Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: Disgrunt on April 13, 2018, 09:09:31 am
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I've done some google-fu, and never really been satisfied by any answers I found.
Has anyone ever played a DF inspired tabletop game? What system?
Do you guys think Barbarians of Lemuria would make a good system for it? I think in that way, it leaves a lot of the fine mechanics of a game like DF to the creativity and discretion of the players and DM.
Link to rules (not pirated, their free): http://barbariansoflemuria.webs.com/bol_rules.pdf
Any other systems you guys would try/have tried?
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I've never really seen any DF table top attempts. There are many aspects of DF you could try to bring to TT. Do you just make it a pure combat game? Do you make it a fortress building/upgrading type game with resource harvesting? Try to do it all?
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That's what I liked about BoL - there are distinct phases where you adventure and then must spend money to advance your character. The way I thought of it, that this could be applied to a fortress or civilization/holdings of the characters within the fortress.
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We need a board with over 137 z levels
The real Four Dimensional Chess :)
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I feel like the old DF stat system, strength, agility, toughness, would be good for a board game, as they would be between levels 1 to 6. And its not too many stats as to be unmanageable if you had say... 20 dwarfs on the table? Maybe a "mind" or "happiness" stat that goes up or down, emotional tantrum chance when it gets too low or reaches zero.
There's about six quality levels, so that fits easy into a game if you wanted to include gear quality. Skill levels would probably need simplified, 6 or 10 total skill levels would be nice and even for a board game.
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There's a lot of world/donjons/cities generators around internet like by example :
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/demo.html
http://www.d20srd.org/fantasy/world/
http://donjon.bin.sh/adnd/dungeon/
http://davesmapper.com/
http://inkwellideas.com/free-tools/random-city-map-generator/
https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator
that could be usefull to use as a base for the printed maps in case of a DF adventure mode adaptation into tabletop.
Though to simulate the randomness of world/dungeon/cities , it may be better to have many separate world/dungeon/cities printable tiles that you can randomly re-arrange on your table instead of printing a whole generated dungeon that can't modified.
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@Robsoie
I was thinking that adventures would still be planned, like your average tabletop. There are just some things that humans aren't as good as computers at, and effortless world-gen is one of them. I would likely initially gen it in DF or one of the
@Xyon
I like the simplicity and open creativity of BoL's health, magic, and armor system. Aspects of it look like good candidates to adapt to DF. From what I've read, warhammer fantasy's hp and career system are a good fit. For sanity/corruption, I think that the One Ring LOTR system is the best I've seen - it's very narrative and tailored to each character.
I'm almost tempted to try and scavenge together a system, but I've got no experience. Might be a fun project though. The biggest challenge would be have to balance the specificity of DF with open world, the gritty realism of it, and the fact that magic has yes to be defined. There'd have to be a system for making monsters on the fly as well, seeing as there are a billion different [insertanimal]-men in DF. Character gen would have to be somewhat random, like 1E DND, but also streamlined because likely you'll be dying quite a bit. You make your character based around your stats, not vice versa. Elves would be shit in melee. Not all races would be able to play together, etc. Maybe a mechanic for the sheer randomness, like the destiny mechanic from Edge of the Empire? Dice could also easily be a pool or simple pass/succeed.
Some things to peak at
http://cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-one-ring/the-one-ring-game-system/
http://khorne.ru/2nd/wfrp_web/Core.pdf
The more I talk, the more I actually might have a go at this, honestly.
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Something that is a trait of DF is the very detailled combat, with layers of armor/cloth/skin/nerves/bones/etc being involved , with people losing limbs, and taking said limbs to strike opponents etc...
While the computerisation of this system in DF make it fast as it's the cpu does all the rolls/calculations for you, i wonder if trying to implement a tabletop combat system that detailled wouldn't only result in very long, dragging and so ultimately boring for the player combat.
I think combat is certainly a section of a tabletop version of DF that will have to get some simplification. But in the same time too much simplification would remove an important trait of what makes DF.
