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[DS]

Spoiler Alert: The story told herein contains some situations which are generally considered spoiler material by the DF community. Proceed at your own risk.

Chapters:

• Springtime at a Haunted Glacier Volcano
• Sanguine Summer Snowdrifts
• Self-Sufficiency in a Terrifying Glacier
• The Foul Fog comes to Roomcarnage
• Diplomacy Beneath the Oily Furnace
• Tragedy upon the Ice of Ghosts
• Delve Greedily, Delve Deep
• Tales of Greed and Industry
• The Worshipers of Zon
• Histories of Cupidity and Toil
• Playing With Fire
• The Water of Ghosts
• Ice Fishing and Other Futile Efforts
• In Places Deep, Where Dark Things Sleep
• The Foul Fog Conspiracy
• On Thin Ice
• The Gathering Storm
• The Pig Tail Fiber Trousers Crisis
• Stories of Labor and Dynamism
• Waiting For Urist
• The Last Days before the Heat
• A Fortress of Ice and Fire
• Liquid Fire and Frozen Blood
• Of Rats and Dwarves
• The Attack of Rupola the Steamy Scabs
• Yarns of Desperation and Mystery
• Glacier, Glacier, Burning Bright
• Glacier Caves and Obsidian Blocks
• The Foul Fog Conspiracy Thickens
• The Vigilance of Vampires
• Ghosts of the Past
• Five Exorcisms and a Waterfall
• The Knowledge of the Dwarves
• Dwarves on Fire
• Spiels of Modesty and Determination
• Double Vampiricide
• A Dwarf by Any Other Name
• The Last Great Deluge
• The Return to the Surface
• To Kill a Mountain Titan Foul Fog Zombie
• Sagas of Violence and Uncertainty
• The Wealth of Roomcarnage
• The Attack of the Foul Fog Conspiracy
• The Curse of Rith Craftportent
• On the Edge of a Blade
• Legends of Patience and Enterprise
• The Attack of Simo Veiledsins the Obscure Terrors
• In Which a Yak goes Stark Raving Mad
• Ézum Earthwane Takes the Plunge
• Warm Meat, Cold Meat; Fresh Meat, Old Meat
• A Migration to Death
• From Blood to Bolt
• Ice Gauntlets and Obsidian Revisitations
• Chaos amidst the Ice of Ghosts
• Myths of Betrayal and Slaughter
• The Consequences of Mourning
• The Death of Kadol Worklimb
• Glacial Victories and Crushing Defeats
• The Road to Roomcarnage
• A Year of Greed
• The Militia Commander's New Clothes
• The Army of the Momentous Dye
• A Decade in Darkness
• The Twilight Years
• The Millstone of Time
• Whispers of Suicide and Despair
• Urist's Bane

Since the early May of 2014, I've been capturing the story of my most recent fortress, Roomcarnage, in the style of a traditional Let's Play. Each chapter of the story so far consists of a single imgur album containing dozens of images with captions. I've been publishing the story on reddit, where it's being rather well received, and I'm eager to share the tale of Roomcarnage also with the bay12 forums.

What makes the story of Roomcarnage unique amongst Dwarf Fortress Let's Plays is the extensive use of .gifs in the storytelling process. Each chapter includes a large number of .gifs in addition to still images, which help to capture the dynamic nature of the game, even while it is paused.

As I produce additional chapters, I'll edit this thread to include them here. Of course, I'm more than happy to answer any questions about the fortress itself, my overseeing techniques, my storytelling method, or anything else you can think of.

Please enjoy!

[Crashmaster]

I expected awesome and have been delivered unto it.
Great everything.

[DS]

Thanks! I'm glad you appreciate it.

I've added the newest chapter, as well as spruced up the opening post with a flashy title card. I suppose, once the series is finished, I'll have to go back through and edit each chapter so that it reads more like a continuous story right from the very beginning. I'll leave the editing until the end, though.

[MDFification]

  It's here!
I freaking love Roomcarnage.

[DS]

Yeah! It's here. Probably no update for the next few days - there's a wedding in the family and things are busy. But I hope people are enjoying it!

[Ai Shizuka]

Awesome, read it all in one go.
Especially enjoyed the beginning and how you dealt with the various problems as they appeared.

[DS]

Glad you enjoyed it! I've just updated with the thirteenth chapter.

[peregarrett]

Wow, that's cool! Read them all in one and waiting for more. Adamantine tubes fllooding the glacier, mmmm....

A technical question - how do you capture gifs from DF window?

[DS]

I've used a couple of programs so far - GifCam and Gif Grabber. I switched from the former to the latter when my laptop began to crumble to its end. GifCam works well on Windows, while Gif Grabber is a Mac OS app - since I now play DF on a MacBook, a change was necessary.

Both programs function in basically the same way - you have a recording area, which captures whatever is behind it as a gif when activated. Gif Grabber has a 10 second recording limit - GifCam can go for longer, but has a tendency to get laggy after a few seconds of recording, resulting in subpar gifs.

It's super easy, either way. Just make sure you get GifCam from the developer's website - anywhere else, and it comes bundled with malware.

[neblime]

that buffalo... I drop one tattered cave spider silk sock onto my dwarves and they're sure to be at least crippled for life..
this is awesome!

[DS]

Thanks! Chapter 14 is up, and I've updated the OP to be slightly more current.

[Spehss _]

Oh cool, you must be the guy from Reddit. I've been lurking r/dwarffortress just to read this. Great story, the GIFs really add to the storytelling. I've tried to embark on several terrifying biomes since first finding this story, the embarks have all been either disappointing or too much fun to handle.

On another note, wow that's a lot of the blue stuff. Didn't realize you could get so much candy from one spire.

[DS]

Yep, that's me. Although, I've been on these forums for far, far longer than I've been on reddit.

Glad you enjoy the story so far! Evil embarks can certainly go both ways - without the reanimating effect, for example, Roomcarnage would have almost no challenge whatsoever. On the other hand, if there was a syndrome-transmitting weather pattern, it could make it even more uninhabitable than it currently is. It can be difficult, sometimes, to find a happy medium.

And yeah! You sometimes can get quite a bit of candy out of a single spire... and at least three have already been discovered beneath Roomcarnage. There's a lot of variance, though, and there have been times where a single mined out tile has broken through into the circus.

[DS]

Chapter fifteen is up!

[Sallen]

This story is amazing. I'm completely hooked.