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View Full Version : Dwarf Fortress in D&D 3e ?



Bayar
2010-06-20, 08:25 AM
By Dwarf Fortress I mean this (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress) and [url=http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Dwarf_Fortress:About[/url]. And by 3e I mean 3.0 and 3.5.

So, how would this work ? I think that using the Stronghold Builder's Guide and Races of Stone would be almost mandatory. And a "no spellcasting" rule to be present. And a percentage system would be useful for determining ambushes, thieves, moods and other fun stuff.

Any other ideas ?

Grumman
2010-06-20, 09:07 AM
Dwarf Fortress is made up of equal parts stockpile management and inescapable traps of instant death. Neither seems like suitable challenges for a pen and paper RPG.

Lapak
2010-06-20, 09:35 AM
Dwarf Fortress is made up of equal parts stockpile management and inescapable traps of instant death. Neither seems like suitable challenges for a pen and paper RPG.I was going to say that given the overall goal (stave off the inevitable destruction of your world for a day at a time, knowing you'll eventually fail) and the way that dwarves are prone to going crazy after seeing things that threaten their way of thinking - Dwarf Fortress has a lot more in common with Call of Cthulu than it does with D&D.

(Adventure Mode can be perfectly well simulated in D&D as a standard dungeon crawl, though.)

nyarlathotep
2010-06-20, 01:10 PM
By Dwarf Fortress I mean this (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress) and [url=http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Dwarf_Fortress:About[/url]. And by 3e I mean 3.0 and 3.5.

So, how would this work ? I think that using the Stronghold Builder's Guide and Races of Stone would be almost mandatory. And a "no spellcasting" rule to be present. And a percentage system would be useful for determining ambushes, thieves, moods and other fun stuff.

Any other ideas ?

I would have issue with the no spellcasting rule. As the magic system of dwarf fort simply hasn't been implemented yet. There are wizards in game code even as a playable faction like dwarves. The main problem is they don't quite know when not to fireball.

2xMachina
2010-06-20, 01:12 PM
As there are no spell slots, the answer is always.

Beorn080
2010-06-20, 01:14 PM
I'm not sure if it CAN work in 3e. Too many variables, and too much insanity. I have to agree that Call of Cthulu, with sanity replaced with an easily damaged and easily increased happiness meter instead of sanity, and a body part damage system, would be optimal.

Count D20
2010-06-20, 01:14 PM
The world must be harsh and unforgiving. Dire everything. Goblins with class levels.
I believe that you need to make clerics few and far between.
Healing other than bed rest is unusual and rest is kind of unsure.
Sometimes the wounded are neglected or left behind to be devoured fangoriously.
No limits on which npcs can make items. A child can become a great woodcarver or smith with inspiration and even make artifacts if possessed.
Are there rules for starvation and thirst? Maybe you should cross over with d20 Coc for sanity.

Faleldir
2010-06-20, 01:19 PM
You'll need detailed rules for fire and how it spreads. The current rules make it impossible to ignite wood with non-magical fire.

Grumman
2010-06-20, 01:33 PM
You'll need detailed rules for fire and how it spreads.
Or alternatively, very simple rules:

IF object->flammable AND distanceToFire ≤ 5 ft.
THEN !!object!!

Vizzerdrix
2010-06-20, 02:23 PM
Maybe not an exact clone of DF, But a PbP game of all dwarfs felling an decimated keep to go establish a new one (or retake an old one) someplace would be amazing.


And if someone snakes this idea, I'd like in :smallredface:

Reynard
2010-06-20, 06:48 PM
*Clutches knees to chest*

Don'tdigtodeepdon'tdigtodeepdon'tdigtodeepdon'tdig todeepdon'tdigtodeep.

Stats for the legions of hell would probably make most powergamers cry themselves to sleep.

There are many, many, many, more of them then there are of all creatures in the world combined, including insects, and they are all CR20+.

Count D20
2010-06-20, 08:11 PM
Maybe not an exact clone of DF, But a PbP game of all dwarfs felling an decimated keep to go establish a new one (or retake an old one) someplace would be amazing.
And if someone snakes this idea, I'd like in :smallredface:
Yeah, exactly.
Capturing the tense atmosphere and desperation to survive, with the strange random stuff that happens. Like an epic bracelet with cheese,dog defeating mandrill, and elephant defeating dwarf on it.
Or a door being jammed by a dead butterfly.

Zaq
2010-06-20, 08:31 PM
For what it's worth, my current 3.5 character is staring what we believe to be a TPK in the face, and my backup is a dwarf who hails from the settlement of Boatmurdered. He's a bit far from home, but yeah.

If when my GM sends an elephant at him, I'm not sure if he should run away screaming, or run toward it screaming in fury. Regardless, he will certainly have an irrational perfectly reasonable terror of levers.