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I know where I'd get the figures... (http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Squats)
(If you find it easier, go for the fantasy versions (http://warhammerfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf), but given they're now off-canon, fan-produced squats/derivatives shorn of their more techy features might be the better option in the long-run.)
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I've been reading through the warhammer fantasy pdf, and the class and combat system seems to be very DF-like. It allows for mundane classes, and professions could definitely be boiled down and converted
Including the layers of the body would definitely be overkill, but I think a wound system like WF would be okay. There is a certain level of abstraction that's necessary I feel. Overall Warhammer 1e is pretty convoluted, character gen is random but very tuned to the universe. The same publisher that made One Ring is going to make warhammer 4e in the next year. Maybe that one, or 2e or 3e is a better system to adapt?
World gen would be ludicrous.
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I have occasionally taken screenshots of my fortresses and used them as pathfinder dungeons.
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What do you think pathfinder does better than 5e?
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The combat thing might not be too terrible with computer assistance.
the issue I see is how to do random encounters, as the monsters spawn on the map at the edge, then migrate around and are totally avoidable in DF. Tabletop games rely heavily on random encounter matrices, which DF does not have.
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I never use truly random encounters as a DM. I might have some little encounters (usually non-combat) prepared with a sentence or three and roll for them. They are usually made to show an aspect of the world or locale.
No game I ever played in used a lot (if any) of random encounters.
Another good ruleset might be Savage Worlds. It is not free but the core rule book (yes, only one) is cheap, the rules are easy to learn/use and flexible. Combat is not detailed as to make it fast. Most enemies die in one good hit, or take 2 decent ones. (First hit only makes someone shaken, 2nd one kills/wounds. But if you hit roll high enough you can do two or more wounds. Exploding dice make it more likely to do so.)
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Something that is a trait of DF is the very detailled combat, with layers of armor/cloth/skin/nerves/bones/etc being involved , with people losing limbs, and taking said limbs to strike opponents etc...
I think GURPS is the way to go. With GURPS you can make combat as complex as you want it to be.
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The thing I’m trying to keep in mind is that nothing can do what Dwarf Fortress does as well as it already does it.
The DM makes the game in the end. A DF system would just be a way to make adventures set in the universe with supplemental features that help you gain immersion in the DF universe. I think a lot of the down-to-the-nerves detail would have to be replaced with a great sense of creativity on the DM’s part. For instance, random encounters are pretty garbage, but a DM replaces the need for what the code of DF does to an extent.
Say I have 7 players roll up dwarf characters who are exploring the ruins of a fort. I’m not going to procedurally generate the entire fort, I’ll have it planned out. Maybe I plan for something catastrophic to go wrong, like for instance a wandering horde of Goblins appears on the horizon and one of the players spots them through an arrowslit. Maybe they just found some loot. Now the seemingly random events planned by the DM have then conflicted on A) how to get the loot out and B) how to deal with or pass by the goblins unnoticed.
The real question is, since none of us are professional tabletop developers, what game could a third party supplement theoretically be made for, and what kind of changes and additions would best fit the spirit of brutality, randomness, and FUN that is Dwarf Fortress?
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i hope this doesn't count as advertising, but we play our tabletop(s) at https://roll20.net/
if you need an actual material tabletop, that's not as much of help though, but one could still use the systems to manage chars, szenarios etc.
DF converted directly into a tabletop with all the internal rules applied would most likely make every GMs head explode within the first few IC-seconds :D
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Technically any system can do if it comes to modify it to fit a specific universe, adding more tables to roll on every hits or critical hits to simulate the more or less serious damage taken or limbs flying or bruised isn't too hard regardless of the game system.
Now regarding DF random encounters being garbage.
That really depends on the version as the randomness wasn't that random actually.
In past version of DF when you didn't saw "ambushes" marked on the map from afar so easily and that factions reputations mattered a lot more, you could have characters being basically hunted by a faction and random encounter were in fact part of that faction narrative.
