Dwarf Fortress: The RP (Dead)

[Zacharine]

Hello Escapists.

This will be an RPG based on the tenents of Dwarf Fortress: take control of your own group of Dwarves, try to build a fortress, explore and trade, but most importantly of all: survive the curveballs thrown at you in the form of unexpected situations (both good and bad).

You as players will do the major decisions regarding your group: what to focus on, what to speacialize in, what to do with that strange stone casket you found buried in adamantium in those underground caverns etc.

In a way, I intend to combine the high-fantasy environment of Dwarf Fortress with the decision-based management of King Of Dragon Pass. You do the choices, I do the math, think of the consequences, see if you trip any hidden metaphorical or physical pitfalls, and present them to you in the form of events.

You interested?

Then join up and let's get going. Don't worry if you didn't join right in the beginning, you can always be added a bit later as a fresh group of migrants/explorers.

To start with, what do you need to do:
You have, in essence 10 dwarfs to start with, basic supplies for a few weeks after arrival and wagon transport. But that is not all: You get to name two specializations for your group, such as arcithecture, metalsmithing, gem crafting or underground farming or something else entirely.These represent the areas your group has greater training and/or talent than others in ; nothing to the degree of legendary (you will not be making Aegis Fangs left and right with Weaponsmithing for example), but something that gives you the edge in that area. You also get one item of note, exceptional quality, somehow magical, plain uncommon or otherwise would not be standard for a group of dwarves intending to settle a largely unknown location.

Spoiler: Group character sheet

Group Name:
Settlement name:
Description of area:
Group history:
Fields of talent (2):
Special item and its description: (stay within reasonable limits or Bad Karma will accumulate quicker)

You also get to choose your location (based on the description below).

And that is all you need to start off. So post in and join us!

Your corner of the world:

Your Mountainhome, place of origin, lies in the east, on the side of a long mountainrange running north-south. The range itself has precious few passages to further east, but those that exist are regularly used by both humans and elves: The elves have one of their greater cities on the heavy forests, almost jungles, right on the eastern side of the mountainrange.

Immediately to the west of your mountainhome in an arid plain, with significant rainfalls only on a few months during the year. Main vegetation in focused along the two rivers travlling from North-east to the south trough the plains.

South of the plains is a hilly area, with a few that actually qualify as mountains. The hills are surrounded by small marshes. Further south is a large ocean.

To the west of the arid plain are forests, mainly unexplored, with some hills. Beyond those are the first large human cities, though their smallest outposts extend their reach all the way to the arid plains. Beyond the humans cities allegedly lies an ocean, but no dwarf has been that far to check and human maps are notoriously unreliable.

To the north of the plains lies an acient hillside, filled more with rocks than trees (but it isn't a wasteland either. From the mountains north of there originates a small river that runs trough the rocky hills and towards the human cities.

So, ready to begin?

Current Participants (max 6 for now):
EvilJoe1 (Stone Dogs of Cold Rocks Hold)
STE3L (Hammer Steel of Seven Rock),
pyroguy86 (Iron Fists of Kazkan)
KronosTalon (starting)
green00706 (starting)
cnordskog (starting)
Gamekid171 (The Outcasts of Toland), has left the game
Jav3lin (Riversiders of Riverbank), has left the game

Reserve Spots, pending hiatus/leaving of an existing player:
#1 venom 3135
#2 sgt_Jakeman 214
#3 Bluedemon322

Post last edited: 21.8 2010

 

[Nikolaz72]

Ehem. Better put up suggestions for a charactersheet like.

Name:
Description:
Field of Work:
Items:
Backstory:

And fold them together in a spoiler called Character Sheet.

 

[ravensshade]

maybe this will get more views.. i'll join the moment we have more then us 2

 

[Zacharine]

Well, here's to hoping we get more participants...

Seriously, it's not like the RP section is underused or anything.

 

[EvilJoe1]

Im in. Tell me if there is anything i need to change about my Sheet.

Spoiler: Sheet

Group Name: Stone Dogs

Settlement name: Cold Rocks Hold

Description of area: Cold Rocks Hold is in the arid plains to the west of the Stone Dogs old mountainhome, it is close to one of the the two rivers travlling from North-east to the south trough the plains. Cold Rocks Hold looks like just a large cluster of rocks to the casual observer, but in the side of the 'pile of rocks' is a jagged hole, about 2m in size and reaching up about 3m. This crack is the main and only way into Cold Rocks Hold. It leads into a large open area about 300m from one end to the other and 100m wide. As the sun travels from east to west every where in the open area is touched but at the back where there is a small cave and a tunnel leading down into the cool, dark and hard earth.

