Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Caldfir]

TVTropes ==> Boatmurdered ==> Laughing too hard to read ==> Playing.

Second.

[Alastar]

Stumbled across it on TvTropes -> a few AARs -> "Holy cow, someone actually makes a game like this?"

Actually playing it: "This is going to be awesome" -> disaster strikes -> "This is hilarious".

I was trying my hand on heavy automation and high pressure plumbing before getting the hang of the basics, so disaster struck often.

[eataTREE]

I originally found it on TvTropes after having played NetHack for a few months (on a sidenote, I still can't get past the Gnomish Mines even if I get lucky and wish for some Dragon Scale Mail ) and was like "okay, I can read ASCII, so this should be no problem at all."

Oh, I was SO wrong.

It took me forever to figure out how to build stuff (I need a bed to make a bed? WTF?), but I eventually figured out how to make workshops, and then it took me a week of diligence and determination to figure out how to assign stuff to be built in workshops. And then I was hooked.

Dude. The Gnomish Mines. Really? What class are you playing? Pick a Barbarian or a Samurai and you can ROFLstomp the Mines even in your starting kit.

[jmancube]

I was going through a period of time where I had no money but a huge excess of time, so I turned to finding free games on the internet. There, I discovered the wonders of roguelikes. I started off with Nethack, which was a bad decision in hindsight, got frustrated when I was sure that I was trapped with no where to go, and promptly quit. So from there I moved on to dungeon crawl stone soup and DoomRL, which both games I loved. I forget the website, maybe temple of the roguelike or something, but after playing those games I wanted more and searched for more.

That's when I came across dwarf fortress. I started off with a tutorial that had the original ascii... Suffice to say, I couldn't figure anything out and got murdered by goblins when they came. So I promptly ragequit (which seems to be a common aspect in many of these stories). But then, I eventually came back to the game and figure I'd give it a try (thank god I did). This time, I tackled it from a different angle with a newer tutorial that happened to have a tileset. This time was no different, I still got murdered, but I understood why I got murdered and what I could do next time to remedy it. After that, I was hooked, and probably spend more time on dwarf fortress and the associated community than any other game. Now I am trying to get my friends hooked Unfortunately they keep falling off the learning cliff....

[Yoink]

Played roguelikes for ages, and I was always looking for new games that could compete with my two favourites, IVAN and ADOM, and eventually found DF. At first I thought something like, 'Oh... A rougelike strategy game? Hmm... Oh look! Let's try these games on the Roguetemple site!'
But then a while later, I found a link on some forum to a copy of... I think .12? And then I downloaded that, and played adventure mode exclusively. I couldn't be arsed figuring out Fortress mode, and just wandered around killing wolves and stuff. But then I was chatting with someone about roguelikes and mentioned it, and they were shocked that I didn't play fortress mode! So I gave it a go, and had probably several times as many problems as anyone else for my first several forts. Took me until like, my 3rd or 4th fort to figure out I had to build workshops to actually make doors and furniture... But now I'm hooked.

[Lemunde]

ASCII... Meh!

It wasn't until someone showed me a screenshot using a graphics set that I got interested.

[MoonCabbage]

It was the 2007 year in the age of men. I was but a talented engineer and novice soap maker in my fortress.

I was a  casual worshipper of the god Google when it blessed me with a roguelike unlike any other. Dwarf Fortress.

I was reminded of fond memories of my youth spent playing harvest moon and Castle of the Winds.

However I was unfamiliar with the archaic runes of "ascii". what did they mean? where did they come from?
I quickly flipped through Legends Mode and discovered the histories of "ascii" gaming. I will be honest. I was daunted after opening Dwarf Fortress for the first time. Challange Accepted...

First Fortress ran into ruin when my jeweler attracted the attention of local "E". I didn't even know how to mine nor what Savage Wilds were. A fool I was.
I dug in deep and prayed to the god Google for assistance. It answered in the form of an engraved hall known as a "wiki".

Second Fortress would be my most successful. I survived. I lived. I engraved. In my 14th year in the month of granite I would bridge the magma and open the stone halls to the unknown.
Demons poured out from the depths. My bridges across the chasm and river ran red. My fortress had succumbed... or had it?
a single baby lived. the demons did not touch it. the demons did not go near it. the lone babby survivor crawled across the bloody arms and legs of loved ones. She crawled up to the river bridge and jumped.

i cried. I knew then I could never return. Dwarf Fortress had changed me. I was home.

[Lancezh]

I was going through a period of time where I had no money but a huge excess of time, so I turned to finding free games on the internet. There, I discovered the wonders of roguelikes. I started off with Nethack, which was a bad decision in hindsight, got frustrated when I was sure that I was trapped with no where to go, and promptly quit. So from there I moved on to dungeon crawl stone soup and DoomRL, which both games I loved. I forget the website, maybe temple of the roguelike or something, but after playing those games I wanted more and searched for more.