By example in older versions of DF, i had a character that was hunting a bandit group, and after doing some damage , i became said faction major target, leading to interesting story happening to my character, one i wrote there by example :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132314.msg4704807#msg4704807
Now i think whatever the system, the randomness of some situations that are so random actually and made DF famous in all those "romanced" stories you can read here and there, makes it so that it's not easy to find a way to reproduce that even with random table rolls .
By example this story happening in my fortress that i reported about a Forgotten Beast that came from the depth of the world and ....
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102839.msg3039523#msg3039523
That was hilarious to witness and so completely unexpected next to some more grim&gritty DF scenes.
Without mentionning the carps that in even older versions of DF were going to have a "special" role that even Toady hadn't thought about, leading in fortress in which going to fish or simply crossing a river was an epic adventure of cataclysmic proportions :D (and leading Toady unfortunately to rework how those carps worked in further versions of DF).
Or the bugs that even if actual bugs could lead into interesting (but devastating) situation, like the giant mosquito count getting out of hand in a fortress map in some past version, leading to desesperate fight for survival for your dwarves.
It's always something going to be hard whatever the game system, as DF can generate the most grim tragedy situation right next the most hilarious and nonsensical one.
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yes, or the FB that ran into the 2nd layer caverns of my previous fort just to hunt Trogs and set all the trees in fire just to die in the flames itself. i just meant if the actual detail of combat actions would probably be too much to actually take 1:1 to be done as a GM.
he'd need a hell of a dice-throwing-machine :D
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I meant that in most tabletop games, random encounters are kind of garbage. DF’s are excellent
I agree that the stories are what really draw me to DF - do you think that a 3rd party supplement for a game like the one ring would be best? I think the combat system is loose and narrative, and that the details of DF’s combat system can simply be baked into the abstractness of wounds and endurance maybe? They already have an insanity/corruption mechanic as well. It’d be simple to switch it to reflect dwarven insanity. Occupations and races could be homebrewed as well. It plays very narrativey as well, and is low magic.
What are your thoughts on a loose unified setting.
What am I missing here?
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no idea, we have a nice GM (he has some custom rules to not ruin too much FUN) but i don't know too much about all tzhe things he has to roll in th different settings we play, which are "warhammer only war" and "pathfinder".
only war is one of the easier ones as you always have to roll lower than your skill or your chance on a 1d100. also insanity is in there too ^^.
our last session was funny and hardcore:
(i made a small textfileso i never forget what happened that evening - i try to translate)
my char is in fieldhospital :D but the story is real hardcore :D
he has a huge hole where his right eye used to be.
he got hit to the eye, exiting right, but that didnt seem bad enough, so a second shot from that salvo hit him straight to the righthand side of his forehead, exiting to the right temple, ripping quite the hole.
He then screamed to his comrade "make it whole again!" which then barely rolled a 21, which was exactly low enough to do the first aid... and began doing stuff:
doing the best he could, he washed the wound with his field flask, whipped in his aftershave and then my char only saw a spoon with canned meat approaching and went unconscious, while his comrade kept using that spoon as a spatula to fill the skull with canned meat, before picking me up and bringing me backwards to the medic.
I was laughing in disgust and hiliariousity (i guess i just made up that word :D ) while our GM explained what happens :D
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Ahahaha, brilliant. If you can nab any rules or homebrew your GM uses that would be great - if they’re willing to share their secrets of course.
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well, he had a rule for pathfinder for leveling-up-HP so the player could either just take 10 points (1d20! so it's 1 below medium) or chose to roll the dice as the rulebook says. so you can either have a mediocre or chose to take on your chances and fail or win big. which is nice expecially on the first few levels :) - but every GM needs to find out their own set of rules to apply to the party, set and setting to make it fun for all players while not giving away too much mercy for foolish decisions.
In the pathfinder campaign two PCs were so incompatible and everyone did great RP, so during the boss-fight, they fought eachother - so instead of killing the enemy of the group, one decided to kill the other, leading to the death of yet another member - which left my cleric and that brute the two only survivors and in quite the ethic dilemma. it's always good to stick to your characters' aptitude and (mostly) ignore what you know about whats best for them.
one important thing as a GM: never decide how the group will react to a situation. give them hints etc., but if they decide to kill a certain important NPC, have something prepared, just in case. even if no sane person would react this way, be prepared that one of them will still do it.
