Re:Dwarf Fortress Development
by Natsu on Tuesday June 28, 2016 @08:37PM
(#11998703)
It's funny how you can look at a simple item on that list, say, 'randomly generated musical instruments' and suddenly imagine a magma-powered tuba that menaces with spikes of microcline and which has an engraving of a dwarf and dwarves in orthoclase and rat leather relating to the founding of Doomedice on the Forgotten Glaciers of Terror in 1387...
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Where it falls down is that none of that has any meaning. There is no context to explain why Doomdice or the Forgotten Glaciers of Terror are significant, nor what was going on in 1387 that caused dwarves to settle in such an inhospitable place.
It all has meaning. It's not just a RNG picking off words from a list and putting them together. All created masterpieces refer to an actual event in the history. All worlds have full histories with wars, civilisations rising and collapsing, megabeasts destroying pregenerated fortresses etc.
If you go read the Legend Mode, you'll find mentions of Doomdice and you can look up quickly what happened in 1387.
Everything you find on artwork, is either related to the preferences of the dwarf who created the item, or to some of their known history.
That's where this magical thing of imagination comes in and takes over. Dwarf Fortress is the gaps in the world that it presents.
Well, usually the player would know why they settled in a haunted glacier, but masochism and insanity are two popular reasons for doing such a thing. Usually the player's imagination helps create the story at that point.
You can find a fort almost exactly like that in Roomcarnage: