History VideoGame / DwarfFortress

* PointlessCivicProject: Building at least one is traditional, the more gratuitous, the better. The forum even ran a contest to see who could build the best tower out of [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=45908.0 soap]], in a game where soap is surprisingly hard to come by.

* AscendedMeme: One of the official songs in the non-free release is called 'Koganusan', Dwarven language for "{{LetsPlay/Boatmurdered}}". It being a somber vocal piece that plays after a fortress has fallen is, if anything, [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption entirely appropriate]].

---> [-(The Fortress of LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}} takes no responsibility for fatal immolation caused by its magma exports. Magma is used at your own risk and the risk of everyone around you. Do not taunt magma unless you have modded-in bauxite clothing.)-]

* EpicFail: The best games end like this. The forums generally consider the only "winning condition" to be to fail ''so spectacularly'' as to prompt forum members to declare that you've won the game. Case in point: LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}'s inexplicable fiery apocalypse and ensuing tantrum spiral.

* EverythingsCoolerWithLava: You can build {{Lava Pit}}s to drop your enemies (or [[YouHaveFailedMe dwarves]], or [[TheScrappy nobles]]) in, make lava aqueducts to your forges, [[RuleOfCool lava cascades]], obsidian factories, or install lava central heating for your dwarves. (It doesn't do anything though), or even [[LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}} flood the whole map with lava]] (although that is incredibly impractical in the current version).

* IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: Evil regions have such names. And even (theoretically) non-evil places can end up with names like ''LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}''.

** Occasionally throws up NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast if something or someone with a sinister name turns out to be, well, sinister. The aforementioned LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}} counts here.

** One of the most famous examples is [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Operation: Fuck The World]], from ''LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}'': a lever that, when pulled, released a flood of magma across the plains. In practice, however, ''FTW'' proved to be more of a standard DoomsdayDevice, ruining the surface world and its hordes of rampaging elephants, while only tangentially starting the fortress' fiery downfall by setting off a host of other issues.

** A popular form of play amongst the player community. Individuals take turns running a dwarf fort for a set amount of time and passing on the save to the next players. See LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}, [[http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Headshoots/ Headshoots]], and LetsPlay/{{Syrupleaf}} entries mentioned above.

--> "Zelersostet, 'The Prime Weevils': Engraved on the wall is an exceptionally designed image of a dwarf and a frog demon by [[LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}} 'Emperor Sankis' Gatinbomrek]]. The frog demon is striking down the dwarf."

* LavaPit: Players love these. ''LetsPlay/{{Boatmurdered}}'''s arguably most famous bit was the attempt to completely wipe out the local elephant population with magma streams.

** In later versions, dialogue can appear in combat reports as well. Expect to see a lot of "Death is all around us. This cannot horrify me" and "Begone, fear!"
* WideOpenSandbox
* WordSaladTitle: happens frequently in-universe with the randomly generated names.
* WorldOfBadass:
** In one reported fight between a dwarven mayor and a berserk sword-master, the sword-master had just finished chopping off all the mayor's limbs when the mayor ''bit the sword-master's head off''.

* TapOnTheHead: Played somewhat realistically. Living creatures that take a blow to the head may suffer anything from dizziness, unconsciousness, neck snapping, skull fracturing, or instant death, and there is no real way of controlling what happens.

* EatTheDog: Often considered to be the ideal solution to the "catsplosion" problem. Dogs and cats are also ''the'' most cost-efficient source of live meat at start-up, costing nearly 3/4 less per unit of meat than cows.

"It is sad but not unexpected."\\

** In later versions, dialogue can appear in combat reports as well. Expect to see a lot of "Death is all around us. This cannot horrify me" and "Begone fear!"

[[folder:Fortress mode tropes: A-D]]

[[folder:Fortress mode tropes: E-H]]
* EatTheDog: Often considered to be the ideal solution to the "catsplosion" problem. Dogs and cats are also ''the'' most cost efficient source of live meat at start-up, costing nearly 3/4 less per unit of meat than cows.

[[folder:Fortress mode tropes: I-L]]

[[folder:Fortress mode tropes: M-P]]

[[folder:Fortress mode tropes: Q-T]]

[[folder:Fortress mode tropes: U-Z]]
* UndergroundCity: A large enough fortress can become a self-sustaining city. Assuming it survives that long, of course.

* VideoGameCaringPotential: Varies, but with each dwarf having an [[NominalImportance astonishing]] degree of [[MauveShirt personality]] built into the game, players can get damned protective of a few favorites. They still die in droves though. It's common practice to take better care of the original seven dwarves. This can extend past the grave, with many players taking the Egyptian approach, and sacrifice huge riches into their tombs.