Vizzerdrix
2010-06-21, 07:51 AM
I can see it now. First surviving and fleeing from a wrecked hold, only gathering what you'd have time to as you flee down smoky tunnels. The struggle to survive and find others that got lucky. Then trying to get everyone safely to ancient lands through dangers unknown, only to have everyone slowly go mad from the influences of forces from the Far Realms that took the city from your ancestors many generations ago. Ending with a fight to put them down once and for all!

Tiki Snakes
2010-06-21, 08:41 AM
Hmm. I'm thinking that a system with horrible, horrible crippling injuries built in would possibly be a better match. Runequest could work pretty well, perhaps? Maybe one of the WHFRP editions.

Failing that, you need to port in such a system of horrendous and detailed injuries, because it's a pretty central thing in the feel of DF, I'd say.

Otherwise, yeah. It'd work because a lot of it would come from roleplaying and setting fluff, and would be a barell of laughs. I recommend enforcing Dwarf-Fortress random namings on the PC's, too.

kamikasei
2010-06-21, 08:45 AM
Maybe not an exact clone of DF, But a PbP game of all dwarfs felling an decimated keep to go establish a new one (or retake an old one) someplace would be amazing.

I'm currently playing a kobold in a deliberately absurd game of Maid where we're reclaiming what's undeniably an abandoned Dorf Fort.

Coidzor
2010-06-21, 02:04 PM
Skill ranks can be acquired via RP/game time spent doing and learning the thing involved. So that's one potential leg up over vanilla D&D3e.

And they don't seem to be dependent upon level... or they can cause leveling..

2xMachina
2010-06-21, 02:13 PM
You can be a legendary (epic) talker if you talk long enough. :smalltongue:

Bayar
2010-06-21, 02:33 PM
Hmm. I'm thinking that a system with horrible, horrible crippling injuries built in would possibly be a better match. Runequest could work pretty well, perhaps? Maybe one of the WHFRP editions.

Failing that, you need to port in such a system of horrendous and detailed injuries, because it's a pretty central thing in the feel of DF, I'd say.

Otherwise, yeah. It'd work because a lot of it would come from roleplaying and setting fluff, and would be a barell of laughs. I recommend enforcing Dwarf-Fortress random namings on the PC's, too.

I'm disgusted to suggest it, but ripping apart FATAL's crucial damage charts and gutting out all the naughty bits might make a fair attempt at mimiking Dwarf Fortress's anatomical parts.

As for leveling skills, they should be just that: skills. Mining can be covered by the rules for Profession (Miner) from Races of the Dragon, for example. More ranks in it, better skill rank title.

Devils_Advocate
2010-06-21, 07:24 PM
A mining complex / underground community dwelling guarded by horrible traps, filled with miners who do their best to defend their home but die horribly to powerful invaders?

That's actually a pretty traditional D&D scenario. It's the PCs attacking a kobold warren.

megabyter5
2010-06-21, 09:36 PM
No normal animals exist. They must all be their Dire counterparts. NO EXCEPTIONS. Of course, we're all aware of the one specific animal that MUST be absurdly dangerous compared to all others, therefore I suggest the following: Paragon Lolth-Touched Dire Carp of Legend.

I tried to only stack templates with relatively few weird powers, but still to pump it up a whole lot. Unfortunately, I didn't have that much to choose from, so... I think I made the fish too not hardcore enough.

Count D20
2010-06-21, 09:38 PM
That is good, but we need to find a way to partly disconnect those skills from levels.
Maybe working with the skill buy from mutants and masterminds. XP gets converted 10 or 20 to 1/2 skill point, i don't know.

Now to read boatmurdered.

Count D20
2010-06-26, 12:35 AM
Let's make a dwarf fortress guide to tabletop!

Another_Poet
2010-06-26, 12:42 AM
I remember an anecdote on the Wizards forums about an all-dwarf adventure. They went to get the last cask of the greatest dwarven beer ever brewed from a fallen dwarven city. The room with the cask had a chasm running through it from an earthquake or something, and when combat knocked the cask in, one of the dwarves dove after it and used his body as a shield to soften its fall. He died and became a hero.

This anecdote won't help you design a DF game, but it is one of the most awesome I've ever heard.

:)

dr.cello
2010-06-26, 01:15 AM
I know I tend to use Dwarf Fortress maps for my campaigns--both the fortresses for a dungeon crawl, and the world maps for campaign maps.

Running the game to be like fortress mode, however, I'd probably try to do something like this:

Your party plays the founding members of a given fortress. During the times between raids, you can accomplish a certain amount of a given task during a season--mining, building, crafting, woodcutting, farming, etc. (Obviously you'd need some rules for farming, but it could be fairly simple.) If you have someone with herbalist or hunting as a skill, you can just use the Survival skill to forage.

