Dungeon23 X Dwarf Fortress

 

Dungeon23! Cool idea. One room a day, one level a month, culminating in a 12-level, 365-room megadungeon. 

It's also... a lot.

Fortunately for me, only a few days before I saw the posts about Dungeon23, I started playing Dwarf Fortress for the first time. Even more fortunately, I am bad at it. Let me explain why that's good.

If you're not familiar with the game, it's an extremely complex world-simulator with no real endgame other than having fun. What that means is up to each individual player. You could train your dwarves to be killing machines, raiding their neighbors and conquering the world. Or maybe they're farmers instead of conquerors. (Full disclosure, I still don't really know how to do either of those.) You can tunnel deep into the earth and establish a home surrounded by subterranean wonders, send your dwarves up into the trees to contend with giant squirrels, cut down a forest of trees to build a floating town on a lake, or whatever else you can think of. There are best practices, but no real "rules." 

My first few fortresses, everyone starved or dehydrated to death. Then I got one up to 100+ dwarves (you start with seven) that got wiped out, one by one, but a rampaging bronze golem that must've hated dwarves. That was followed by another delicately dug 100+-dwarf colony that was overrun by the living dead. It was so elaborate that I decided to reclaim it, only to suffer the same fate. Quickly. Twice.

Then Dungeon23 comes along, and I'm like, hey, I think I have a starting point here.

In the year 250 of the Age of Myths, the dwarves of the Mountainhomes dispatched an expedition into the wilds to establish a new colony. Under the guidance of their leader, Olod Inodkoman, a septet of dwarves founded Umomkegeth, the Darkholds, on land rich with natural resources. Years passed, and the stronghold prospered. Its craftsdwarves developed a reputation for their handiwork. Many fine and valuable pieces were produced there, highly prized by dwarf, human, and elf alike. Umomkegeth continued to attract more dwarves to its banner, and even developed trade agreements with nearby non-dwarf communities. When the living dead swept over the land, Olod and his kin were caught unawares. Many dwarves lost their lives in the siege; when it was over, Umomkegeth still stood. But that was only the first wave of many. Seeking safety, the dwarves dug deeper into the ground, eventually abandoning the upper floors and taking desperate measures to keep the undead at bay. What they hadn't anticipated, however, was that with each level they excavated, they were drawing ever closer to an even greater evil.

It has been more than a century since Umomkegeth finally fell, but whispers persist of the riches still buried there, waiting to be claimed by anyone brave or foolhardy enough to do so.

That'll work, right? Feels sufficiently old-school to me. I'm not going to copy any of my fortresses, but I'll use them as inspiration for a while.

And to encourage [read: strongarm] myself to keep at it for the next... 360 days, I'll be blogging about it here. Maybe it'll be interesting to people; I dunno. Being interesting to anyone other than me has never been a priority for this blog before, but still. New year, new... this.

Starting tomorrow I'll share the first five days of dungeon-building, so if you're into that, stay tuned! And if you're participating in Dungeon23 as well, let me know in the comments, and drop a link to your own work online if that's how you're rolling.

P.S.: If you're interested in Dwarf Fortress, whether you've played it or not, check out Kruggsmash's videos on YouTube. They're mostly from the pre-Steam version of the game, but for years now he's managed to spin the lives of these little ASCII characters into compelling and entertaining narratives accompanied by charming art. Personally, I started with Scorchfountain and its sequel, Chamberpoint, and found them to be a good entry point. You may be surprised at how invested you get in the exploits of Beetlebane, Winks, Ted, and many, many others.