[[folder:Tropes specific to Adventure mode]]

* ApocalypseHow: With enough wrecked fortresses and berserking adventurers, especially in a small enough world, civilizations will eventually deteriorate and crumble. You can then proceed to cause the extinction of all sentient races. Then, that of ''every single living being in the world''. And because [[DevelopersForesight The Toady One Thinks of Everything]], your world will acknowledge this by entering the Age of Twilight/Death/Emptiness. Age of Twilight is when the majority of creatures in the world are mundane; the ages of Death or Emptiness are entered when there are no more civilized beings in the world - the Age of Death after there has been at least an Age of Myth/Heroes/Twilight, the Age of Emptiness if no such ages have existed. Even in these desolate Ages, you can still play.

* OurAngelsAreDifferent: Guardians. Very few will see them. [[BonusBoss Fewer still live]] [[LightIsNotGood to tell of it]]. They're procedurally generated, much like Titans and Forgotten Beasts. [[spoiler:Guardians are created by specific gods and have descriptions associated to their progenitor's spheres. They are found guarding vaults, and are known fight even modded adamantine colossi to a standstill. Your reward for defeating them is a BraggingRightsReward by the time you're powerful and/or cunning enough to manage it.]]

* InsaneTrollLogic: The reasons for gods to [[spoiler:create vaults and release demons upon the world]] can be this. In some cases, it makes sense; a god of misery and suffering doing it [[ForTheEvulz to spread those]], or a god of valor giving heroes a foe to fight. However, sometimes the act will be done "after pondering the ineffable subtleties of" or "uses of" one of their spheres - even if the sphere is one like youth that would have ''absolutely no good reason'' to [[spoiler:help a demon escape into the mortal world]]. One god in particular did so after "pondering the ineffable subtleties of" ''fish''.

** Necromancers have a tendency to write books about themselves. Then they write essays about the books about themselves.

* InsaneTrollLogic: The reasons for gods to [[spoiler:create vaults and release demons upon the world]] can be this. In some cases, it makes sense; a god of misery and suffering doing it [[ForTheEvulz to spread those]], or a god of valor giving heroes a foe to fight. However, sometimes the act will be done "after pondering the ineffable subtleties of" or "uses of" one of their spheres. Even if the sphere is one like youth that would have ''absolutely no good reason'' to [[spoiler:help a demon escape into the mortal world]]. One god in particular did so after "pondering the ineffable subtleties of" ''fish''.

* InsaneTrollLogic: The reasons for gods to [[spoiler:create vaults and release demons upon the world]] can be this. In some cases, it makes sense; a god of misery and suffering doing it [[ForTheEvulz to spread those]], or a god of valor giving heroes a foe to fight. However, sometimes the act will be done "after pondering the ineffable subtleties of" or "uses of" one of their spheres. Even if the sphere is one like youth that would have ''absolutely no good reason'' to [[spoiler:help a demon escape into the mortal world]]. One god in particular did so after pondering the ineffable subtleties of ''fish''.

* {{Kevlard}}: Fat realistically serves as a layer of tissue that may take damage from an attack instead of a more important body part. More bizarrely, in Adventure Mode you can repeatedly ''[[ViolationOfCommonSense set yourself on fire]]'' and put it out after a while to remove all the fat in your body. If you survive you become effectively fireproof because heat does not kill you through burning]], it kills you by melting tissue (which except at very high temperatures is usually fat) to make you bleed to death.

The main game is '''Fortress Mode,''' which plays like a dizzyingly complicated hybrid of ''VideoGame/DungeonKeeper'' and ''VideoGame/TheSims'', only that all your little people are now stumpy, manic-depressive alcoholics. '''Adventure Mode''' plays like a very freeform {{roguelike}} - similar to VideoGame/NetHack or VideoGame/{{Rogue}} [[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Adventurer_mode according to some]] - in the vast procedural world that your fortresses inhabit. Both modes have [[EndlessGame no way to win]], but hundreds of ways to lose, and hence the community motto: '''Losing is Fun'''. If you intend to play this game for any longer than five minutes without dismissing it as a glorified Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, [[http://imgur.com/mHXiz.png keep that in mind.]]

** [[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cheating Some of the easiest and simplest mods to make]] are essentially {{Cheat Code}}s--you can make dwarves TheNeedless, produce valuable materials ''ex nihilo'', create a free StatGrinding workshop...

* HenotheisticSociety: There are abstract [[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Force "forces"]] who are worshipped by the elves. Although they are not considered gods in the traditional sense, they are nonetheless glorified by their elven followers.