As the fortress advances, you start getting immigrants. You can assign them to various tasks, and they'll produce/perform at a steady rate (probably one that increases over time, obviously). I'd probably mostly ignore mood, or leave that to DM fiat--this should be a fairly simple thing.

Then, every month, you roll a percentile to see if something happens: a siege, an ambush, a kobold thief, a kidnapper, threats from wild animals. Once that happens you basically go into RPG mode. The party can assign military dwarves to defend a location, but their tactics will be pretty simple. It will be largely up to the party, as the resident legendary warriors, to cut through the goblin hordes and fight off the trolls and megabeasts et cetera. Obviously each siege becomes progressively bigger, and megabeasts should always be a high-level challenge--you'll need to sacrifice low-level military dwarves to keep it distracted while the party beats on it.

And of course, if you dig down there's an underground cave network which just may contain the legions of hell, as well as more mundane unpleasant monstrosities. You should know what level this is on, so when they dig down that far they discover it.

...

The other, much easier way to run a DF campaign is to just have your party be reclaiming/looting the lost dwarf fortress that just so happens to be a map that is a real dwarf fortress that you built once. Or, I guess, you could just be visitors to the fortress, with no real control over what's going on--same map, but with actual dwarves running around doing their dwarf-things.

2xMachina
2010-06-26, 01:21 AM
Though dwarfs aren't exactly famous for their traps... but in DF, traps can easily repel a mega-invasion without even having to have your dwarfs go into melee. And you can go Tower Defense them lol.

We could try an alt game lol. Goblins invading a standard DF fortress. Have fun going through the traps.

Beorn080
2010-06-26, 01:28 AM
No normal animals exist. They must all be their Dire counterparts. NO EXCEPTIONS. Of course, we're all aware of the one specific animal that MUST be absurdly dangerous compared to all others, therefore I suggest the following: Paragon Lolth-Touched Dire Carp of Legend.

I tried to only stack templates with relatively few weird powers, but still to pump it up a whole lot. Unfortunately, I didn't have that much to choose from, so... I think I made the fish too not hardcore enough.

You forgot the Half Carp and Were Carp templates.

Coidzor
2010-06-26, 01:37 AM
You dig deep enough and there's a confluence of the plane of fire and the plane of earth, such that there's an infinite band of magma.

Not sure if you'd have an underdark or if the 2nd/3rd layer of caverns would be closer to the underdark...

Ravens_cry
2010-06-26, 01:54 AM
I don't think D&D, in any edition, has anywhere near the rules granularity to create Dwarf Fortress. According to the time-hole known as TV Tropes, it even models major blood vessels. That's barely workable in a computer game, let alone a table top game where you, the players and the GM, have to work it out yourselves.

dr.cello
2010-06-26, 02:02 AM
See, people always assume that if you're converting something from one system to another that you want the exact same experience, just in a different format. It tries to capture the individual elements with fine detail, instead of trying to capture the entire experience with broad brush strokes. The former usually doesn't feel right. The latter tends to provide the desired experience.

DF lets you monitor every minuscule detail, but that's not the essence of the game.

2xMachina
2010-06-26, 02:02 AM
FATAL lol?

You have the finger bone, the other finger bone... (etc). Each which can be broken/bruised separately.

Also, roll for your personality. And likes/dislikes.

Ravens_cry
2010-06-26, 02:10 AM
See, people always assume that if you're converting something from one system to another that you want the exact same experience, just in a different format. It tries to capture the individual elements with fine detail, instead of trying to capture the entire experience with broad brush strokes. The former usually doesn't feel right. The latter tends to provide the desired experience.

DF lets you monitor every minuscule detail, but that's not the essence of the game.
Then go for 1st or 2nd edition with a Tomb of Horrors style DM. Because that seems, from what I have read, is the two essences of the DF experience. microscule attention to detail and insta-deaths and traps at every turn.

dr.cello
2010-06-26, 04:04 AM
Really, the essence of the game is "you build a dwarf fortress." You could still feel like it was the same game if most of the various elements of "attention to detail" were absent. So long as you can build a fortress, mine it out yourself, arm your dwarves, defend it with traps and clever uses of architecture, and it gets invaded constantly, you've got pretty much the same game.

It's an economy management game with military strategy attached. You could do that in pretty much any game system with a little ingenuity. Detail on paper would detract from the experience unless you want to do a lot of bookkeeping, though. If you want it to be streamlined, it would perforce need to be be simpler. Assuming you keep the same population caps, you're looking at something like 200 dwarves after a while, plus however many you have assigned to the military. Sure, you could run it with excruciating attention to detail, but there's no reason that's actually necessary.