Numbers Are Super Great And Frustrating
The majority of Dwarf Fortress overhauls use the concept of Caste or Sub-Race within the dwarves that you start with and immigrate to your fortress. This is a neat, in-world solution… to artificial problems. As Dwarf Fortress currently stands (Release 0.34.11), its pretty hard for uneducated player to tell if a certain Dwarf is particularly good at a job that you assign them. Without taking the actual skill level into account – a level 3 Miner is objectively better than a level 2 Miner – there are a large number of factors that affect the speed at which a Dwarf will learn a certain group of skills, and some of them make more sense than well… Kinesthetic Sense. To the “uneducated player” (which I realize is a bit silly – because they care enough TO think about how stats affect the productivity of a single Dwarf), more of a stat is always better than less of that stat. It breaks down when you’re thinking to yourself, “What is the trade-off between a Dwarf that is “Very Slow To Tire” (avg 1500-1749) or another Dwarf that is “Very Quick To Tire” (avg 251-500) but “Extremely Agile” (avg 1650-1899)?”. Add in the “Soul Attributes” – like Kinesthetic Sense, Willpower and Social Awareness – and this process starts to become more painful than it needs to be.
The concept of min-maxing is certainly not unique to any genre or personality type, especially if there are noticeable benefits to spending the extra time engaging in the process. Role Playing Games, specifically MMORPGS, carter to that audience – giving min-maxers open forums in which to unveil their discoveries. This is also true in Roguelikes, but mostly with those that have little to no randomly generated starting “characters”. It is very possible to generate a character that is numerically worse than another character, even if both characters have the “same” chance of achieving their goal through RNG. Dwarf Fortress is no exception – it is entirely possible to generate a truly terrible Dwarf – one that has the lowest end of each possible stat line for the Dwarf Race. Conversely, you may also end up with a true Uber-Dwarf, with every numerical string at the height of Dwarf perfection. Of course, both are extreme statistical outliers. Most Dwarfs you get end up being kind of gray scale, and the truly exciting ones are only made so by favorable RNG that takes place outside of their stat scores. Propensity to knocking goblins down deep chasms and beating back armies with backpacks aren’t really something that will be displayed during the casual v-z-enter.
Bigotry In ASCII
I return to the concept of Castes and Sub-Race. Mod authors simplify the clunky but quaint special-snowflake model of Dwarf Fortress’ Dwarf generation by making templates within the “Dwarf” race that make them savants in certain categories, and possibly worse in others (very, very rarely). This makes sense for Dwarfs, and immigrating Dwarfs to boot – Smith-Caste Dwarfs are trained smiths – they learn the trade faster regardless of their physical and mental attributes, even faster than Dwarfs that would normally make great Smiths (High Endurance, Strength, Creativity and whatnot). The Smith Dwarf goes into the smithy hole, the Craftdwarf Dwarf goes into the crafting hole, the Brewer Dwarf has a great little life, and so on. There is basically no reason to look at a Dwarf and have a tough decision of what they’ll do – if you have enough Dwarfs, that is.
So as to not weigh certain Castes too much, there is usually a pretty good chance for every and any Dwarf to immigrate to your fortress. This leads to the obvious problem of getting a billion Fisher Caste Dwarfs in a desert fortress. Not super useful, and doesn’t make much sense a gameplay-wise, unless your Fortress’ marketing team is really incompetent. But, don’t worry though – while those Fisher Caste Dwarfs may be objectively better at fishing, they aren’t particularly bad at everything else, so you force them into a life of sand removal and go on with your merry little fortress.
That scenario is terrible on two levels. Firstly, it takes a poorly implemented mechanic and disappoints you – what about your seaside Fortress that wanted Fisher Caste Dwarfs and only got Lumberjacks? Secondly, and most importantly, it doesn’t promote storytelling. As to get Caste immigrants, you assign them the jobs they’re good at, and forget them unless you are truly desperate for a Weaver Dwarf. What you end up with is essentially a 4X game – in which you amass resources and wealth, and see your population as a means to an end. While I have no problem with that genre of gameplay, and I by no means condemn players that pursue that style of play, I firmly believe that it is out of the scope of Dwarf Fortress.
Jötunheimr: ToDF And Storyline
After I spent so much time bashing Caste systems, I’ll say it – the Trollkin will be separated into Castes. That said, each variation of Trollkin will have their own unique stats on top of skill preference, and there won’t be so many as to cover every single skill – and some skills might not even be covered at all. Trollkin in general aren’t especially noted for their farming prowess, for example. On the whole, they’re pretty terrible at a plethora of trade-skills, which will give the player a unique experience while handling their Troll settlement – instead of simply applying the same Dwarf logic to every problem your Trolls face. For example, Trolls will not dig stone – only sand and dirt. They will be able to “quarry” stone, but by bribing other creatures to mine for them (kobolds, knockers and other such earth sprites). They will lack basically all farming skills, instead relying on primitive hunting, gathering and fishing, in addition to a herding mechanic which will be their sustainable food source (I’ll cover the Trollox in a future post). The greatest change is that Trollkin are incredibly strong and hardy individuals – even the smallest Trolls have hard, sturdy skin and bones, and are able to survive and kill ambushers.
Overall the goal for Jötunheimr: Tales of Dwarf Fortress is to promote the longevity of its characters, and limit the amount of actors that the player interacts with, so as to form real bonds with each one of their Trolls. This includes the hope that I’ll be able to properly implement the “quarrying mechanic”, so as to invite players to make much larger embarks than the standard 3×3 (hopefully 6×6 or 8×8!) because there won’t be any digging to FPS breaking layers like the Caverns and Magma. Just imagine – a whole moorland or forest jealously guarded by a tribe of Trolls, or a rocky mountain range with a crude wooden hillfort!
-Sándor Csontos
Caffeine Lich 