*** Or a Forgotten Beast will show up in unexplored sections of your caves--since your dwarves aren't aware of them, there's no arrival message, but the resident [[https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Animal_people animal people]] can fight and kill them there, and even earn names and titles for doing so. You may often notice this when, on the units screen, there is a Forgotten Beast listed as dead.

* Catch22Dilemma: An anvil is one of the most important tools to embark with, because it's the required tool for crafting ''anything'', even ''other anvils''. Starting without one, either from incompetence, a SelfImposedChallenge, or the [[LuckBasedMission randomized]] "Embark Now!" option, leaves you unable to craft until a merchant comes by selling one or an offsite mission gets lucky. [[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Anvil The wiki article]] has some fun pondering how this is possible.

* ChildrenAreAWaste: Children eat your meals and drink your booze for 12 years without doing or learning anything useful. Birth rates don't come close to matching a successful fort's immigration rate or basically ''any'' fort's death rate, so children won't really give many long-term benefits even if you're patient and successful enough to have the same fortress span multiple generations. Even worse if you're unlucky enough to get a wave of migrants that consists almost entirely of children and your fort has suddenly become an orphanage. The Steam release tweaked this: Bad news, children now last until ''18'' years until they can start doing adult work. Good news is that they can now do minor tasks like construction and hauling before they reach that age, giving such orphanage forts a massive task force of haulers that leaves the adults free to work. Just be careful when they haul corpses and their mangled components, children don't have as many distractions as adults and they can end up ''really'' unhappy about all the death they see.

** Experiments in [[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=91093.msg2532118 "Dwarven Day Care",]] aka locking a small child in a room full of crowded animals so that the violence of fighting for their life every day would [[ConditionedToAcceptHorror harden them to tragedy]] and [[TrainingFromHell cause them to develop combat skills]]. It was pronounced a partial success when one experiment resulted in a child taking a permanent change to mental attributes--aka, ''permanent mental scarring''.
** Vaguely averted with the Steam update, which made Children only recruitable once they're 18... vaguely, because children that get caught in violent situations are still unusually dangerous thanks to all the hauling they now do; they've been known to beat up predators and even adults, and once they age out that same strength is well-put to a weapon.

The main game is '''Fortress Mode,''' which plays like a dizzyingly complicated hybrid of ''VideoGame/DungeonKeeper'' and ''VideoGame/TheSims'', only that all your little people are now stumpy, manic-depressive alcoholics. '''Adventure Mode''' plays like a very freeform {{roguelike}} - similar to VideoGame/NetHack or VideoGame/{{Rogue}} [[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Adventurer_mode according to some]] - in the vast procedural world that your fortresses inhabit. Both modes have [[EndlessGame no way to win]], but hundreds of ways to lose, and hence the community motto, Losing is Fun. If you intend to play this game for any longer than five minutes without dismissing it as a glorified Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, [[http://imgur.com/mHXiz.png keep that in mind.]]

* EndlessGame: There are no actual winning conditions as of yet. Earlier versions had the potential to end in a ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''-esque "you DugTooDeep and unleashed a horrible demon" ending, but this was removed in favour of letting you play with essentially no time limits. (Though it is still quite possible to dig too deep..)

** Also known as "[[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Dwarven_physics Dwarven Physics]]." It's not only possible, but easy, to build a perpetual motion machine, and melting a metal item returns a fixed amount of metal which is almost never the amount that went into it (in fact, sometimes it's ''more''). The same unit block of stone can be used to make a one-tile wall, three mugs, or as little as one toy boat, with no waste material in either case. Some of these will probably be fixed eventually.

** Dig deep enough and you will eventually reach Hell, instantly triggering an invasion of demons. More insidiously, all veins of adamantine (the best metal in the game) lead to Hell, making mining it a very risky prospect.
** Even before reaching Hell, when digging in the very lower levels of the world you can occasionally unearth a Forgotten Beast that was sealed inside an air pocket inside the layers of rock. Said Forgotten Beast will usually wipe out your miners and make a beeline straight for your fortress.

* OnlyOneSaveFile: Fortress Mode and Adventure Mode, use a save system that is under normal condition effectively the same as most {{roguelike}}s: saves are not deleted when you load them, but you can't stop the game without saving it (or finishing it, if you lose) and selecting "quit" from the main menu. SaveScumming is still possible by forcing the computer to close the program or manually copying the same file, but is considered cheating.

** *All* corpses can potentially arise as (potentially hostile) undead when in certain Evil biomes or in the presence of a necromancer. Under these circumstances, some players resort to disposing of them via destructive means, such as dumping them in magma or using the "Dwarven atom smasher," to ensure they don't threaten the fortress's survival.

* PrecautionaryCorpseDisposal: Corpses not given a proper burial will spawn a ghost to haunt the area. What that ghost will do ranges from generic haunting shennanigans to [[TheFunInFuneral organizing their own Wake]].

