Build Stories, Not (Just) Fortresses

[@hachnslay]

Here's a point 6 - Make a really good large world (with advanced options) and play all your games in there. This way the Dwarfs will engrave the achievements of your previous forts on the very walls they live in.

[@trueblueflare]

Storytelling is legitimately my favorite part of DF. I still will at any opportunity recount the tale of the legendary miner who threw caution to the wind and single handedly fought a weregilamonster that killed her friend with only a pickaxe - and won. She risked her life and even lost a foot defending the fortress, and as such was hailed as a hero.

[@ponga_6855]

Once you know the basic mechanics of the game "winning" is easy, all you need is a few traps and bridges, and food is a very easy way to make a ton of money for something that you needed to make anyway. Once you stop using the easy ways to win and go looking for troubles the game becomes very fun.

[@JustDontDie]

Agreed. It's something I love about the game. Unlike city builders or some other games, you're not 'done' once you figure out how to build defenses and survive because you can easily add on a bunch of challenges and story reasons to reinvigorate gameplay and keep it interesting.

[@htspencer9084]

Yeah there is a reason why the the term: !FUN! exists! :)

[@zaubergurke5468]

My current fortress is positioned in a harsh savanna at the borders of our territory, where 2 goblin empires try to encroach towards an elven civilization. usually, none of my bussiness, but the Leaf Lovers serve as a natural protection against beasts for the neighboring friendly dwarven civilization. We set out into these unforgiving wilds with one goal: Attack the southern Goblins, draw their attention and prevent a war on 2 fronts for our bearded brothers when the goblins inevitably break through the elves. Only problem is that, while ive got all the resources, i lack one thing: Dwarves.

[@AddisonFairweather]

This is how I play rimworld, focusing much less on winning and much more on seeing what things *happen* through the course of a run

[@JustDontDie]

It's a perhaps unintended benefit to these games. With a lot of games like city builders, you're sort of done once you understand the supply loops and how to build defenses. But with a game like DF or going medieval, you can add a lot of story and extra challenges on top to keep it interesting even once you know the game.

[@o_sch]

Im far too competitive in nature to do this i hate it.

[@AddisonFairweather]

@@o_sch My brother in christ whomst is your competition in a singleplayer game

[@JulianSloman]

@@JustDontDie It's definitively intended.

[@Centorios]

As a d&d master, this encourages me to play 2 or 3 years of df and then make a homebrew campaign with just that storyline and a bit of narrative flavour

[@JustDontDie]

DF is so good for stuff like that. Every playthrough ends up so different.

[@tangentric]

You don’t even need to play a few years - generate a world and bubble around in Legends Mode; there’s so many cool stories in there! It’s great for NPC motivations too since you can often find links to a bunch of key players in the final fate you uncovered

[@xindruzandre]

Very cool tips, thank you for that! I also like to dive into legends mode at the beginning and see if I can find some inspiration for backstory, limitations or possible goals there. For example, I found out that my civilisation was taken over by necromancers some years ago and is now ruled by a necromancer puppet king, and some of the dwarves from the capital fled into a nearby desert. So now I'm playing as a group of refugees trying to mount a resistance. It colours a lot of my decisions for my fortress.

[@thedgibm6460]

Honestly, I started watching some of your other videos, and kindof stumbled upon you by accident, so hi there. I wanna say, I love your sense of storytelling, and how you make your playthroughs come to life, rather than explaining it as a game, it's a great touch, and I also love that rather than normal long drawn out playthroughs, its one nice neat video to watch, or a short playlist I can get through in an hour or two. I'll be sticking around to watch your channel grow, and am really excited to see what you have in store for me in the future. I wish you and your channel well my friend!

[@JustDontDie]

Thanks so much! Kind words mean a ton ♥

[@G0DZIRRA17]

Great advice! I try to do some of these in my games, but not all. I love making up the story of why they are leaving the homeland and giving them starting skills that are associated with that, and not even close to what would be the best things to start with. I think your advice about consequences and limitations is very important. Some of my favorite forts were ones where I had to overcome something early and slogged through it, instead of just going oh well new game. Thanks again

[@rojopantalones9791]

A lot of these are things I employ when running a game of Pathfinder. Been a forever DM since 2014 and all of my campaigns have been completely homebrew. Because of this, I have more fluid worlds that can change to what the campaign is doing. I don't go in with an immediate plan for a campaign. I have a setting in my mind and a few story hooks that I can put out at any time, but I let the story and the world grow around the players. I wanna tell THEIR story, right? An example of something I often do is someone gets a nat 20 on a knowledge check with the question being "What do I know about X?" I respond, "Well, what DO you know about it?" I'm asking them to create the rules for a creature or concept or city. I'm not asking for stat blocks or anything, simply *lore.* One of my players in my most recent campaign rolled to see what he knew about skeletons. Got a nat 20, so I asked him what he knew about them. "Well... I don't know what I know about them. That's why I rolled?" "No, I'm asking you to tell me what you know about skeletons. You have tapped into the divine consciousness in this moment, and I am giving you the option to make a rule about them." "Oh... Well, then." He pauses a moment to think, then says, "Well, everyone knows that if you die with unfinished business, or if it's a Tuesday, you come back as a skeleton once all the meat is gone." This became the backbone of the entire lore behind the entirety of goblin culture in the area for the entire campaign. Why do goblins like fire? Well, because they ritually burn their dead once per week. And why do they do that? Because anyone who dies on a Tuesday, they'll come back as a skeleton, so they burn their dead on Tuesdays. One player wrote a bit of fanfiction about the whole thing, he was so inspired by it. Just a conversation between a goblin wizard and a human wizard about the source of skeletons in the world. It's why there is a relic called only "The Torch," which is literally a torch, housed within their temple to Shelyn, who is a goddess of beauty and fire is beauty therefore goddess of fire to the goblins. The party wanted to roll every session and after every long travel to see what day of the week it was so they knew to burn the dead if they got into combat. One single thing shaped the entire world to the party and made it more their own. They got to breathe their own breath of life into the world that they were choosing to spend 5 hours a week in. We have bread dwarves due to an out of game joke as to how a cowboy hat was of dwarven make, which led to the party fighting an eldritch duck named Qua'thulhu, only to then employ this monstrosity at the dwarven university as a taste tester and mascot. There were serious discussions as to how the whole plot could really have been the result of a proxy war over pizza, when the basic plot summary is "your river was stolen." "Does fire is have soul?" is a common utterance nearly every session since it was first contemplated by the paladin. One player describes the experience as a "meme fiesta" because I think that's what everyone needed. That's what they breathed into it. You get out of a game what you put in.

