Bay 12 Games Forum

Here's what I do - play it ethically. All precautions are to be made to avoid death and suffering. It's harder than it sounds. This includes putting bars at the edge of cliffs and other edges where it's possible for dwarves to fall over, using only cage traps, putting avoidance of injury at a very high priority (i.e. full armor for training dwarves). And sustainability means that you have to avoid overhunting, overgathering of trees, overslaughter of undead except purely in self-defense.

Humans have it harder than dwarves

I told my captain of the guards to wear iron chain mail and he did. Later, when I had steel plate mail, I told him to wear the steel plate mail and he did too... right on top of the chain mail.

It says upper body - iron chain mail and upper body - steel plate mail.

I'd like to know how the game calculates damage to the chest with him wearing both

Lol, I am writing it as a simulator. Heck, I'm writing it assuming that it's a real thing, subject to real cultural, ethical, and engineering leadership theories. I'm going to have to write a short risk management report on the building of whatever engineering projects (the reservoir being the most significant, I guess). I'm not so much focusing on the player's interaction style, though. No extra points for that; anyway writing a fat essay on DF is much more fun than inspecting the IEEE Code of Ethics or another dull review on the leadership skills of heroes in literature. It's a lot more work than it'd otherwise be, but meh, it makes learning the boring stuff much easier

Oh.. and thank you guys, because there was a test earlier yesterday which touched on duty, virtues, rights, and utilitarianism (the "greater good"). Because I spent so much time trying to explain it in short words here, it was pretty darn easy to do in a test.

Muz, do you intend to explore how much of this is the creator's intent, versus to what extent ethics emerge from the gameplay?

I'm going to somehow consider it like a real world, that spawns its own ethical rules. I mean, in a sense, there are things like ethics like children not being killed and stuff.. but players decide to play the game unethically and the creator decides to let it happen. Nothing wrong with that; it's just a game after all :p

Anyway, everyone did give good points of bravery. It's hard to say, but yeah, it seems a lot more useful for real people who understand the concept of bravery, even though cowardice is a term not in the dwarven dictionary :p In a similar way, I guess dwarves wouldn't get the concept of abstaining from alcohol.

I rather like it as it is

I do demand that all the piles of clothes get sorted out and stuff. It's hard for me to figure out whether everyone has enough socks or too many socks.

I've never seen thieves steal anything. I've seen thieves though, but they don't seem to be holding anything while running off the map. The damn monkeys get stuff though. They seem to be stealing from dwarves outside the fortress (woodcutters, hunters) more often than the ones inside. Stealing from a hunter is a very bad idea. Most of my hunters blast holes through them using bone bolts.

The virtues espoused by dwarf fortress, by my eye, are the following: production and ambition.

That is just brilliant! I'm not completely sure about ambition, but production is just perfect. It explains where 'useless' dwarves are drafted into the military. It explains why mandates can be so important. It explains why a dwarf kills himself or flies into an insane rage if he fails to create an artifact. I suppose it's comparable to 20th century Japan culture.

I think compassion also works, because they do help their friends and they feel very sad for when a pet or friend dies. And they're happy to throw parties and stuff.

Obedience seems to be a bit ethical, because, as you say, "This is why the other dwarfs attack to destroy mad dwarfs." I think dwarves are bound to have full confidence in their leaders, which is why so many dwarven leaders are so corrupt. They believe that whatever their leader tells them to do has to be the best decision. After all, 7 unarmed dorfs wrestling with cave spiders are more successful than having 4 who do and 3 who disobey the crazy order.

Bravery is somewhat forced upon them, because they're not capable of feeling scared. Bravery is not the lack of fear, it is doing the right thing when scared.

Crap, double post because of the stupid Internet lagging. How do I delete this?

As I've written about a month or two ago, I'm doing my ethics assignment on DF. But looking at it from ethical frameworks, there are some things I'm not so sure about.

Duty - this is what a dwarf is ethically inclined by duty to do. It's also what the player has the duty to do for the dwarves. Couldn't find this one.

Virtues - The purpose of a knife is to cut, thus the virtue of it is sharpness. The virtues of people are honesty, compassion, hardworking, etc. What are the virtues of the dwarves in DF?

Rights - This is what every dwarf (player, animal, goblin, etc) has the right to. I put it as every dwarf having the right to live, and the right to happiness, regardless of how they are becoming happy.