Bay 12 Games Forum

GreatWyrmGold: The characters in your story have names unfit for a fantasy world (John, Zach, Jilian, Tiger, Robin are all out of place). I am also getting a very cliché'd feeling from your bio: normal boy from normal town, becomes adventurer and magic user apparently for the fun of it (despite the fact that magic is hard to access and adventuring is very dangerous and not an actual profession: this isn't D&D), forms a team with friends and friends die or otherwise disappear immediately, serving no purpose to the story whatsoever. The bit with the clan has no purpose, either... So that definitely needs improvement.

1. I'll gladly admit it's a pretty bad backstory; I was mostly trying to get it finished.
2. Grimore, Tiger, and Robin were names the kids gave themselves, they're not supposed to be ones a parent would name their kids. I wasn't sure about the flavor of "normal" names, either, so I chose names that sounded like realistic ones.
3. Adventuring wasn't supposed to be a good choice; if they had encountered real foes before the bandits, or if the bandits were better-armed, or if they didn't have access to magic, or if the bandits were more prepared, they would have probably all died. It was supposed to be the sort of stupid idea that lots of adolescents have, only followed through with. Afterwards, my character just followed his preferred career--being a woodcutter isn't very exciting, and doesn't pay as well as he imagines mercenary work, adventuring, or whatever would.
4. The friends would have served a purpose if I felt the need to expand on that part of his life. It probably wasn't more than a few months, and (from a story perspective) mainly gives him a taste of what a life of not being a woodcutter would be like.
5. The bit with the clan was supposed to teach him discipline, again from a story perspective, which he obviously needed since he ran away from home on a wild dream.

So...yeah. It needs work, but I did think through things a bit.

You know what? You're screwed. I told you not to listen to them, but you did. Now look where you are.

...You had them attack EVERYTHING?

Yeah, probably some dwarven traders.
Here's how loyalty cascades work:

0. You have a fortress of, oh, 20 dwarves, 1-20. They are all members of the civilization (let's designate them C) and of your fortress (F). Let's throw in a merchant caravan, three dwarves (@,#,$), who are C but not F. When something attacks something else, it becomes an enemy of the target's groups; e.g. if Q attacks F (who goes to the hospital), Q becomes an enemy of the civ and the fortress. Let's designate such an entity as cf.
1. You order your militiadwarves--let's say H, E, and L--to attack everything. L attacks a member of the caravan. L is now an enemy of the civilization, but not an enemy of the fortress. Therefore, L is cF.
2. H and E notice L. L is, as an enemy of the civilization, their enemy. They attack L, killing him because L forgot to bring his helm and axe. This is another important part--E and H attacked a member of your fortress, making them enemies of the fortress, but as L revoked his citizenship when he became an enemy, they are not enemies of the civilization. E and H are Cf.
3. E and H wander into the alcohol stockpile. They see a bunch of enemies--e.g, other members of the fortress. A, M, T, J, and K counterstrike and become cF. Basically, everyone becomes either an enemy of the civilization, an enemy of the fortress, or a corpse. One of the two "factions" will eventually kill the other if they don't get separated or killed by some other means first.
4. Once you're down to one group of dwarves, all enemies of the same group, you begin to rebuild. With luck, you avoid a tantrum spiral.
5. Migrants arrive, enemies of your current fortress residents.
6. Go to step 3 until all dwarves who are enemies of your civilization or fortress are dead.

Sounds like a cool world.

Thank them for the beans. Eat them.

Trickery Demon, summoned from a barren island tower.

It's starting off slow, but that's to be expected. I'm reserving judgement until the real meat of the game happens.

"It's about as good a lubricant as oil--maybe a little better--but if any sparks are around, it burns explosively. I discovered that on accident yesterday. Once I finish repairing my lab, I'm going to test the explosive capacity further."