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well, he had a rule for pathfinder for leveling-up-HP so the player could either just take 10 points (1d20! so it's 1 below medium) or chose to roll the dice as the rulebook says. so you can either have a mediocre or chose to take on your chances and fail or win big. which is nice expecially on the first few levels :) - but every GM needs to find out their own set of rules to apply to the party, set and setting to make it fun for all players while not giving away too much mercy for foolish decisions.
In the pathfinder campaign two PCs were so incompatible and everyone did great RP, so during the boss-fight, they fought eachother - so instead of killing the enemy of the group, one decided to kill the other, leading to the death of yet another member - which left my cleric and that brute the two only survivors and in quite the ethic dilemma. it's always good to stick to your characters' aptitude and (mostly) ignore what you know about whats best for them.
one important thing as a GM: never decide how the group will react to a situation. give them hints etc., but if they decide to kill a certain important NPC, have something prepared, just in case. even if no sane person would react this way, be prepared that one of them will still do it.
As both a player and a GM I always hated the old roll based char creation/leveling in D&D/pathfinder. Both for attributes and for hitpoints. It creates a situation where if a player rolls bad they are way more useless than a medium or better rolled stat char and this leads to consequences both for the player handling his char and the group interacting with him. As a player it also encourages letting your character die and rolling a new one. Sure decent and experienced players don't let that really affect them much but it will always do so a tiny bit.
If they are bad rolls then you can let them re-roll as GM but this just opens a can of worms and compromises your position. When you allow the first re-roll then pretty soon you are re-rolling more and more or players are campaigning for or sweet-talking/debating you to allowing re-rolls. And there is just no perfectly neutral system to when you allow it and when not.
When I was GM I always used points systems for attributes and HP was average+0.5 so 4 for d6, 6 for d10 etc.
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well, allowing redistribution of some points from one attribute to another is a nice thing to counter misrolled chars.
the medium + roll thingy is dfferent. the player can chose if they take the medium or roll. so its up to them if they take the risk and it's only for when stats change on lvlup.
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Would DF Tabletop do randomized generation linked to careers like Warhammer Fantasy? How do you feel DF’s characteristic’s and attributes would transfer over to the tabletop format? Would condensing some skills compromise the feel?
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I feel like TT DF should let you assign dwarfs on the fly to jobs/professions based on whatever whim/desire/need that comes up, of course dwarfs who have experience or matching attributes would do better at the task, but any dwarf is generally capable of filling any need and can grow in skill with time.
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I feel like TT DF should let you assign dwarfs on the fly to jobs/professions based on whatever whim/desire/need that comes up, of course dwarfs who have experience or matching attributes would do better at the task, but any dwarf is generally capable of filling any need and can grow in skill with time.
say you got a max o 10 for each skill.
from 0 to 1 requires 10 positive rolls for that skill (equaling 10 critical hits, because you got no skill and it's that difficult to get it right at all) to level up.
from 1 to 2 it would require 100
2-3 1000. that way it is not impossible but unlikely to levelup a skill and it takes longer to get from no skill to mastery.
maybe there's better counts for leveing up, but this way you only learn from doing it right.
other systems give you XP in a skill for every use no matter if you failed. then again others only give you XP when you failed, making it harder once you've got some skill.
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One thing I would think is needed to be hammered out is the scope or length of a single "game" of dwarf fortress. Do you want the board game to be something where you put it away and come back to it another day because it could take 40+ hours to finish a single game, or do you want it to be something where you can play a single "game" in 10 hours? 8 hours? 6 hours? 4 hours? 2 hours?
Do you want it to be like a... new-style risk game.. i forget, but the new version of risk? Where 'global' events happen at the end of each game and you take out cards or stickers or things that permanantly change the game in some way before you start the new game. So maybe a game lasts 2 hours, but its the same 'world" and maybe you have some dwarfs carry on, or events, or artifacts, or whatever, that carry on from the last game to the next game?
