that in mind, this idea that every single fortress is eventually going to collapse one way or another that lends itself to the jenga tower mechanic so the janga tower mechanic has been used in other RPGs like a lot of like small indie stuff probably the biggest one that uses it is called dread so I use that as a

the jenga tower represents the dwarf's mental health happiness and stress levels so it always you're always getting like going further and further and getting worse and worse at this and also you know Dwarf Averis is also a drinking game. So you take, you don't have to drink, but everyone does. You take drinks every so often in the games when certain things happen. And so you're now playing, by the end of it, you're playing drunk jenga. So the stress level, like personally felt by everyone around the table is like really high and everyone gets really emotionally invested in this. And it's a really fun time. Although I am a me so my, what would probably happen with me is I'd be that dwarf that just wants to sit

down and lean his back against the wall and have another drink and just sit there and eventually die of dehydration. You'll just, or you'll just end up making soap. That could be your, that could be your Averis experience, just turning into a big soap factory. One of the core things about Averis is like, it's a, you build a shared picture of your fortress. It's all in like, instead, like, so Door Fortress is a plan view as a like overhead. And so Averis is a section elevation cutaway kind of view. So you draw out your fortress and you kind of like pass it around the table and everyone draws on little things.

As the game progresses, you add more like, oh, I built this workshop and you draw it out and stuff like that. So that would be really cool to post that up onto like Reddit or your forms and stuff like that and say like, here's the fortress I made. Do you have a history of making RPGs? Like, I mean, are you, is this kind of a thing or is this something that was inspired by? door fortress and you thought, hey, you know, let's, let's give this a try. I mean, I've made a handful of like little tiny indie kind of RPGs and stuff like that and a couple of like D&D adventures and stuff like that that are that are available on drive-through. A lot of them are free.

Averis is pay what you want. So that is like if you want it to be free, go right ahead. That's fine with me. And yes, I have like, I've been doing this for, yeah, for a while now. I have like a whole bunch of stuff. One of the big things I just wrapped up was we had a Kickstarter that's now out in the public for consumption, which is called Fifth Edition Team Death Match. So it's like D&D, but it's 4V4, team-based, like, PVP kind of stuff. And the big selling point is it has all these different, like, it's not just like, okay, you stand up and you, like, fight each other and just, like, roll to see who can win.

Like, there's a lot of tactics to it because there's 21 different arenas that have all sorts of different kinds. of terrain effects that are like really over the top crazy and you have to use those to your advantage to beat your enemies so yeah hmm so Ross in your in Averis there is artwork that is done in the distinct style of Krug Smash so how did you get with Krug Smash to get him to do the art for it? Yeah absolutely so a lot of Avers was inspired by stuff that Crug Smash does on his channel, where he's taking the heart and the emotion of Door Fortress, and he's drawing something out to show you those stories.

And that just aligned with my vision of what I wanted for my RPG so much. I said, oh, man, I've got to get in touch with him. So he is super easy accessible. So I just went to his website. He has his own website besides the YouTube channel. and TS's contact information on there and I got in touch with them and I said hey man I'm making this RPG

it's going to be it's really it's indie small press like it's not a lot of like money here or anything like that but it's it's a personal personal passion project and I would love to be able to use your artwork that you have to be able to do this and I kind of get like a rundown of how the RPG rules work and that sort of thing

and he was totally on board like right away very very cool and very easy to work with and then I used he just sent me all of the saved, scanned images that he had at the time. And he had a lot of those up on his website anyway. And so he said, hey, use all these. And then I needed one new image. So I needed an image to represent a Fischerdorf.

And so he made that for me for the game. And then otherwise, I was just like, cool, man. I'm just going to use your stuff. And then he gets a portion of all the royalties. So it's like it's split evenly between me, him and Tody. Cool, cool. Oh, that's nice. So you're, so you're splitting the, any proceeds you get from it with a 301, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool. They both were like so nice about it. They're like, ah, you really don't need to do that. And I said, no, I do. Like, I feel like I couldn't not do that. And I feel like I couldn't not. I couldn't make this a game that I charged any amount of money for and had to charge. Like, it had to be to pay what you want because, like, that's part of the whole community of dwarf.