Cold Rocks Hold got its name from the small location at the back of main open area that the sun never touches and is always cool.

Group history: The Stone Dogs where originally one of the best tunneling clans in the old mountainhome, but after years of being ignored and taken forgranted they decided to leave and start anew some place else, where few people could survive on the surface and they could expand underground as much as they wanted.

Fields of talent: Under ground farming; Tunneling

Special item and it's description: The Sigil Stone: The Sigil Stone is a small carved dimond about palm size that glows white when the it is near precious metals or stones.

 

[Zacharine]

Im in. Tell me if there is anything i need to change about my Sheet.

Spoiler: Sheet

Group Name: Stone Dogs

Settlement name: Cold Rocks Hold

Description of area: Cold Rocks Hold is in the arid plains to the west of the Stone Dogs old mountainhome, it is close to one of the the two rivers travlling from North-east to the south trough the plains. Cold Rocks Hold looks like just a large cluster of rocks to the casual observer, but in the side of the 'pile of rocks' is a jagged hole, about 2m in size and reaching up about 3m. This crack is the main and only way into Cold Rocks Hold. It leads into a large open area about 300m from one end to the other and 100m wide. As the sun travels from east to west every where in the open area is touched but at the back where there is a small cave and a tunnel leading down into the cool, dark and hard earth.

Cold Rocks Hold got its name from the small location at the back of main open area that the sun never touches and is always cool.

Group history: The Stone Dogs where originally one of the best tunneling clans in the old mountainhome, but after years of being ignored and taken forgranted they decided to leave and start anew some place else, where few people could survive on the surface and they could expand underground as much as they wanted.

Fields of talent: Under ground farming; Tunneling

Special item and it's description: The Sigil Stone: The Sigil Stone is a small carved dimond about palm size that glows white when the it is near precious metals or stones.

Welcome!

Sounds all good to me.

So far the Stone Dogs have been busy! busy! busy! in establishing their Fortress. A season has passed since they left Mountainhome in their wagon and the temperature in the plains is rising as summer is on the door.

Basic farms to meet their own near-future needs and slightly more are set up, but even the experienced farmers cannot hasten nature: it will be mid-autumn until they begin to harvest anything else but the quickest growing mushrooms. But once they do, Cave Wheat, Dwarven sugar and the popular reed-like 'Pig Tail', useful as low quality cloth and construction fiber, will provide plentiful bounty.

But that is about it. A meager dining hall, small individual rooms with practically beds only, the farms and some storage space are all the fortress is made of. The entrance, while fairly well hidden even to an average dwarf, is wide open and often used as water is brought in with buckets from the river. The diggers have yet to meet anything but sandstone, gravel and small amounts of chalk. The Sigil Stone has stayed dull and dark, though the Stone Dogs are certain this will change as they dig deeper.

The clan is in the dining room, discussing their plans and situation. Some comments have been said of supposedly large feline tracks near the river, made during the night. Others are concerned from the lack of fresh water source within the young fortress. And yet few note that beside the basics and plainly obvious you really know almost nothing of the surrounding aboveground area. None of the concerns are too serious for morale, you are Dwarves after all, and not some flimsy human surfacers. In general spirits are high, but lack of a plan for the near future is driving what little uncertainty does exist.

The leader steps up on the table, and immediately silence falls.

What do the Stone Dogs plan to do within the near future?

 

[EvilJoe1]

The clan leader gives a short speech on how he is happy with the progress and his hopes for a prosperous future and the continuation of the clan in their new home. The clan leader then lays out his plans for the near future:

1) To dig several exploratory shafts down further to try and find some resources, using the excess stone to fashion tables, chairs, boxes and the like as they go. If no resources are found they will convert the tunnels into water and food storage, more farms and a place to rest the dead(ensuring them he is only thinking of the future) away from any of the farms, storage areas and living quarters.

2) To set some traps by the river for the feline creature.

3) Set up a quick way of blocking the entrance to Cold Rocks Hold and to the enterance to the caves in the case of an attack.

4) Send out scouts to map the surounding area and search for possible foods, and caution them to be careful and vigilent.

 

[Zacharine]

Okay, I'm going to need a bit more specifics on some of these:

2) To set some traps by the river for the feline creature.

Are the traps created to capture and contain, or to wound and possibly kill? As in, trap pits v trap pits with spikes, crude metal cages v claw-traps etc

4) Send out scouts to map the surounding area and search for possible foods, and caution them to be careful and vigilent.

How many do you send (you currently have 10 dwarves including the leader) and are they to take a quick peek so to speak, or to stay several days/even a week or two on this scouting trip?

