Bay 12 Games Forum

Look up Dwarf Therapist.

Quote from: DwarfMeister on April 10, 2012, 02:37:52 pm

Quote from: Sean Mirrsen on April 10, 2012, 10:29:35 am

Indeed, here you will have essentially a group of succession fort players competing for being the best succession fort player. Everyone who participates would post their write-ups for the year, and would then be able to vote on any of the other write-ups for that year. The winning save wouldn't necessarily be the most efficient or the richest, etc, the quality of the write-up itself would be a factor as well. The game's inherent randomness would mean that events would be slightly different for everyone, and it'd be the participants' job to make their fort's story be as interesting as possible. In the end, we'd have a compilation of yearly updates by (hopefully) different people, making this sort of a genetically sorted succession game, every generation branching into different directions and all but the one best path trimmed every year.

You, my friend, are a very smart man.

I really don't intend to poop on your idea or anything.  But from what I can tell from the succession threads I've read (and my own brief experience in a succession game), doing nice creative write-ups takes an order of magnitude more effort than just playing 1 year of a fort.  People sustain that by knowing that they only need to it for a year, and that for one year, the observers of the thread and the other players in the game are relying on them, and only them, to have a well documented, fun year.  That said, if you actually make a game like this, i would be interested in following it.

Quote from: slothen on April 10, 2012, 09:15:20 am

Not very fun for the other players if only the arbitrary 'winner' gets to see the progress on the fort persist.  It makes a lot of extra work for all the players, and takes the fun out of "well, this is what happened with the fort during your predecessor's turn.  Deal with it."

Well, after the first year people will be playing with essentially the same stock of Dwarves, which will provide some continuity.  And.....

Quote

And whatever you do to your fort?  won't matter, chances are it won't be picked anyway.  Lastly, who wants to dig through 7 saves just to make a vote?  Finally, if its just the players voting, the winner is probably won't win with more than 1/2 votes over the next person.

As was mentioned, by keeping it within the players it seems reasonable that they could collude to give each other a turn sometime.  Also, chances are that as the fort progresses each player will be dealing with pretty much the same problems at the same time... and there will be write-ups, right?  So it won't be digging through saves, but reading reports on how other players dealt with similar challenges, which could be entertaining and educational at the same time.

Quote from: dree12 on April 08, 2012, 10:54:23 am

Edit: Here's a modification I feel could help keep a succession-esque format:

9. After one person has his or her version of the fort selected, he or she is no longer eligible to get his or her fort selected (but can still vote).

This method ensures that the fort has a natural progression (e.g. Bob -> Donald -> Gage -> Frank -> Alice -> Carol -> Emily) rather than an unnatural "stewardship" or "dynastical" progression (e.g. Bob -> Bob -> Bob -> Donald -> Bob -> Bob -> Carol).

I considered this too, but then wouldn't players drop out if they had no chance of winning the vote?  Why stick around for 10 turns of (edit - *guaranteed*) deleted years?  Even if I sucked and one guy kept winning, the challenge to be number one would (probably!) keep me motivated.

Quote from: Deathworks on April 08, 2012, 11:03:36 am

And allowing players joining and leaving may encourage participation, especially by insecure players or those with unstable schedules. In addition, players can join in, and later leave to concentrate on further developing their version of the map, branching off at any time of their choosing.

This seems reasonable to me.  The whole thing could just run on a clock then and whoever wants to submit a story for that year can do so, no waiting for people to finish, provided someone finishes.  What does DwarfMeister say?

Hello!

This sounds like an interesting concept to which I would like to add a suggestion:
Make it open for entering and leaving and do away with the must-be-odd number of players.

My reasoning is as follows: In the end, each turn only one player influences the history of the fortress as the other maps are all removed from the contest (but maybe their players want to continue them). So, even if there were 11 participants with the first turn, in the end, 10 of these participants will have contributed nothing to the map which is used in the second turn (they will have contributed their maps and their stories to the community, of course). In the third turn, no more than two players have left a mark upon the map before it starts, and only if it is not the same player winning both bouts.

Therefore, I think this game-style is very flexible about attachment as you don't have hard territories staked out. Instead, for everyone but one the game starts anew with each turn.

And allowing players joining and leaving may encourage participation, especially by insecure players or those with unstable schedules. In addition, players can join in, and later leave to concentrate on further developing their version of the map, branching off at any time of their choosing.

Yours,
Deathworks

This sounds like a lot of fun. Good way to think around having to wait for turns.

Wait, why not switch steps 1 and 2? Every player generates his own map and embark, every player then votes on which map and embark to use... logical, no?

Um...it's kinda weird.  Not really the coolest feature Toady can put in the game. 

Well, it is cool if say, baby-snatched dwarven babies come back, filled with Goblin propaganda, and an army.  But...child services?  Nah.