* BetterOffSold: Crafts, totems, toys, musical instruments and mugs can be used for two things - selling to the seasonal caravans and, back when Economy 1.0 was still around, shop stock. On the other hand it's a great way of getting rid of the average fort's mountain of stone.
** Mugs, along with cups and goblets, finally left this category as of DF 2014, as drinking without the aid of such a vessel would generate an unhappy thought. They are also necessary for a Tavern to serve drinks with.

* WideOpenSandbox: Taken to an extreme in that there is no way to finish or win the game, and the only goal is to not lose ... lose interest in whatever weird thing you're doing that non-dwarven lawyers would surely advise against (mostly because you're not following the live long and prosper model).

* ElvesVersusDwarves: This is [[InvokedTrope invoked]] more by the players than the game itself. While Dwarves and Humans have the most in common, Elves are far more often allies than enemies of Dwarves. At least until their diplomat demands that you stop cutting the wood you need for bed, barrels, and charcoal. Or until you accidentally offer their traders the wooden box your trade goods are in. ...You know what? ScrewYouElves.

* EnfantTerrible: Dwarven children are just as capable to go crazy and attack other Dwarves as adults are. Thanks to all the years of hauling they do, they can develop some serious strength enough to overpower adults and murder them, and the justice system has no way to prosecute minors. Some players have reported mad dwarven kids with homicides in the ''dozens''.

* {{Gorn}}: Yes, in ASCII text: the combat system describes the slashing of throats and gouging out of eyes with worrying relish.

* OurMonstersAreWeird: Forgotten Beasts, Titans, [[spoiler:Demons]] and [[spoiler:Angels]] are randomly generated, and the results are very, ''very'' strange. More consistent, but still bizarre, are the many-tentacled Sea Monsters, and the various creatures such as Pond Grabbers, Green Devourers, and Cave Crawlers that live BeneathTheEarth.

* InfinityPlusOneSword: Any artifact adamantine artifact sword (or other cutting weapon). Adamantine holds an incredible edge, and artifacts are of the highest quality and don't suffer from wear.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Necromancers have a tendency to write books about themselves. Then they write essays about the books about themselves.

* ForeignQueasine: Cooking in this game is GameGourmet meets ForeignQueasine. Dwarves will butcher ''any'' animal with enough meat on it, which includes normal domestic animals like cows and sheep, but also things like dogs, cats, aardvarks, and forgotten beasts if you get a fleshy one. They will also eat pretty much every part of the animal except its cartilage and nervous tissue; brains, eyes, heart, lungs, tripe (stomach), liver, sweetbread (pancreas), spleen, and intestines are all edible as 'prepared organs'. Dwarves will also cook any ingredient with any ''other'' ingredient regardless of how well they go together (which doesn't matter in-game), giving you things like yak brain and oyster biscuits, cat intestine-crocodile egg-durian stew, and roasts made of syrup, potato wine, quarry bush leaves, and tallow. Elves and goblins go even further by not having the dwarves' cultural restrictions against eating sapient creatures; elves will eat defeated enemies and goblins can butcher sapient creatures specifically for their meat.

* GameGourmet: Fruits, roots, meat, milk and cheese, and other kinds of food can be consumed either raw or cooked. Like all crafted goods, they have a quality level, which in this case affects the [[MoraleMechanic happiness gained (or lost) by whoever eats them]].

The key word for describing ''Dwarf Fortress'' is "[[ComplexityAddiction complex]]". The game makes vigorous attempts to simulate real-life physics, biology, and even chemistry as accurately as possible, with a surprising degree of success, at the cost of user-friendliness. For example, in lieu of HitPoints, the game has a detailed, ''[[VideoGame/IterVehemensAdNecem IVAN]]''-esque SubsystemDamage mechanic for all dwarves, monsters, and other creatures, [[GrapplingWithGrapplingRules and an attack targeting system that allows any unit to attack or grapple any part of its opponent's body with pretty much any still-attached prehensile appendage.]] The game only gets more convoluted from there, becoming denser with each update. The fans joke that Tarn Adams, who remains the primary developer on the game, will continue to make the game more and more granular until it reaches the subatomic level and begins to simulate quantum mechanics and particle physics. Judging by the way the game is growing, that prediction may become true, and everyone can then become an unlicensed theoretical physicist.

** When asking a child their profession: ''"You look like a mighty warrior."'' ''"I'm four!"''

-->"You look like a mighty warrior!"\\

-->[[MemeticMutation "It was inevitable."]]
-->"It is terrifying."
-->"It is sad but not unexpected."
-->"I should leave."