Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - In which Ross Returns to Discuss the Physics of Kea and the Metaphorical Implications of Dwarf Fortress Species – X

Episode Date: July 14, 2019

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Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. Today we continue our conversation with Ross from defyidanger.com, creator of AvernessRPG. You can find links to Ross's craftwork in the show notes. So this game really sounds complex, but the question is, here is how long do you play for one session? Like three-ish hours, something like that. Character generation and embark usually takes about an hour, and then the rest of it's clear.

I do have to say, though, that the rules aren't as complex as you might think. The instructions are well written, and there is a lot of it that is not strongly defined. I guess that would be a way to say it. Yes, yes. So while you may be talking about all these things that might be complicated, you don't actually have that codified and you can elaborate as much or as little as you want for any particular round, I guess you would. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. And like I was saying before, like the original, like the early game designs of this were very much into focused on like, okay, I need to codify every single little aspect that's happening, just like Dwarfortures, the video game does. And then I realized like, okay, we don't. have a computer figuring that all out so we have to gloss over a lot of the little nitty gritty details and pull back and have the bigger scope of story that's being told so for example like

one of the things like that easily represents that is when you build a new chamber within your fortress all of the stairs and tunnels and connecting like architectural interstitial pieces you draw that as well, like, for free. Like, you don't have to worry about every single tile that you're mining out. You just freehand draw out. Whatever it is that you're drawing, you draw all the details to it, little little sconces and finishes, and like you kind of get real artistic on it, or as much as you want or can, because a lot of people are very bad at drawing, and that's fine, myself included. And then all of like the little pieces in between that have to be there to connect it back to the fortress. You just draw that as well. You don't need to roll for that or anything like

that. So it's zooming out of the detail in favor of the big picture. And so aside from a pen and paper, do you need anything else? Do I need dice or like 12-sided dice or anything? You need some 12-sided dice. You need writing emblemates and a piece of paper. 11 by 17 is like the paper is probably like the best that I found. You need, you know, you need to print out some cards that come with the game to roll up random events and for your bad thoughts and then of course you need the 12-sided dice. Like if you have four 12-sided dice, you're probably fine. Oh, and then you need a couple 10-sided dice to do random character creation to randomly generate your clan's name and what animal they worship or they like the best, what gems they prefer.

War corgis, that's going to be the animal that people like the best. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, man. I'm working on it. I said that like I've played this almost entirely with people who don't know Door Fortress very well. And I've been on the two now podcasts that are focused on RPGs, tabletop RPGs, and bringing, I'm trying to like bring the dwarf fortress to them. So it's kind of like the opposite of what I'm doing here. And like the dwarfiness of things that like you guys and I take for granted at this point, like that blows them away sometimes. Like, people are like, oh, right, of course it's called a crossbow dwarf. Like, like, those little things are like saying it's a craft dwarf, it's a fisher dwarf.

Like, they think that's like, that's like really neat and innovative. And we're like, yeah, of course, that's just what it is. There's an event in Averis called Ware Creature where a random generated lichanthro where it's like out of a D100 table of animals. So you can get Wear hyena, wear giraffe, you know, all the Door Fortress kind of funny wear creatures. that comes up. And then when that comes up in Averis, like when I've been playing with people who don't know Dwar Fortress,

they're blown away by how funny and creative that is. So it's kind of like an interesting, like take on something that, I don't know, like at this point I take it for granted. Like, of course you're going to run into a wear giraffe. Isn't that normal? Yeah, absolutely. I see. That's great, yeah. And the text in Averis is like,

there's a lot of writing about how much the elves are terrible. terrible and how you need to kill them all. And people are taking back by that, too. They're like, why is there so much hatred about the elves? I'm like, you know, you guys don't understand. You don't stand about these elves. Well, and see, I feel like we should talk about that because where did, I mean, where did that come from?

I know that they get kind of persnickety when it comes to the, you know, cut down the trees and stuff. And all right, okay, I get it. You know, I get it. But, you know, come on. This outright hatred, guys, you know, we need to. Tony doesn't really understand where the Elfman comes from either. I have heard on old podcasts.

Let's just say it makes them sound like that they are disagreeable, easily upset, quite violent, and cannibalistic. We are having, we are establishing this fortress to fight off literally the demonic end of the entire world, right? Like that's what's at the core of all the goblin civilizations are these demon leaders, and we're trying to fight that off. And these elves have the balls to come to us and say, oh, you gave us a barrel full of wine instead of a clay pot. Nope, won't do it. It's, it's, I'm going to. Where did Lego less touch you?