 

[EvilJoe1]

Sorry about that. Is this better?

2) A cage type construction, with a safe way to carry, if say a large, angry cat was in it.

4) Only 2-3 dwarves, and as you put it "a quick peek", taking no more than the day.

 

[Zacharine]

Sorry about that. Is this better?

2) A cage type construction, with a safe way to carry, if say a large, angry cat was in it.

4) Only 2-3 dwarves, and as you put it "a quick peek", taking no more than the day.

Right, thank you, that helps.

The scouting team sets out early next morning, given waterflasks, leather armor, bucklers and handaxes. They start off by heading towards the south-west, out from the river and the Cold Rocks Hold. Then they intend to turn east, followr the river north past the hold and then back west towards the low-vegetation plains.

They return slightly after nightfall. They report they found nothing interesting in the plains, everything seems to be centered around the river. There are no other sources of water they found, there was very little wildlife elsewhere. The river itself seems to have at least a handful of bigger fish in it, based on the splashing sound heard. Land animals they met around the river seem to be either small and quick to hide in trees and underground, or large, fast and apt to flee at the slightest noice. With one notable exception. The scouts are unsure what the actual animal is (having spent so much of their life underground), but it is feline, almost as tall as a dwarf even when on four legs, seems to live in groups and clearly a meat-eater. The scouts were not attacked, but these creature were also unafraid.

They scetch a quick drawing, showing something like this:

Unsure if the traps you have under construction would be able to handle something like that, you order them modifed and reinforced. So far, a week after deploying the fourth anf so far final trap, nothing has tripped them, despite frequent and fresh paw-marks on the ground nearby.

As a quick solution to your enterance, you carve a suitable chalk door and place in on the enterance. Your mechanic, who at the moment doubles as your cook, is devicing a lever-mechanism for a level of control. However, without melting your few bronze and/or iron items, a porticullis is beyond you at the moment and it will take several weeks to construct anything sturdier from stone.

You have also started four mining shafts. You quickly dig into several layers of gravel and chalk on all of them.

Shaft #2 hits a new layer of rock, finding hard, hard granite. A few samples taken reveal that small tin and copper veins run trough. If you continue to dig into the granite layer, the members of your group with gem and stone crafting experience say with time you would be able to safely extract the metals while retaining a sizeable portion of the granite itself.

Or you could listen to your blacksmiths, throw the rocks into a smelter fuelled by wood and bellows and fairly quickly get the metals into bars. The process would however weaken the granite noticeably, most of the time going so far as to make it totally unusable in any structural function. Copper simply requires too high a temperature, at the upper limit of what Dwarves are able to create with wood and charcoal. Tin would be far easier to extract in this manner, and result in far less lost granite (though there would still be more loss than by manually carving the veins out).

Shaft #4, guided by the ever so slight but strenghtening glow of the Sigil Stone, dig more away from the river than as deeply as downwards as the other shafts. They have yet to hit anything but pockets of Olivine, a low-quality stone known for it's distinctive green hue. There have been some gem-quality pieces embedded that might be the cause for the Sigil Stone's faint signals, but you do not know for sure.

Shafts #1 and #3 have dug deeper in chalk-stone and met nothing significant, but they have yet to reach as deep as shaft #2.

 

[EvilJoe1]

To-Do List

1) Start work on a large pond suitable to breed fish in. Set nets in the river where the scouts though they heared the fish, and if any are caught move them to the ponds(When they are done).

2) Set traps, the non-leathal kind, out side one of the burrows of the smaller animals to capture it. When, or if a smaller animal it caught, tie it up and place it in one of the cages. Start construction of pens sutable to keep the feline animals in.

3) Go with the gem crafter's idea and try and safely remove the metals from Shaft #2. Keeping the granite for use as building materials. Use some of the granite to construct new, more attractive doors for the entrance, making the lever-mechanism out of the first metal coming out of the shaft.

4) Continue Shaft #4, #3 and #1

Is that everything? If it isn't I wont be on until tomorrow so seen you then.

 

[Jav3lin]

Color me interested! Throw me in when you can!

Group Name: Riversiders

Settlement name: Riverbank

Description of area: Next to one of the rivers cutting through the land. An open plain between the riverbank and a forest area. Lots of flowers and grass and a dozen hundred of rocks scattered everywhere.

Group history: Travelled from the mountains after many years of suppression from the reigning Dwarves, this certain group of Dwarves used to farm outside the mountain, making food supplies and other various goods for the nobles and lords. However, taking up such space to do their farming, they were offered a one chance deal: Leave the mountain area, their home, but receive all the help they needed to start off their own little farming colony. They ofcourse accepted this rare chance, and the nobles and lords got their land back.