I'm just bringing this up because, are you really going to have 100 'successful' events in a table top board game to level a dwarf up? Is that realistic for the time scale of a single game? Is it more realistic if you have a dwarf carry on from game to game?
Do you have a pool of skill points available to 'assign' to dwarfs on a given turn of the game, and maybe you have a "pool" of dwarfs, so maybe you can assign skill points for all your tasks on a given turn because you are 'grabbing' dwarfs from the pool of available dwarfs who might have those skills, so instead of tracking individual dwarfs you just have a nebulous pool of resources that represent the total skill level of all possibly available dwarfs?
These are things to think about.
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So, let’s say we do use One Ring as a foundation for a Dwarf Fortress supplement/campaign.
I figured it would be like DnD where you carry out a campaign over the course of many sessions.i imagined it as an RPG-like game.
TOR is divided into two phases - the adventuring type phase, and the fellowship phase. The adventuring phase is pretty self explanatory, but the fellowship is an abstract legnth of time in between either campaigns themselves, or different stretches of whatever quest you’re doing. I think that in a DF system, this time is when Dwarfs would be able to add to their skills either based on experience gained during the adventuring phase, or as a part of training undertaken throughout the fellowship phase.
(The game you’re talking a out is Risk:Legacy which is a fucking blast) Personally I think continuity is preferable. A short guide to creating your own DF world without computer generation, but with options to use DF to make it would be nice. I thought the game would be more of a traditional approach, with a party of characters each controlled by a player.
This isn’t going to be a hard port of DF to tabletop, but more a supplement or RPG inspired by it.
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I kind of imagine DF being transferable to a TT board game rather than a RPG. Like a city management game with some kind of continuity of 'end game' events that carry on to the next fortress you run which make your civ stronger or weaker the next time you start a new fort.
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Can a TT game beat DF as a city builder type game? I feel like DF has it on lock pretty hard.
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can a DF themed RPG beat any other RPG out there? Probably not. Can it still be fun? Yes.
Likewise. Can a DF themed TT board game city manager still be a fun game? Yes. Can it be as in depth/range of possibilities as actually playing DF? No. Can it still be fun? Yes.
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What city builder would you point to as a point of inspiration?
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I would say I haven't played any board games that influence my idea of what a DF board game of managing the fortress would be. But "fallout shelter" is a game that kind of gets the layout of how I think the board would look. A 2d board that represents a cross section of the area of the fortress, tiles representing the 'dug out' areas, maybe some decks of cards that represent sediment layers that you draw whenever you dig a new level down, and lay them on the board. Some resources and workshops abstracted, like "Food" generally representing drinkable/eatable food , "Farms" being a combination of farms/stills/livestock, etc.
Each sedement layer you draw for that level determines if any ore can be found. Maybe some random cards drawn at the start to represent what surface features are on site, like ponds, rivers, trees, mountain, volcano, etc.
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I think randomness is still an important factor to get in a DF tabletop type of game as it's a very important element to the actual game.
And because DF is something that has even managed to surprise its developer (remember the carps :D) so whatever is going on during a DF "planned" game may be able to surprise the DM too, and not only odd decision from the players.
A DM rolling some tables and observing his important planned NPC going insane from the sight of a shoe of the wrong size would force a fun attempt at adapting on the fly his story to the unexpected situation.
For that i think giving a focus on writing lots of tables is a good idea to introduce some of the random crazyness.
A bit like what the people at the massive Table of Tables (https://www.reddit.com/r/BehindTheTables/wiki/index) have done.
using that table of kind of tables collection you have brillant things like this to generate results for you instead of manually roll the dices like in the table of tables : https://autorolltables.github.io/ by example.
And to get farther, why not go with DM-less gameplay and let tables and other possible DM-simulating tools actually oversee the players adventures, emulating a bit more the actual DF completely freeform gameplay from adventure mode.
Though in that case you would need a massive amount of tables.
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A shuffled deck of cards seems to be the preferred modern board game method of randomness instead of tables
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I’ll check those links out tonight.