I mean, let's talk about what happened. Is this another episode? Do we need to heal? I don't know. But I totally understand, you know, elves. And especially in legends, mode, elves are really terrifying. You not only

fight literal tree people, but those three people will eat you and your friends. And that's terrifying. In the middle of the battle, an elf will peel off and just start chomping down on your friend's face.

What kind of monster does that? It likes to be turned into soap, I guess. I don't know. Thrown into Roland's pit. I don't know. my toilet um yeah cut that out um no way man so i think of elves as more like a force of nature so they're the most magical stuff happening there but they do have droids going on and growing stuff out of trees using magic and then they just go around clad in bark armor and eat your face off and yeah it's it's really kind of a force of nature you know they they protect the forest they will hunt you down if you cut too many trees and if you are a threat to nature but then again they do have warfare with the goblins but that's mostly because

because the goblins start attacking them first. That's interesting that you talk about like force of nature and I actually I really agree on that. Because I see the dwarves as a force of industry. I think industry is a key word that is really tied to the dwarves really strongly. And I think that's where a lot of the animosity between the dwarves and the elves comes from is the elves are all about nature. And the natural world is anathema to the dwarves, right? We're out there busting our asses to forge steel, to strike the earth, to make something out of raw material. And the elves are completely against that.

And so I think that's why they're terrible things. Yeah. I'm just in this to make wax crafts. I don't know to you guys. That's my passion. Door Fortress. So Roland, Ross brought up a point here a moment ago. It may be a problem for your goblin sweat marketing campaign.

And that is that you are putting the goblin sweat in barrels. And the elves are not going to buy these barrels of, air quotes, shrinking water. Yeah, I see. That is... You're going to put it on clay pots. Yeah. Weren't you make an amount of lead? You can do lead barrels, can't you?

Yeah. That's the thing. I have, like, a massive amount of copper. I can just make it out of copper. I can make it out of lead, so I get like a plus one on damage to health. There are options, but as soon as it's a real wooden barrel

and the elves go like, how dare you? How dare you? And I'm like, over here, it's like, I'm just trying to trade, dude. And it's like, do these elves know how hard we just worked to make that, barrel, like, and they're just going to turn their uppity noses at it.

Why is that it's all good for them to sell you wooden crap? But then the one time that I accidentally sneak in a wooden barrel, suddenly we're at fisticuffs. Like, yeah, I think that there's this weird double standard there that maybe we should address. They groan, grown. So they take a little bit of the tree and shape it out using magic. And so a wooden sword is not really a wooden sword, but it's more like a club that's flat, you know? Oh, are we also maybe talking about sustainably harvest wood as opposed to clear-cut forests?

Because I, you know, I go at it clear-cut. I don't care. Trees grow back. Yeah, this is fair trade swords. That's right. Shade grown. Yeah. Fair trade. Yeah, fair enough. But we can all agree that elves are not the worst. You know, I personally accept some elves in my neighborhood for the sole purpose that they bring me exotic animals.

I can then train, for example, bears. I get a lot of bears right now in my current fortress. I love it. They're perfect. And that's the only reason why I do not wage war on those treehuggers right now. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, bringing, like, an elf bringing in a pair of breeding tigers or something like that is pretty nice. Yes, yes. But you know, what's the real enemy? Chaos.

Oh, my God. The Keats. Yeah, that's annoying. They just steal, like, you have, like, one axe that you start with, and they steal it, and then they just fly away, giving you... Yeah. Yeah, because Keir just this moment stole Cup games worth, like, half a million. Pia's and macaques What now?

Rees macaques, they're kind of monkey Oh yeah Like I think it's mostly jungle biomes They'll come in and they'll just steal things from you randomly And if you try to attack them Like sometimes they'll get angry and they'll fight back And bite your doors and it's They're pretty terrible as well

Yeah, I had Giant Grey Langers once And only the sight of them spook my dwarfs and then they run away and dropped stuff they had in hands and then the ape came in took it and ran away like damn and they're big as buses you know you can't just poke them with the stick you know if you love these thieving creatures and you enjoy that sort of fun you can add to the fun with meth's fortress defense his fortress defense mod which I've mentioned before I think that's what it's called might not be called that

might be called something else but in any case we'll we'll sort that out but anyway he did this mod and you can drop in additional people or creatures from other races and so you can have like you know tiger men that can come in and steal stuff that act like thieves which is pretty cool oh yeah I love it because then you at least stand a chance I hate things that fly like I don't get my stuff and fly off because we've already talked about the poor efficacy of archers so like the whole flying thing is just rude yeah it takes so like so my current fortress that I have right now I do have a working archery range and I've seen them actually shoot in it so that's like accomplishment right off the bat but it takes so much a time

and effort to get to that point and to get anyone like worth anything in archery besides like maybe a couple hunters or something like that like it's yeah the air defense is really tough, really difficult. I can't build a tower. That would be a cool mod, I guess, or maybe an update would be some sort of like air defense tower that the doors could build with, I don't know, some sort of functional air siege weapon.