[@dracothrope]

Loved it! Thanks for the tips and tricks! I usually get a little too narrow-minded about goals and miss some of what's going on all around the rest of the fort. Cheers! :D

[@dracothrope]

(I'm still a rusty newbie to the game, so I think my next one will just be a Zoo Tycoon fort where dwarves want to make their millions on progressively more ridiculous animal enclosures! Plenty to work with, there!)

[@PureStealth]

Seeing "just don't die" next to the title talking about tips was some unexpected humor haha Great video I'll incorporate these tips into my own df/rimworld playthroughs!

[@JustDontDie]

Ahaha. The whole channel name is a play on the joke that games are easy if you simply choose to not die.

[@Graknorke]

One thing that made me enjoy the game more (a change i made way back but should still apply now) was not hiding from sieges so much, or at least not do it as a first resort. Towering walls and elaborate traps are cool in their own way but there's something about watching the wave of a siege break on the rock that is a well trained and equipped squad or two or three.

[@htspencer9084]

A lot of what you describe are great improv/roleplaying tips in general.

[@peanutbuddasoulja3817]

I've taken recently to making a statue for every dead dwarf and it usually tells the tale of their death. It's been a great way to solidify them in my history and mind.

[@dragonmaster1500]

I really like d this video. While I do already practice some of these it definitely helps me with my story telling. You could even expand some of these tips to encompass an entire faction. For example, in my current world, the dwarven civilization that I'm playing is attempting to colonize a previously uninhabited continent. So that's what my main goal is, to establish a main fortress outpost and then eventually retire it and start building new satellite fortresses across the landscape. Each specific fortress will have it's own goal as well, but they will all be part of the same overarching metanarrative.

[@JustDontDie]

I love goals like that! I'm thinking about doing something similar for an upcoming video or a sort of series of videos where each fort has different challenges/stories as part of the overarching campaign.

[@joewalker4710]

I've just started getting into this game and videos like this are a great help 👍👍

[@JustDontDie]

Glad you're enjoying it! It's a super fun game.

[@TanToRza]

I love this. Need to incorporate more of this in my forts

[@Robert-vk7je]

Neat ideas! Thank you for sharing!

[@MilkisMilk709]

Dwarfs that broke off from their homeland after a book of life and death was stolen from the main library. Set on bringing death on the lands, learning of dangers of the deep, set on releasing those dangers on the world while they hunker down

[@htspencer9084]

Aside from KZbin videos, what are ways you would reccomend "journalling" or tracking this story you create along the way?

[@JustDontDie]

I used to use a private discord server to keep track of things. I'd jot down little notes about what X character did and how Y felt about it, ongoing goals, dates of important events so I could celebrate anniversaries of the big wall or great hall finishing, etc. As a bonus, this let me go back and see the tabs for each run to reminisce a little . A friend of mine uses worldanvil to journal their stuff. It's basically a place to share worldbuilding stories. I think.

[@htspencer9084]

@@JustDontDie oooh I remember world anvil. That's a great shout actually! I think I'll use that my next run. I do like the discord server idea too though. Do you make entirely new servers for each run or different channels/categories? Would I be OK to post what I get up to on KZbin? I don't wanna feel like I'm stealing your thing (and there is no way my quality would be anywhere close to yours anyway lel).

[@JustDontDie]

@htspencer9084 separate channels. And feel more than free. This is my favorite kind of content and I'd love to see more of it.

[@MrNoobed]

I had a fort attacked by an Ettinger before I had a military. The dwarf that went out and finally killed it had a pet bunny that followed him... and the pet bunny tore into it and ripped its nose off. So I commissioned a bunch of images and figurines of the bunny fighting. The owner went mad after losing a mood though, and I forgot to pen the pet so the pet died too. Now I got a whole new series of images. I started a new fort later and commissioned images related to the bunny hoping the dwarves would pick something cool but the only thing actually in the history about the bun is starving to death so its all agonizing sad withered bunny pictures 😅😅

[@jhumza]

The other day my legendary miner was bitten by a wereshrew. I didnt wanna just kill him so I made him a hideaway chamber next to the food storage that leads also to outside. I let him mine but before every full moon i have to send him back into his cage for the day. If we are ever attacked then i plan to release him like a mad dog to kill two birds with one stone. (A shame about him being legendary though)

[@JustDontDie]

Just politely ask your attackers to wait for a full moon.

[@RobVespa]

While I'd like to think I'm creative, all the stories I build in Dwarf Fortress seem to have the same ending...

[@alexrowe7063]

No I like winning fck the limitations, I get way too invested to watch my hard work burn because of bugs or BS. Which is why I sometimes skip through your videos to see if you win.

[@JustDontDie]

Haha, to each their own.

[@cfespenilla8235]

First!