What about a migrant-focused game? A mix between Oregon Trail and The One Ring?
Tables are useful, but the more there are the more bogged down it can get.
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I think cards is a good idea on a smaller scale boardgame like a dungeon crawl in the vein of Heroquest/WarhammerQuest/Descent etc... , but if you go a tabletop rpg and try to keep at the df scale and level of details, that's going to be expansive in amount of cards.
Now if you cut it down and focus on an aspect of DF and decide to go with a board game, cards is surely the way to go.
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well, the scope of the game, the length of the sessions and the level of detail are most important.
if it's going to be like heroquest, then there's no need for detail or characterdevelopment and randomness can easily be achieved by cards, while if it's like DnD you can basically go into as much detail as you like and tables are much better for randomness of events.
also the leveling up of skill could be a cobination of any method and the necessary times using the skill for leveling up should be adaptive. maybe 5 successful uses from level 0 to lvl1 would be better...
or always 10 fails for each lvlup? rewarding each try and yet making it harder to raise skill as it takes fails to raise.
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In a TTRPG situation I think the attempt approach to skills wouldn’t really work. Can’t be exactly like the DF system without being really bloated.
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There's certainly a lot of the DF skills that can be merged for streamlining and unbloating purpose .
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Skills-tree? General stone-afinity is a thing that gets used for all stone-related stuff, with distinct sub-stubs of carving (masonically) and crafting and smoothing and engineering1 being useful in more specific situations. Crafting being the most important component in what DF would consider the stonecrafting skill, where available, but does not help with bashing together a stone coffer which would use the masonry-derived sub-branch if available, but falling back purely on the basic 'stone affinity' (not the same as preference for a type of stone, though that would add basic bonuses too if applicable) if the more specific skill is not above a given baseline (zero, or perhsps the parent-skill level).
Whatever the source of the skill-check, practice in an actvity gives a chance buff to anywhere on the covering skill tree(s).
It could be tuned to approximate (as it appears we don't want to mirror) the DF binary's system but require a more simplified record (unless you deliberately cross-train across every leaf node of all the skill trees available to practice, which would be an awkward mode of play if the whole group and GM isn't really keen on mostly content-free grinding sessions) by forcing a few specialisms dug down from a small range of root-skills (combat, making, socialising) and sidelining most of the other branches.
1 Instead of, or in parallel with Engineering being sub-stubbed by different materials of mechanical devices and/or maybe subsumed Architecture under the branch of Civil Engineering?
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I've started drafting a loose port of Dwarf Fortress into Barbarians of Lemuria. It is rule light enough where we can be flexible in the future, and add other features. Magic and religion are loose enough to be mutable as Toady expands the systems. As it stands a good part of it will rely on the DM and players being imaginative more than any tables. I hope this naturally leads into an OSR feel. It's a process, and as I've started writing it's encouraging in that it has significant obstacles that will require creative solutions, but also that a lot of it fits so well. Hopefully I can post screen shots of snippets I need help on.
All brainstorming/help is appreciated, especially if you have any specific ideas on converting Barbarians of Lemuria.
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All brainstorming/help is appreciated, especially if you have any specific ideas on converting Barbarians of Lemuria.
never played it, so can't help there.
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For DF-style TTRPG, I have to point at Rolemaster. It even has somewhat similar learning curve :) The 15 years of playing the game have seen as many severed limbs and crushed skulls as any long standing fortress. My personal favourite is still my pal's character, who lost his right hand 3 times and whole campaign essentially spiralled into "lets look for next way to regrow that hand".
On the other hand, I've personally started DF-inspired campaign in Dungeon Crawl Classics, since the system is pretty sleek, and is deadly enough for d20-based game. Additional props for having dangerous magic so it really is best left for NPCs.
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I mean, this very much depends on how much you want your DF TT to be 'inspired' by it.
Because you probably could just take any given DF world, extract the data, muddle around with it for a bit (depending on the size), then use a generic system like GURPS, FATE, Savage Worlds or Open Legend (wink wink nudge nudge (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170012.msg7718806#msg7718806)).