I don't know. Lasers. Yeah, when you dig down to the cavern leaders and you get adamantine or whatever, and you start turning into lasers. That's great. With the gems, you can polish rubies up. There you go.

Now you're thinking. What happens when you mix dwarf fortress with Empire Earth? You get laser miners. Oh my God, yes. I love that game, by the way. I bet you steam blows up some of these mod ideas because it really did for Rimworld, the crazy depth of mod in there.

That image that you posted to Discord with the Kia carrying the ladders, where'd you get that? It was from a Reddit post, but I just searched Door Fortress Kia, and I found it. I'm going to see if I can get a hold of the person who did the original artwork on that and see if I can use that for this week's featured image. That's pretty awesome. I love it. Why is a bird stealing a ladder?

Come on. It's just to be spiteful. A five thousand cannot carry a three-pound letter, right? What if it was an African swallow? Exactly. That's right. I mean, I have Kia's stealing. silver wheelbarrows and you can't tell me that the tiny bird can actually lift a silver wheelbarrow.

Maybe they're really big. Or maybe your wheelbarras are really small. Like what kind of wheelbarrow are we talking about? Like hand-sized or what? It's the wheelbarrow from Monopoly. Maybe the dwarfs are so good at metalcraft that they can make the silver so thin that it's light enough for a bird to carry. Like, have you ever thought about how awesome your dwarfs are? Sure, but that stuff would break if you put wood in it or something. It's impractical. Some kind of grass ministras.

Not if it's gorilla glass. Like, gorilla glass, yeah. Gorilla silver. It's real rubies. It's gorilla silver. Gorilla silver. Okay. Yeah, it's a cool image, though.

I like it. There's been a lot of those kind of silly posts on Reddit. I enjoy that. That seems to be one of the more active. I don't look at the Bay 12 forums. So maybe that's why I don't talk about them ever. Maybe I should change that. But I don't know.

Can I change? I don't know. But I really like the Door Fortress Reddit. It's got a lot going for it and pretty active. There's a lot of that silly stuff in there as well. People's drawings. I think Krug Smash has really helped people start to draw more and stuff. And that's been really awesome to see more of these visualizations.

There's a slight, maybe unimportant, but existing a difference between the subreddit and the Bay 12 Games forums. And that the Bay 12 Games forums, I think the questions and answers and topics tend to be more towards a development side of things. Because that's the place I know that at least it was, the place that TOTI would read pretty much completely. where the Reddit seems to be more community creative input. Yeah, definitely. I think you're spot on there. Yeah, and I haven't been with the community long after really understand which it came from originally,

but like the whole, the whole like dwarfy culture about like hating elves and, you know, magma everything and that kind of thing. I don't know if it came from either a word, but the Reddit, the subreddit is definitely like way more into it. it. Yeah, they're definitely into the magma. You can ask a question, you know, saying like, you know, my dwarfs don't know how to make ladders. And they'll say, have you tried throwing them in magma or whatever? It doesn't get old for me. But I suppose if you're looking for an actual answer, yeah, maybe Bay 12 is a place for that because I think my Google search has turned me to Bay 12 sometimes. Well, there's always this massive question threat above everything else, you know, what I'm talking about. Yeah, right. It's always on top of the page.

And before 44.12 came out, I used to hang around in that question thread and just answer the questions if I could. And so many times people actually just got back to me after they solved their problem or whatever and said, thank you, I solved it. and that was sweet. Yeah, that's something I say about Dwar Fortress, subreddit, and the community at large, like, it's one of the most positive and helpful gaming communities that are out there. Like, it really does, like, everyone, like, binds together.

