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[Thor2axe]

How can I convince my friend to play? He is just overwhelmed by the shear scope.

(And/or share your first time experiences and thoughts.)

[Bromor Neckbeard]

Well, start him off slow.  Let him use one of your abandoned fortress worlds to adventure in.  Walk him through adventure mode and let him see the inside of your fortress.  Once he's built a godly adventurer and genocided the entire world, he'll think, "Thor2axe's fort is okay, but I could really build a better one."  Then you've got him hooked, hopefully.

I first heard about this game through reading a succession game on a forum for a different game.  At the time, the graphics packs weren't as popular as they are now.  So when I downloaded it, I really couldn't get past the ASCII graphics.  I tried for a little bit to learn it, but just couldn't get into it.  About six months later, I saw another succession game on another different forum, and it interested me to investigate.  I read some of the most famous succession games such as Tale of a Sensible Dwarf, Nist Akath, Boatmurdered, and One Dwarf Against the World.  After that, I knew I'd have to force myself to struggle up the Cliff of Learning.  Once I got a couple of z-levels above the ground, I never looked back.  Thanks to the helpful and patient people on this forum answering my noobish questions, I'm now a Competent Dwarf Fortress player and I'm working on Skilled.

Some of my most FUN experiences include:

Back before I knew precisely how water worked, I decided that I would do what everybody else was doing, and put a waterfall in my dining hall.  However, I figured that if the water drained through grates into a pool twice as deep as the dining hall, it would evaporate fast enough that I wouldn't have to make anywhere for it to go.  Now, my dining hall was lower than the rest of my fort, and it was necessary to go through it to get from the outside to the living quarters so that my dwarves would constantly pass through it and get good thoughts from seeing all the masterwork engravings and furniture and stuff.  I imagine that some of those "good thoughts" went along the lines of, "my bedroom seems a tad on the damp side", "how does Bromor expect us to breathe water?", and "whoever designed this fortress is a goddamn moron, glub glub glub".

Back before we could construct more than one square at a time, I decided to build a badass elevated walkway over my courtyard.  But, rather than laboriously construct it block by block, I decided to dig the ground out underneath it, and then channel around where I wanted my courtyard to be, so that I could collapse the ground down into the new courtyard, and what was left would be the elevated walkway.  I didn't realize that cave-ins would punch through a single z-level of rock.  After the dust cleared, most of my dwarves were dead and my fortress resembled an anthill that somebody had taken a scoop out of with a shovel.

[inaluct]

At first, I was like "Fuck this shit," and I went to play Crawl. After about a week of DF sitting on my desktop, I got bored and decided to give it a serious try. That's how I learned to play it.

[Wolfius]

Let him look through the wiki, maybe read a story or two, then embark in a nice safe area to get a grip of the basic mechanics - soil farming, brewing, mining, and basic static defences.

[ToonyMan]

I knew how to play the first time I loaded it up.






EDIT:



If they can't get DF into their skull, they never will.

[DI7789]

I read Boatmurdered, instantly hooked.

[ToonyMan]

I guess it depends on the type of person.

[Jim Groovester]

The ascii graphics are big obstacle to many players, as well as the steep learning curve. A graphics pack can help with the first, and the DF wiki can help with the second.

Though, really, refer him to some of the more ridiculous DF stories that are out there. If the prospect of flooding the world with magma doesn't excite him, then there's no hope.

[AncientEnemy]

I would recommend the following:

make him a new install with a graphics pack installed, and go through the init and streamline everything.

set him up a basic embark package focusing mainly on the basic 'get everything going' skills, and give the dwarves Novice levels in skills you wouldn't otherwise give them, just so they'll start with that labor enabled and he won't have to spend time figuring out how to enable architecture labor on a dwarf just so he can build such-and-such. I actually still do this just for the convienience.

perhaps even start a save with the bare basics already set up, build him a functioning farm, food stockpile, some beds, a small dining area. In my experience one of the major hurdles to my newb self was just figuring out those things. Name the dwarves so they're easier for him to keep track of.

turn him loose on that and show him the wiki.

when i get around to it I think I may write a 'your first fortress' article of my own, but much more simplistic. the current article is definately very helpful, but i find that (As often the case with people trying to teach someone) it still has a tendency to overload you with information, and it's difficult for the beginner to understand what exactly they should be doing when presented with so many things they could do.

[Tallefred]

I heard about it on the Darkfall forums. Tried it out but gave up in disgust after around 20 minutes. A few months later there was another discussion about it, and someone directed me to the wiki. I followed the "my first fortress" article until I had mastered the basics, then started messing arounf until I got wiped by a goblin ambush.

The real problem with starting out is that it's extremely disorienting. The wiki article gave me a direction and held my hand through the "oh shit dehydrated is that bad???" stage of the game. Stick around and give advice if your friend gets stuck.

I tried getting a few people into the game, with no success. Everyone took one look at it and got turned off by the graphics. Maybe get him to read some of the stories first (boatmurdered captures the chaos pretty well- avoid the ones with any actual story as they don't give a feel for the game). Don't be surprised if he refuses to even look at it though.

[Jay]

I have to agree with these notions.
The hand-holding at the beginning is key.
The wiki, then, is key.
If you're a friend showing it to another friend, be the wiki (Wow) at least for a time.
Even in the most mundane of games, if you're just starting out with it, and you ask your friend a question, you're going to get angry/possibly not want to play the game if they say "RTFM" or "Read the wiki"
I know I would have, if any of my friends had been the ones showing me DF.

But yes, other then the sheer scope of it, the ASCII is the most off-putting thing, I notice.
...On a different note:
I'm pretty close to convincing a few of my friends to try it out.  Oddly enough, the primary factor there is that they don't have time for it, apparently, not the graphics.
Mostly because of the sheer brutality of Adventure/Legends.  It's so much fun to give a monologue about adventurers/battles/wars and see their responses.
Sooo much fun.
Course, you can't just copypaste it from the gamelog.  That's not any fun.
Write/speak with description!  Make it interesting!
"I tore off her pants and beat her to death with them." sounds so much better then the entire several lines of grips/attacks/whathaveyou from the log.

[Thor2axe]

That is all well and good, but this is not the kind of relationship where I go over to his house all that often. And I would still like him to play, but I think he is just in shock from some of the stories I tell him of my fortresses. Not that I have done anything crazy, but he claims that it is just 'too nerdy' for him. I dont believe this to be true.

[brainfire]

Telling stories about the imaginary dwarves that live in our computers... forming relationships, dying, and killing themselves over a combination of the first two... exploratory mining to find the right materials to make into iron so we can layer plate over chain over leather...

Dude, sorry to break it to you. Totally nerdy.

[TinyPirate]

Offer a very basic, play-along tutorial. Like this one.

[Jay]

Dude, sorry to break it to you. Totally nerdy.

That'd be precisely why I specifically said the brutality of it.
You do have a point.
The background stuff that doesn't have all that much of an impact on gameplay at all is not the stuff you want to be talking about for hours on end.
However, and to use a tried-and-true example, leading your lone dwarf on a valiant struggle against skeletal titans, dragons, and of course, beating people to death with pants is!