Fortress. And that's, I feel like that's a real core part of it and something that I really admire is that if you don't, if you want to just grab door fortress and pay no money and just like try it out and stuff like that, that is 100% cool and you never have to send them a dollar in. And Tony's able to like, you know, live off of just the, uh, the voluntary donations. And I wanted this to follow the similar kind of model. Yeah, that's great. And whenever I got over to drive through RPG and I saw that it was the, uh, pay what you think it's Worth model. I was quite impressed. I was happy to see that you did it that way. Yeah. I wasn't going to bring it up on here because I didn't know if you wanted to publicize that, but you said it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, and we just this week were got the final proofs for the physical copies of everything. So pay what you, you can pay zero dollars to get PDFs of everything and just print it on your own. But then if you want to, you can do print on demand and buy the cards and the physical rulebook. And that. you need to pay a minimum amount of money just to cover the printing costs.

Right, right. Yeah. And how long does it take to learn this? I mean, is it something that somebody could just kind of pick up and go? Or do you have to know Door Forgers or do you have to know how to play RPGs or anything? So I have run this of great many times. And so I would run this five times. And out of all that, there was, and each time had like three to five players.

And out of, so we're talking about, like, something like 20 players, out of that one player in one game, new Dwar Fortress. So it was, like, all my playtesting and stuff like that, it was all with, like, people who had no idea what, they knew what knew what door fortress was what, but they really didn't know Dorefurtureth at all. And none of them had read the rules beforehand. I was just like, I just showed up and I was like, hey, here we go. Just run, like, I'll run through the rules, like, in like, 10 minutes real quick and just kind of like, do it. It's pretty intuitive as to what you do. So the game starts off with like an embark phase, as you would think, where you go through a series of questions that are presented in the book about what your purpose is to go out on this expedition, like why the mountain homes are sending you out away from civilization to start this new fortress, what kind of hazards are there, what kind of valuable resources are out there, what kind of enemies are out there. it talks about

you roll randomly to generate your clan and what kind of things they like. So for example, some dwarves really like goblins for their hideous features. You know, like that kind of stuff. Dwarves have different affinities towards metals

and symbols and the gods. And so that's all like randomly generated. So you kind of go through that process. When you answer these questions about the terrain and the surrounding environments, you answer that and draw it out on the map and kind of like pass it around so that's like the first phase and then after that you get into the game proper where every clan has a set of skills and these all match up with like the dwarf fortress skills so there's fisher dwarf craft dwarf um there's 13 skills the 13th is

alchemy which is a secret unlockable um and you kind of you just you describe generally what your clan of dwarves does to help out the fortress or to put down some sort of hazard that's the afflicting you and you gather up a bunch of 12-sided dice and you roll them and you take the highest one and then there's a range of effects so if you roll six or lower you don't do what you're trying to accomplish and something bad happens it's a draw from a random pile of cards if you roll 7 to 11 you do what you want but you also are stressed out by it so you have to take a drink and make a pull from the jenga tower and then a roll of 12 if the highest that you roll is 12 then you do it with no ill effect.

And whenever you do stuff, you draw out the effects and you kind of pass it around. Every so many players turns, you draw from this deck of events. And then that kind of tells you like a new dangerous thing that's happened, a usually dangerous thing that's happened. So for example, one of the deck of events

is a vampire comes up into your fortress and all the doors are terrified. Or the crops. fail this season and then you have to plant new crops or everyone goes hungry or the dwarves get sick and tired of drinking the same old elven wine and immediately become sober which is the worst thing that could possibly happen in the game that kind of goes along with with a subject matter that we've touched on the last couple episodes and it's about a merchant gameplay and the and the the hidden complexities that is just beneath the surface of the uh of the uh of the

you know, in-your-face, ask you gameplay of Dwarf Fortress. Yeah, the episode we dropped today, it was pretty much all about the subject matter of Oh, that's great. Slightly hidden complexity. Yeah, the emerging gameplay aspect of Dwarfurtures is definitely a big part of this, too. And when you're in a room, like, when you're playing Dwar Fortress on your own, you kind of like pick up some of that stuff and you kind of have, like, you mentally create this picture of what's going on behind the scenes.

