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[Hiddeknight]

Is there any way to influence the game? I don't mean small things, like modding attributes. I essentially want to play in sandbox mode, where I could choose when certain things happen and how.

I would settle just for some degree of choice over things like attack frequency, ferocity, amount, type... even if that just means picking a certain area like "evil"... anyway, I'm sure you get what I'm saying. Any help?

[The Architect]

You have two options to create the outcome your title indicates you are looking for.

One: Just make it up. Write your story, and people will participate and read if it's good. If you have a thorough knowledge of DF and don't try to pretend it is happening in a Dwarf Mode fortress, it will be smooth and immersive for readers. There are plenty of examples to check out.

Two, for actually making a fortress: there are very few things you can influence outside of the normal. However, here is a good tool called Dwarf Companion: http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/User:Bartavelle/DwarfCompanion

You can do a lot with the normal influence given the player if you are clever, but this tool will allow you to alter the status of units in the game, to the point of even tweaking their affiliations. It will require some experimentation for you to figure it out. You can turn enemies and dwarves against each other, send them flying, and force moods. (Although you cannot induce a mood in a specific dwarf, you could theoretically scum until you hit the right one. Much easier if you don't have 200 dwarves, obviously.)

[Hiddeknight]

Well, see, I know I could simply write the story, but generally, it's more interesting if it has pictures and/or video to go with it, and some basis in fact. Dwarf fortress itself creates some epic storylines but it would still be nice to have a sandbox to write your own.

[darkflagrance]

I see a lot of the stories in Dwarf Fortress arising from fortuitous arrangements of random events. Because so much of the game arises from procedural, unplanned interactions, coherent or interesting stories thus have an additional aspect of authenticity. Because of this, it's not really wise to go into Dwarf Fortress looking for it to recreate the stories you imagine.

Therefore, the best way to generate stories is simply to look with imagination at events as they take place in a fortress, to read into the tiny actions of dwarves, like the fact that one of my traders likes to hang out on a lonely outcropping overlooking the city (imagine his thoughts or his reasoning for hating the others), or to look into the interactions between creatures, like the fact that my first engraver, who was killed by goblins before she did more than engrave the dining room, had one son, whose children each became mayor in their turn before succumbing to madness, and among whose children was born a girl with a score of 100 under the Artistic trait, who became the fort's next engraver.

As for influencing and adding flavor to stories, information/manipulating utilities like Dwarf Companion and Dtil/Tweak spring to mind, the former allowing you to both alter dwarves and look at the stats of enemy units (for example, turned out the legendary crossboworc who killed my entire group of marksdwarves was once a lowly fish dissector, but had gained so many levels in this skill that he had maxed out all his stats), and the latter allowing you to alter landscapes (like the magma moat in Blockedlance).

Dwarf Therapist also allows you to check the traits of dwarves - that's how I found the girl with maximum artistic propensity.

You can also mod the game. Take out normal wildlife and infest every biome with zombies, or fantastic beasts, or subtly mod giant eagles and desert scorpions so they are a common sight. Headshoots was defined by HolisticSpawn, and half of the beginning of Nist Akath was the Skelk...

Other things: speed increases attack and movement speed, and attack power, armor, etc can be changed with modding. You can turn invasions on and off in the init file, among other things. Life span is interesting because it changes the generational quality of dwarven life.

[Hiddeknight]

Yeah, I didn't mean to take the procedurally generated content out, because that's what makes it interesting, hence actually getting these things to happen in-game. My point was really just about conditioning it correctly, for the atmosphere. For instance, if I had wanted to make a storyline about some dwarves doing a specific thing, like, destroying a forest on purpose during a war on elves, I might find a good spot for it - a nice huge forest for instance - but there might not be any elves in the area to declare war on, and it might just be a storyline of some dwarves chopping some trees down and that's it.

All I'd want to do in that circumstance is to make sure I'm at war with the elves, and there's plenty of trees or something - you know what I'm getting at, yes? Not to control EVERY aspect, just the precipice without sorting through hundreds of maps to find a good one.

[darkflagrance]

Yeah, I didn't mean to take the procedurally generated content out, because that's what makes it interesting, hence actually getting these things to happen in-game. My point was really just about conditioning it correctly, for the atmosphere. For instance, if I had wanted to make a storyline about some dwarves doing a specific thing, like, destroying a forest on purpose during a war on elves, I might find a good spot for it - a nice huge forest for instance - but there might not be any elves in the area to declare war on, and it might just be a storyline of some dwarves chopping some trees down and that's it.

All I'd want to do in that circumstance is to make sure I'm at war with the elves, and there's plenty of trees or something - you know what I'm getting at, yes? Not to control EVERY aspect, just the precipice without sorting through hundreds of maps to find a good one.

Which is what I suggested via modding. If you know how the mechanics of the game works, it's easy to control nearly any aspect of the game.

War with elves? Take away [can speak], or give them baby snatcher.

Modding and utilities are the key.

[The Architect]

What you see here is all that you have to work with. It's quite a lot, really. But just know your question is fully answered here: there's nothing you can do beyond what is listed here. You can learn more about the details of modding, etc in various places. The wiki and mod threads are good places to start and to ask questions.

[KenboCalrissian]

I highly recommend copying your save to a second install, abandoning the fortress, and popping open Legends mode every so often.  The game already wrote a story for you, but what I like most about it is it isn't told directly.  Facts are spit out in a very matter-of-fact manner, but dig long enough and you'll notice some correlation to pique your interest.  Pretty soon, hours have gone by and you have a pile of notes taken from all kinds of interesting interactions that have taken place during worldgen.  The game tells you what happened; you get to make up the why, and this is why I consider Legends mode to be an actual game mode.

[quinnr]

You can also use ascii draw (arrowkeys to draw with text.) or http://fansi.org/MUSHii.aspx to draw text with the mouse. Like an art program for drawing fortresses!