There's very, very rare instances that anyone, like, says anything very negative or condescending or anything like that. And I think part of it is, again, like, that idea of camarader with who shared suffering, like, we've all gone through the pain of learning how to play this game. Right? Like the learning curve for this is really tough. And we've all experienced it. We all know like, no, this isn't something you just like pick up one day and just you just do it. Like it takes a lot of thought and effort to play Dwar Fortress. And then the rewards, of course, are awesome when you get through that. And so we all have this like, yeah, man, we've been there. We understand. And we're all out there to help each other.

you know and probably a good shout out to the moderators of the Reddit forum too because having been a moderator of various web forums it's not an easy job and I think that you're right I think they do keep the tone really positive and on point maybe that's some community but I also think it's probably a lot of hard work from them so that's pretty that's pretty awesome so it's turned out to be a really good good spot so and you know it'll be interesting to see what happens with Steam, because I know Steam has its own forums, too, and a much more varied user-based, perhaps. So we will see. So let's take a look at the states of our fortresses. Ross, you want to go first,

talk about any fortress you might be working on? Yeah, so the current fortress that I'm really focused on is Kill Roads Zero. bronze fires. Populations 161. It's been around for 14 years. I started it as a, I just, I had a couple ideas and like new things that kind of came out that I wanted to try out. So I just did a real quick, medium-sized world, and I let it run to the earliest time setting, just to like get something out there. So it's still very early in the whole history of the world. You guys have mentioned before, Blue Knight Brown Horse, and he has these like tutorials and kind of that he's been posting up on Reddit.

So I saw that a while ago on how he does his farming and vegetation. I was like, oh, wow, that's some like interesting things that I have not seen before and how he does his like planting and crop rotation. So I will start that with that and then I wanted to experience that and explore with that. And then also something with the newest version or the newest update of Dwar Fortress is I feel like, you know, the stress mechanics are always kind of like swinging, between versions and this one seems like pretty punishing so I was like how do I stop my dwarves from going absolutely bonkers so early so um also with blue knight brown horse he like

recommends custom professions so I started saying okay well what I need to do is create I need to dedicate dwarves who are their personalities are really good and durable in terms of seeing horrible things and those are my morticians like I need just like one or two of them for the whole fortress and those dwarves and those doors alone are allowed to take care of bodies and that's their entire idea and most of the time they don't have anything to do and all they do is hang out in the tavern or go pray and stuff like that and that's great good let them have time off which kind of rolled into the next thing in um crowsmatch's current um series the uh the honey stokers he has the autumn fest that's in there and it's like once one season out of the year he just like

shuts everything down and says no everyone has to go into the tavern and the temples and just like take a season off and I've been using that and that has helped so much and making a small tavern has helped a lot too because when you make a small tavern you just like jam all the dwarves into there and then they stop being as despondent about not being social so when dwarfs want to be social or to get the dwarf to be social they have to be physically next to another dwarf so you just got to like jammed jam them into a very small tavern. And that helps a lot. So I've been working with that. And then I kind of also mentioned like sewing and sewing images onto cloth and dying cloth. I've been focusing a lot on half of the doors like that.

And then I've, oh, and then also kind of a fun thing I've been doing is when I capture elves, I usually have a torture chamber that's set up. So it's a, it's a spike trap that has just, that's made of just one wooden training spear. And then I chain them into

a room that it's like, there's the chain and then the next tile over is the spike trap and then it leads out and then there's the door and then I have a dwarf there that just keeps like operating the lever repeatedly and they eventually and I just

like stab them with these with spears until they die. Oh my God, that has Roland written all over it. I mean yeah but the main question about that is is that a spear you made yourself out of wood or is it

an elven grown spear. Oh, man. Oh, that's a great idea. I didn't even think. It's a one that I made. But if I, I need to get an elven grown spear and use that against, oh, you've just, you've just really awakened some, some interesting thoughts. Thank you very much.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Well, and you just started a new fortress. Last week, we talked about, uh, The fact that I am naming all of my dwarves after rock and roll pioneers from the 1950s and then going to retire the fortress, I've run into a problem that has really slowed down my implementation of this plan. And that is dwarf therapist keeps crashing on me as after I've changed like three names in a row.

So that put me a little bit behind the eight ball and the fact that we have a short week this week means that I didn't really have any progress except I've got three quarters of my population named things like Buddy Holly, Fat Stom. Moneau, Patsy Klein, and Marilyn Monroe. In my fortress, too, I've been doing a lot of custom professions and custom names, and I found that really helpful. So, like, when I, for, in terms of warning messages. So, like, if I get a, like, it's fun to see, like, Gordon Ramsey has made a masterwork pot roast or whatever the hell. But, yeah.

But then, like, when you see, when you see, what's a good one, Levi Strauss, who's my usual, like, person who makes clothes, has been interrupted by a cave alligator. I'm like, okay, something's way off. Why is there a cave alligator all the way up in my cloth industry? And then like that immediately turns you in so like where things are and like things that are going wrong. Oh gosh. I never even thought of doing something like that.