Hell, with how (intentionally) generic DF worlds are as far as fantasy goes, you could probably just run a D&D or Pathfinder campaign in any given one with (almost) no problem. Pretty sure people have done that exact thing before, even.
Now if you want to truly represent the nitti-grittiness of DF's actual mechanics and translate that to a tabletop RPG...That's probably going to be more difficult. GURPS, with the right set of fantasy-oriented supplements, and aforementioned DF-aided worldbuilding, is probably your best bet there.
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I mean, this very much depends on how much you want your DF TT to be 'inspired' by it.
Because you probably could just take any given DF world, extract the data, muddle around with it for a bit (depending on the size), then use a generic system like GURPS, FATE, Savage Worlds or Open Legend (wink wink nudge nudge (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=170012.msg7718806#msg7718806)).
Hell, with how (intentionally) generic DF worlds are as far as fantasy goes, you could probably just run a D&D or Pathfinder campaign in any given one with (almost) no problem. Pretty sure people have done that exact thing before, even.
Now if you want to truly represent the nitti-grittiness of DF's actual mechanics and translate that to a tabletop RPG...That's probably going to be more difficult. GURPS, with the right set of fantasy-oriented supplements, and aforementioned DF-aided worldbuilding, is probably your best bet there.
THIS.
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Dwarf Fortress combat always reminded me of Runequest, or at least the 80's version of it that I recall learning. Limb-based hit results, massive critical hit tables, high significance of armor, etc. Sadly I recall that level of detail in combat was slow and not terribly fun to play out in a dice setting.
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Dwarf Fortress combat always reminded me of Runequest, or at least the 80's version of it that I recall learning. Limb-based hit results, massive critical hit tables, high significance of armor, etc. Sadly I recall that level of detail in combat was slow and not terribly fun to play out in a dice setting.
That's exactly what I was worried about, and that's most of the reason why I chose BoL as a system to try to port to. The great thing about boardgames is that you can just use imagination, really. That's the only thing we have over computers.
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As you're mentioning boardgames now, i am wondering if you're aiming for some kind of mix/hybrid between a boardgame and a tabletop rpg ?
Are you thinking about something similar to old Warhammer Quest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_Quest) that came with both basic heroquest-like boardgaming rules and had an advanced rulebook (with near 200 pages) too that was making it more of a rpg both within and outside of the boardgame elements.
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Are we having dwarven culture being as intended by toady, or like players play.
A one-gendered culture, with a strange slant of anarchy with any noble who gets too demanding, who ultimately listen to the Overseer an unseen somewhat ghostly entity that can see much more than any one dwarf but is not omniscient.
They are known to randomly kill merchants and visitors for no reason.
They have a communist-like economy, with little understanding of the concept of money.
Each dwarf(except nobles, which is one of the reasons they often kill them.) takes only what they need from the fortresses stocks, and if they take more, production is simply increased.
Despite this, they do have a working class referred to as "haulers".
The Haulers are the people who do jobs that don't require any skill at all, and these people are often the dwarves sacrificed if any sacrifice is needed.
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I'd go for a mix of Toady's vision and the players' vision.
We can just say any megaprojects are the result of special strange moods.
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well, the player rather represents the highest noble. them having "accidents" is a mere workaround the players do to evade impossible mandates. so as the noble has the right to mandate from the fortress, the player is more like the architekt and manager of the noble.
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"Gullstaff, you have entered the door to the north. The pungent stench of mildew emanates from the wet dungeon walls..."
"Okay."
"There's a giant cave ogre."
"Oh."
"The giant cave ogre hits you in the stomach (technically its fist is the size of your entire torso). Make a saving throw against vomiting up your spleen."
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Also, what is the Overseer, in the world of the tabletop?
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The DM?
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In my mind, the party-collective-consciousness. Individual party members may have ulterior motives that move against the Plan™, or just be unable to help towards it, but the players' openly spoken consensus is the Overseer.
The GM/DM/whatever plays the environment and politics and commerce. At least in my version of the conversion.