Fields of talent: Farming all types of food and tobacco along with fishing & cooking industrial skills.

Special item and it's description: A large gathering tent made of white cloth and laced silk. Decorated with some garnets and looks triangle-shaped, almost like one of those circus tents.

 

[Zacharine]

Color me interested! Throw me in when you can!

Group Name: Riversiders

Settlement name: Riverbank

Description of area: Next to one of the rivers cutting through the land. An open plain between the riverbank and a forest area. Lots of flowers and grass and a dozen hundred of rocks scattered everywhere.

Jsut want to make sure, did you mean one of these rivers? Because that is what I understood and going for a farming community...

"Immediately to the west of your mountainhome in an arid plain, with significant rainfalls only on a few months during the year. Main vegetation in focused along the two rivers travlling from North-east to the south trough the plains."

Or did you mean the river going from the mountains trough the rocky hillside, towards the forest west of the arid plains, and then to the human cities?

 

[Jav3lin]

The former.

 

[Zacharine]

To-Do List

1) Start work on a large pond suitable to breed fish in. Set nets in the river where the scouts though they heared the fish, and if any are caught move them to the ponds(When they are done).

With your at the moment limited supplies when it comes to raw leather, hides, reed, rope and other similar materials, means you will have at most a handful of nets available and that means your supplies in these areas will be pretty much spent. Do you want to continue with the idea immediately or put it in a back-burner?

The pond you can dig with ease, but you will need to be a bit more specific with the location: right next to the river, outside next to the main door, underground the fortress proper, somewhere else...?

Just making sure, because for obvious reasons this may or may not be significant in the future.

Once once you decide, I'll retcon the effects in. The rest, I'll continue with.

2) Set traps, the non-leathal kind, out side one of the burrows of the smaller animals to capture it. When, or if a smaller animal it caught, tie it up and place it in one of the cages. Start construction of pens sutable to keep the feline animals in.

Do you want the pens above or below ground?

Your dwarves have set traps outside some of the burrows for the smaller animals, but the way the huffing and stomping of your dwarves (at least, that is the way most elves and humans describe dwarven sneaking) keeps sending them all fleeing, it might be some time until you see any triggered traps.

A few weeks roll by.

Extracting the metals from the granite has been slow going, but the amount of wasted granite would fill only a few buckets instead of entire wagonloads it would have with the 'throw it all in the smelter'-method. It has also been a drain on manpower: almost a fully employed woodcutter, a smelter to keep pushing the bellows in your small forge to make the wooden coal burn hot enough to melt copper, and a craftsdwarf to keep carving the veins out. You have managed to create a small pile of tin bars the lenght and thickness of a dwaren forearm. You also have a few similar bars of copper in store, with a shiny new lever connected to your now-granite entrance door having taken the rest of production to date.

Having focused your digging attentions to shaft #4 with the Sigil Stone's signals guiding you, you have dug that shaft the most. Results however, have not been encouraging. You've hit what appear to be entire sediments of clay, sand and gravel, pocketed by more Olivine stone with only a fraction of it gem-quality. The Sigil Stone keeps a very faint glow on the end of that shaft, but no stronger than before. So far on other shafts, it stays as silent as ever. The ground is easily malleable here and further digging would be fast, but your miners are doubting the worth of it.

Shaft #4 now extends three times the distance it did a few weeks before.

Shafts #1 and #3 have dug deeper and hit what seems to be the same layer of Granite as shaft #2. There are only trace amounts of tin and copper in these mines however and even the most stingy dwarf would think twice before attempting to extract such miniscule amounts. The granite, however, is just as red and hard. You've yet not had the manpower and time to dig deeper than just a few levels into the granite in these two shafts.

On the outside front, your larger metal traps set for the felines have brought some success. Just as you are about to seal your fortress for the night, your cook, returning from the river with buckets of water, hears high-pitched meows and yips a few hundred paces away. One of your traps was set there, on of the more frequent trail of paw-marks. Seems like one of your metal cages has been triggered.

Your cook ran back and has just finished informing you of the sounds. The sun is setting, your dwarves are a bit tired from a full day's work, but there is a triggered trap. What do you do about it, if anything?

 

[Zacharine]

Huh, double post

 

[Zacharine]

The former.

Okay. Just a friendly note: you will be somewhat busy for a time with building irrigation channels once you actually expand your farm plots to any significant size.