You can be like have a clothing maker called Versace. Right. Oh, yeah. So my cloth makers are Levi Strauss, Chanel. And I forgot one more. And that helps a lot. Roland, did you play any? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I've been playing a bit, and today, actually, I got the best artifact ever. My apprentice child, I tend to appoint even child to any labor, so that when they grow up, they are already a bit good in what they do. and this also prevents child from making useless bone crafts when they get the mood and this works great you know like I don't get any

stupid bone crafts anymore unless a real bone carver gets actually the mood but hey-ho so this child in particular was a weapon smuff and of course that's great news always great news and I was like

okay let's see what we can do here so I forbid all the metals and the only thing that was acceptable to use was platinum so I kind of gambled on

getting like a blunt weapon and I won I got a platinum warhammer that is also started with raw platinum blocks and it's great it's great it's not so bedazzled with pictures and stuff it only has like a bit of hanging rings of cloth and wooden spikes and an artifact made multiple things that's got to be

worth a lot yeah that's kind of cool yeah it is and the best thing is on the weapon is an image of my queen who lives in my fort who is not a dwarf but a jackal woman and yeah and on the weapon is the scene in which she becomes

the queen of my civilization and I gave that weapon to her husband who is my master tactician military general so he leads usually leads like small ambushes on the goblin to my east and i gave him that weapon so he has always something to look at when he's traveling and always gets reminded of his wife that waits for him at home and stuff that's that's really cool I think.

And yeah, I just hope for the next siege so he can bash some goblins with that artifact weapon. I mean, it is my first platinum and I think it's one of the very

few artifact weapons I've ever gotten that weren't completely useless like bones spares and stuff. So yeah, I did it. Tony, have we talked about your fortress? So I've got a small world that I built with fortress defense,

and so I've put all kinds of varieties of creatures in it. But I had a fort going that was everything was just rocking along. Yeah, then all of a sudden, for some reason, I seem to have hit that FPS death, and it went from 170 FPS to zero FPS span of like 30 seconds. So that is retired and doing well, in its own now of 300 and something dwarves, which is cool. So now I've got a new one. It's called Orcher Fath or Web Sacked, which is a great name.

And so we're doing battle against the mantis men. And that was a bit of an accident. I put them in because they sounded really cool, but it turns out they can fly. So when you get a raid of mantis men, they just fly right over your walls. So that has added to some of the challenge for sure. so I've had to rethink how I designed the fort because the mantis men will just fly right over walls. So, whoops, surprise.

And then their fort seems to be inhabited by a charcoal brute. So he seems to be doing all kinds of damage. So I've got a new thing going. And I decided, as per one of our other conversations, to make the only food industry cheese making. So the dwarves are eating cheese based on animals that they capture. So things are going pretty well in the fort. Everything smells like cheese, and we're fighting a charcoal brew.

That's that. That's a tough challenge because, like, getting enough milk to make about all that cheeses, that's a lot of effort. Yeah, yeah. You know, I guess comparing it to real world events, there was a bit of a great leap forward there where we were transitioning from plump helmets to cheese. And I won't lie. there were a lot of potentially unnecessary deaths,

but I think the ends justify the means because now we have a pretty robust cheese industry. So that's, you know, it's really exciting to see the varieties of, you know, Greyhound cheese or whatever we've got going. It's a good time. Good time. I just want to add one little thing. I totally forgot about it,

but I just saw it in my screenshot folder. For some reason, a bunch of elves attacked me, and I managed to cage some of them and one of that is the queen of the civilization. Oh, nice. So I'm just sitting here and I have no idea

what I can do with her because, you know, like... Well, I'm going to ask you a question. Do you have any elf-grown spears? Hmm, I see. I like where this is going. You could also build a glass chamber and chain her up with wooden chains. But what? Wooden chains?

I don't know. Can you make wooden chains? I've never tried. It feels like something you could do. Can do grown cages, but no chains and think. There you go, yeah. Keep her in a wooden cage. I think that's a cruel and unusual punishment for an elven queen. Okay, well, I think that we can probably wrap her up. Rock and roll. 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, like we said before, I'll like my products.

You would say you can get at defied danger.com, and then you can catch me mostly on, I'm on Reddit. user defy danger, and then also on Twitter at C. Stephen Ross. Okay, well, thanks Ross for stopping by and saying hi to us and talking about Averis and all these Dwar Fortress insights. Thanks so much for having me. I had a really great time talking to Dwar Fortress. Does anyone else have anything else that they would like to go over? No, I think we're good. Okay, I guess that's going to wrap up this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable, and we really do

appreciate everybody checking in and downloading the show and listening to it. We're glad that everybody seems to be enjoying the show. So until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. I'm Tony. And thanks again, Ross, very much for stopping by and joining us. We'll have you back sometime. That's great. Thanks.

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