That's when I came across dwarf fortress. I started off with a tutorial that had the original ascii... Suffice to say, I couldn't figure anything out and got murdered by goblins when they came. So I promptly ragequit (which seems to be a common aspect in many of these stories). But then, I eventually came back to the game and figure I'd give it a try (thank god I did). This time, I tackled it from a different angle with a newer tutorial that happened to have a tileset. This time was no different, I still got murdered, but I understood why I got murdered and what I could do next time to remedy it. After that, I was hooked, and probably spend more time on dwarf fortress and the associated community than any other game. Now I am trying to get my friends hooked Unfortunately they keep falling off the learning cliff....

I'd be interested on what point exactly they start to say "naah, i dont like this" any ideas ?

[gumball135]

I forget how I found out about the game (it was several years ago now), but I remember my first experience of it as being through Boatmurdered. I thought the story was brilliant, but then became a bit crestfallen when I realized that the game world was made up of loads of little symbols. I'd never even heard of a Roguelike before.

However, I was SO impressed by the carnage and utter fail of Boatmurdered that I decided to give the game a shot. Took me several tries to get into it, but eventually I stopped banging my head off a wall on seeing the Matrix Effect and learned the game through use of the Wikipedia and trial-and-error. Yes, I started right at the top of the Roguelike difficulty chain, and learned DF before anything else. Whenever I felt particularly depressed by the learning cliff and quit the game for a few weeks, I'd always end up reading a bit about the forts in Community Games & Stories to re-inspire myself. It took several months. Real-life ones!

Good times, good times.

[Caz]

I got a copy of DF that was on this cd that came with a gaming magazine so decided to play it. Had NO idea what I was doing. Took several tries and ragequits before I could figure out what to do. THEN I found the wiki, go figure. I never even managed to get to the chasm because I couldn't figure out how to irrigate my farms without the underground river killing everything. Also elephants.

[Particleman]

I believe I first heard about it on the Order of the Stick forums. There was a thread about DF in general, and I thought it would be a setting or something for Dungeons and Dragons, but I was mistaken. People told some AWESOME stories about what had happened in their forts, so I downloaded the game and after some fumbling around I managed to embark somewhere totally random with no equipment or skills. I also couldn't get over the menu and had absolutely no idea WTF I was looking at so I just said to hell with it and deleted the game.

I kept reading the thread on the OotS forums, though, because even if I found the game itself absolutely incomprehensible it still produced amazing stories, and somebody linked to the LP of Boatmurdered, which I read in one sitting (I still go back and re-read it every eight or nine months.) Somebody in that thread also posted a link to the Complete and Utter Newbie Tutorial to Dwarf Fortress, which helped me learn how things worked. That was almost two years ago, now.

I remember the joy I felt when I first managed to draft a hauler who discovered a kobold thief, who then proceed to grab the little bastard and rip his head off. It was then that I knew Dwarf Fortress was awesome.

[jmancube]

I was going through a period of time where I had no money but a huge excess of time, so I turned to finding free games on the internet. There, I discovered the wonders of roguelikes. I started off with Nethack, which was a bad decision in hindsight, got frustrated when I was sure that I was trapped with no where to go, and promptly quit. So from there I moved on to dungeon crawl stone soup and DoomRL, which both games I loved. I forget the website, maybe temple of the roguelike or something, but after playing those games I wanted more and searched for more.

That's when I came across dwarf fortress. I started off with a tutorial that had the original ascii... Suffice to say, I couldn't figure anything out and got murdered by goblins when they came. So I promptly ragequit (which seems to be a common aspect in many of these stories). But then, I eventually came back to the game and figure I'd give it a try (thank god I did). This time, I tackled it from a different angle with a newer tutorial that happened to have a tileset. This time was no different, I still got murdered, but I understood why I got murdered and what I could do next time to remedy it. After that, I was hooked, and probably spend more time on dwarf fortress and the associated community than any other game. Now I am trying to get my friends hooked Unfortunately they keep falling off the learning cliff....

I'd be interested on what point exactly they start to say "naah, i dont like this" any ideas ?

One of them seems to get most of the game, except anything to do with the military... The other just claims he has no idea what is going on. I have hopes for the first one though

[Roflcopter5000]

Drunk, at a friends place (I know right?)

'Hey, check out this game!'
WTF, ascii? Jesus. So complicated... It's like letter salad
'Yeah, so notice how I made sure to bring along a few extra cats? Those will come in handy later when we start running low on food...'
Oh god. It's one of -THOSE- games....
'So, yeah, I forgot about booze on one of my forts, and a huge tantrum spiral happened, and some kid went insane and butchered a dwarf and made a crossbow out of his corpse...'
Wait, what? Holy shit.
'And shortly thereafter I dug into hell and...'
YES. YES. MORE YES.


*days pass*
*downloads DF*
*reads some wiki*
Hrmm... High savagery sounds good. Losing is supposed to be fun, right?
SASQUATCH DESTROYYYY!!!
Oh god it can get through my doors! NOOOOO!

*hooked*

[The Master]

one word: Minecraft.
I was looking at the various different games that inspired Notch to make Minecraft, next thing you know, BAM! here I am. hooked as hell and loving every second of it!

[kirrian]

"Crap... Another game that I am going to have to spend way more time playing then I should or is probably healthy and will most certainly pi_s off the Wife.  Oh well.. I just gotta."

...

No... really.  That is what I thought.  I love intricately complex building god games and well... DF are one!  =P