But when you're in a room with like three to five other people who are all investing their time and their creativity into one shared like basically arts and crafts project, like that emergent gameplay is really heightened because then you put out something into the group and then other people will pick up on it where they'll add to it on their own, they'll get inspired by what you say and vice versa. And it really create like by the end of it, every single time I've run this, by the end of it, everyone is like so happy and so thrilled. and like it's this really like team building bonding experience also everyone's drunk yeah so it's a real fort a fortress experience oh absolutely it's uh yeah it's uh camaraderie through shared suffering right everyone goes through this fortress and puts their heart and soul into it and then just collapses into nothingness and just is ruined and then everyone's like oh man we we survived that and we shared that together so yeah yeah So did you guys get a sense from Toadie's post that things could take a little longer,

or were you looking at it as more of a like, wow, I hadn't realized how far how long things were? With the villains progression? Yeah, just the whole thing, yeah. From my perspective, at least, it seemed like it better spelled out exactly what he was trying to accomplish with the villains and plot lines. Like I didn't, like I knew the villains and plot lines was the thing he was working on and that was the next thing that was coming out. But I didn't understand like the depth of what he was talking about and then posting when he posted out like, okay, we have this villain and he got kicked out of this village and he's really good at what like trap smithing or something like that or making mechanisms. I kind of forget. And like going through that whole chain of history events, I was like, oh, okay, now I understand what you're trying to accomplish here. I thought that was pretty cool.

Is this the story of Oostuth? Let me add a little bit of context to that then. Sure. Yes. So on the Bay 12 games, I'm assuming that you all are talking about the Dev Notes on Steam. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So on the Bay 12 games, Dev Notes that was published on the 12th of June, he goes through and talks about a complete plot that it was the first complete plot that was pulled off by the system

and he goes through and gives the narrative that is behind that plot that's what I'm talking about yeah but the main character of the of the plot it looks like is a dwarf called Oostoth so we're talking about the same thing right yeah yeah we're talking about the same thing that's the one okay cool cool so he's cross-posting the dev notes which is great Right. Yeah, that's super. Yeah. So I can go to, I can keep going to the Dwar Fortress Bay 12 games for them because it has such an incredibly awesome background. I was going to bring up the fact that the elves aren't explicitly the bad guys, but the behavior and relationships that tend to form between the elves and are lovable dwarves tend to be a little more adversarial, a little bit more adversarial, a little bit. shorter they do seem to be a little bit snobby without much reason whenever you look at their

behavior right so someone mentioned that even tarn adams didn't know what the deal was with the elves which is surprising if you think about it at first because he's the one who programmed all of it but then if you take a look and step back perhaps that's just how the elves ended up evolving through the emergent gameplay when you take the characteristics that the game engine has about elves, maybe they're just a naturally but unintentionally

repulsive species. Right. I was thinking of this too, like the goblins at least will bring you copper. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you can do something with it. Yeah, elves, it's just trash. What am I supposed to do with this? Sword, great.

By the way, I liked how you said naturally repulsive. of species. Like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I get that. I really do.

The elves do bring one thing whenever they bring their caravans in. They tend to bring elven wine, and I tend to buy all of that that I can get. Is that like, it's like a white wine spritzer, I bet you.

This is Infandel. Yeah, something super fruity, maybe with a, you know, like a plastic bottle on a screw top, that's all in wine. You know what I think, what it is?

I think it's a giant barrel full of LSD. Hey, this is Elvin 1.25. In Avers, I have a little, like, section on all the different kinds of civilizations that you can encounter. And if you guys wouldn't mind, and you can cut this out, if you think it's like a total non-sequitur. Let me read from you from what I read about elves. Elves are foul, arrogant, tree-fundling hippies. dedicated to the ruthless protection of their misguided concept of nature. They are obsessed with trees and other worthless vegetation.

Elven men are incapable of growing facial hair, which is yet another indicator of their duplicitousness. When a player speaks of elves, they must do so in an angry, accusatory fashion. Dwarves who like elves are called traitors. I love it. Because like it, like, like, like, golly. They'll bring you copper. You have to kill them first, but they'll bring you copper.

They like to party. They're fun to look at, right? Like there's something there. They're poets. They are. I've had some great, great goblin poets in my fort. I mean, yeah, I'm all for that. I loved it.