So, here we go:

Right as spring rolls by but before the ground outside of Mountainhome begins to thaw, the Riversiders wagon rolls out. Before the ground turns muddy, you reach the arid plains. A few weeks of peaceful travelling and tales of how your now home will look like after you are done ensure morale is high once you arrive. It is one of the rarer meadows that you settle into, stopping your wagon a small ways from the river.

Almost immediately your dwarves wish to turn begin turning the land into a farm worthy of Riversiders, but you have other priorities as well. While leaving was certainly the right decision you feel, there were some advantages back at home. Proper living quarters, a safe fortress, crafting industry to meet your needs, established trade routes, guaranteed use for your fine meals. All are history now. But you will persevere and take this chance to grow greater than ever.

Hard work is no stranger to you, as you turn your picks form digging up stones and tree stumps to mining. Daytime temperature is picking up as summer rolls closer and you know that underground is safe and cool. The gravel and chalkstone ground yields to you slowly, but you dig out a dormitory and small storeroom to serve your immediate needs. Not in years have any of you touched chisels and saws and other crafting tools, but you quickly create basic furniture from wood and chalk.

Your Great Tent is yet to be erected, you have been too busy with everything else. You have turned a sizeable portion of the aboveground soil into a proper farm (just in time for spring planting season), but unless you receive steady rainfalls you will need some kind of irrigation system for consistent harvests in years to come. The significantly smaller underground farm you have, can for the moment be watered by buckets carried from the river: the vast majority of underground plants you have with you survive on little water.

You have seen movement in the plains near, and at the forest. Deer, but taller and larger than the ones back near the hills of Mountainhome, as well as some kind of feline pack-animal you presume to be a carnivore. There have been no incidents, but the felines have been eyeing you as they hunt for food or go to the river for a drink.

Your small clan has cracked open a barrel of beer and is celebrating their new home by a campfire in the setting sun. As is customary for you, before the planting season you have always given a speech of the good luck during the past year as well as lead the clan in a short religious sermon to Arnaulda, She Who Grows. You feel a speech of past is not fitting as your new home is still so young, but instead sharing some of your plans for the future and then asking for the blessings of you clan's main deity would be a better way to celebrate the oncoming planting season.

What plans do you share and what are the main points of your speech?

 

[Jav3lin]

"Alright lads, here we are at last! Our own planting area! Those pig Nobles and scrawny Lords have no rule over us! We are free! AND FREE! WE SHALL STAY!"



1) Raise the tent to work as sort of a governing meeting area and Town Hall.

2) Build a small pier for fishing industry.

3) Send two scouts on a two day trip around the area.

 

[Zacharine]

Snippety snip

First thing come morning your group, still mostly drunk, erects their Clan tresure: the Great Tent. It sits upon the northern side on the meadow you've chosen as your new home, your stairway into the meager underground areas protected from rain and wind by it as well. There is a lot of cheering as the winches and pulleys raise the canvas to the top mast, rising slightly over two dozen feet into the air. In a happy stupor, your clan makes a toast of rum to Arnaulda, as well as her twin Eralda, The Bountiful Harvest. And so you truly feel at home, as you lay down the first seeds to the ground in the midday shade of the Tent, as your Clan has done for decades past.

But you quickly pull out two of your more sober dwarves, and send them to the river to find a good spot for fishing and to build a pier there. When they return at nightfall, they say they've found a promising spot. They inteded to bring one back as a taste of what the local fish are like, but say that as they laid down wooden supports in the river they must have scared the all fish away as there were none to be caugh in such short notice.

Your scouts return on the late afternoon of the third day after you send them on their trip. They report the plains around you have a much poorer soil and that the meadow you've settled into is the best farming land in almost a day's jorney to any direction. They confirm the felines you've occasionally seen from a distance are carnivores; they witnessed a pack of them chasing and bringing a full-grown deer down in under a minute.

That has been all the significant wildlife they've seen so far though the forests near the river must be teeming with smaller creatures.

But this is all overshadowed by grimmer news. Goblin trails, half a year old. A small group made camp for a extended period of time roughly a day's jorney to the north, right next to a shallow ford that allows even a fully armored Dwarf to run over with barely a loss of speed. Your scouts don't think the group could have been larger than dozen, at most a dozen-and-a-half, strong. They stayed around long enough to make a reasonably accurate guess of the Goblin strenght, that there were no fresh marks and that they themselves had not left any obvious tracks nearby. They ford was teeming with smaller fish heading upstream, and your scouts think this easy access to meat was the reason for the Goblin camp at that location; perhaps, as winter came, the fish had swam elsewhere and the goblin group was forced to migrate.

 

[Jav3lin]

According to recent events, these will be my next plans of engagement.

1) Add another farm

2) Assemble a party of four to continue the pier construction and start fishing