I love when I get the goblin traitors in. Somehow it just feels better somehow if I can convert them over to the Dorman Ways. Get them in the fort and having a good time. a good time get them liquored up and put a pen in their hand and the next thing you know it's owed to the mountain homes goblin style meanwhile you're trying to get information out of them on how to navigate their their rat holes so that you can kill all of them i just feel like if they're the type that wants to write poems and get drunk they're probably not going to have been too clued in on the overall goblin strategy but yeah that's just me right yeah like i kind of see goblins as

like, you know, their heart's in the right place and their demonic overlords are really the problem. So, yeah, you want to raise their cities and destroy their overlords, but that's to free the goblins and let them experience the true dwarfiness of the mountain homes. Yeah, what if all this time goblins really weren't acting of their own free will and it was just these demons that have taken over the base? Because that's something I just really kind of made sense of was, you know, this goblin force that I kept attacking had a population of like 10. But then every single squad I'd send at it would be absolutely decimated because there was a hedgehog man monster. And I think that that was like some sort of a demon or whatever

that was just the consumer of Dorvan, everything. So yeah, like what if what if these poor things are just trapped all this time and really all their nature, natural true nature is they just want to write poems and get drunk? And here we are. punishing them and melting down their armor. I don't know, man. It's complexity, I tell you. There's a lot of morality in Door Fortress. Yeah, I mean, what now?

Who am I, really, the end of the day? That's some, and I think that's one of the things that we touched on maybe in another episode is just trying to get people into the game. And one of the things that's, I don't know if I call it a pet peeve, but maybe it sort of is, is articles that, you know, they spend the first 30, minutes of the article talking about how hard the game is and how it's just so utterly impossible and impenetrable and you know incomprehensible that no one can ever figure it out but then you know the author says but I figured it out and

look at all the fun that I had and it's so great but don't ever touch it because it's too hard and I think there's such a strong pervasiveness of that that you know I've got friends that have played games that are so similar to this and if they sat down and looked at you know like the you know that paradoxeserent tutorial or whatever and just sat with that for like 20 minutes, they'd be up and running. And so yeah, I just, I feel like some of the writing and people talking about it kind of just puts people off

because it's not that complicated. It really isn't. I mean, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. Yeah, and there's layers of complexity, right? So like, every time I play, or that's just every time I start a new fortress, there's something new that I'm trying out and I'm trying to do better or trying to do differently. And so like, for example, like the fortress I'm doing right now,

I've just realized that, When a dwarf wants to, quote, unquote, wear something fancy, I think is what one of their thoughts is. Like, I need to sew images and dye the cloth before I make clothes out of that. And that was like a big revelation to me. I was like, oh, okay, that's the next level. Like, I'd already figured out how to replace clothing and how to, you know, and long ago figured out how to grow food and all the basics and stuff like that. But there's always like something new that you're trying, that you're uncovering.

So it's just like, yes, it's super complicated, but it's. only as complicated like you you learn the complication as you play yeah i agree it's just builds on you build on your layers yep so this is something that i actually was thinking about as i was editing last week's podcast and we we also on this on this program fall into the it's almost a trope yeah the learning curve is high onto a fortress i i actually kind of want to make a drop of some sort where anytime one of us says that there's a little ding a footnote that says while dwarf fortress may be a complex you do not need to learn the full dwarf fortress in order to enjoy the game you can enjoy the game after 20

minutes worth of yeah here some little thing that because even even we who are trying to spread the game say things like it's got a huge learning curve and that's just you know makes people not want to try it in the first place every time someone mentions that Dwar Fortress is challenging or has a steep learning curve, you've got to take a drink and then pull from the Jenga Tower. Yeah. Okay.

We record at 9 a.m. My time zone, so that would change my lifestyle a little bit. But yeah, okay, sure, whatever. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable. We'll be back next week with more of our interview with Ross.

We'll talk about the animosity toward bulbs and dwarf fortress. Meph's fortress defense. We'll talk about the state of our fortresses and Kia's carrying wheelbarrows. We're going to wrap up here with contact information for Ross, and we'll see you next time. Ross, where can you be found online? How do you want to be reached if our listeners would like to reach out to you and say howdy? Yeah, so all like we said before, I'll like mine. products as you would say you can get at defied danger.com and then you can catch me mostly on i'm on

reddit uh user defy danger and then also on on twitter at c stephen ross all right this has been dwarf fortress roundtable the podcast for all things dwarfy you can find all our past episodes at df roundtable dot com. Please stop by and leave a comment or suggestion in the comment section of this episode. While you're there, you can subscribe to Dwarfortress Roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice. Music is Skykewelen, composed by Kevin McLeod. You can find Kevin McLeod's music at Incompetec.com.

You can find a link in the show notes. This is a silver podcast. All Craftsdwarf ship is of the show. the highest quality. This podcast is adorned with hanging rings of silver.