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Mikeavelli
2010-07-13, 02:13 PM
The players in my campaign are going to meet some dwarves. I've decided that, instead of the normal scottish-accented alcoholics that dug too deep, they're going to be the cat-loving lava-chamber-flooding temper-tantruming dwarf fortress dwarves.

I'm fishing for ideas here, what sorts of things should the players see?

High-level group (15th level, decently optimized), may or may not end up deciding to just wipe out the whole fortress.

Eldan
2010-07-13, 02:43 PM
Remember that these dwarves can live off booze soup and booze, without getting drunk much.

Rin_Hunter
2010-07-13, 02:46 PM
I've always hated the stereotype for Dwarves. Especially since I am Scottish and it's never made sense why there is that connection.

In my setting, Dwarves grow their hair long and have no beards, speaking in a Welsh accent. :smallbiggrin:

NEO|Phyte
2010-07-13, 02:48 PM
Dwarven Justice.
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/5879/dwarvenjustice.png

Radar
2010-07-13, 02:54 PM
Considering the Dwarf Fortress enviroment, they should be quite paranoid and slightly self-destructive in their trap-making efforts.
If you want to justify their lack of luck (as Dwarf Fortress always ends with a nasty wipe of your fortress) and specific attitude:
they might have enraged some minor deity and are hiding underground in hopes of survival.

cheezewizz2000
2010-07-13, 02:56 PM
Off the top of my head:

1) Wall carvings that explain the history of the fortress in INTRICATE detail.

2) Absolutely STUNNING mundane items, such as Grinding wheels, with very disturbing imagary (an elephant and a dwarf. The elephant is stomping on the dwarf).

3) A dwarf is locked in his room demanding kangaroo leather, an uncarved opal and some silver. If the adventurers find it, they get a very nice enchanted silver mace with leather spikes and an opal in the hilt. Kangaroos are not native to the region, and the fortress is renouned for its magnetite deposits. There is an abundance of platinum and iron, but no silver.

4) The toughest dwarf in the whole fortress is the guy who keeps the records. The Fortress' stocks of everything is carved in the walls, door and desk of his office. A DC30 decipher script check reveals that all future stocks are accounted for.

5) There is a pit filled with cats. The pit has scortch marks all over it.

subject42
2010-07-13, 03:05 PM
PLEASE fill the surrounding countryside with monstrous carp and rampaging herds of elephants.

Bonus points if they reward your players with an elephant-leather shortsword. The blade is made of elephant, the hilt is elephant, and the pommel menaces with spikes of elephant.

The elephant leather ricasso is engraved with an elephant and a carp. The carp is screaming.

potatocubed
2010-07-13, 03:13 PM
Remember also that Dwarf Fortress dwarfs are typically naked, except for the ones who are wearing two suits of armour.

They all sleep in tiny cupboards with nothing more than a bed and a door.

Several of them are horrifically wounded and/or on fire but still going about their daily tasks.

EDIT: More seriously, DF dwarves love to kill their enemies with the environment. Floods of water or lava, retracting drawbridges over bottomless chasms, falling rocks... who needs swords?

Tengu_temp
2010-07-13, 03:18 PM
Drawbridges. Including the Dwarven Atomizer.

One of the local nobles announces an unpopular edict. An hour later he dies in a terrible accident as his room gets filled with magma. No other dwarves seem to care or even notice.

dgnslyr
2010-07-13, 03:54 PM
Plenty of levers to pull. Leadership is determined by beard length. The so-called nobles are just pests sent by the homeland to keep eyes on them. The Hammerer is there, but as the adventurers visit, he is mysteriously assaulted, leaving him bedridden with a mangled spine. No healers oblige to heal him.
At the heart of the fortress, there is a legendary statue called Planepacked (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Planepacked), with 73 images of itself and a complete history of the world engraved on it. Lore claims that it was built where the universe folds, and the statue is actually a fractal image.
Elephants, unicorns, and camels are feared, as are giant eagles and carp. To venture near the water unguarded is suicide. Elves are despised, and routinely offended with offerings of wooden goods.
Perpetual motion devices and atom smashers abound.
Cats are routinely butchered for bone and hide.
Kobolds ride velociraptors.
Dwarves in strange moods will butcher another dwarf for raw materials. After leaving the workshop s/he has decided to stay in, the dwarf will present the party with a bone trinket.

Murdim
2010-07-13, 03:57 PM
The most powerful warrior of the fortress is a young mother. She always brings her baby child in the battleground - which doesn't matter much since she's a one dwarf army and kills about anything in one mighty hammer blow.

Every single square foot of available surface - walls and floors - is covered in masterful engravings of dwarves surrounded by dwarves.

The whole fortress is fed and watered boozered by two ridiculously skilled farmers and their tiny subterranean field.

The place's culinary speciality is a roast entirely made of booze.

Somewhere in the fortress, there's a switch that, once activated, unleashes an infinite stream of lava upon the world.

DF dwarves are extremely strange creatures, and any outsider will find their moods disconcerting. They can lose their wife, three friends, two children and a pet to the hopeless war against the endless swarms of elephants, but will still be ecstatic because they've eaten a truly decadent meal in a legendary room.

IzualDarkwater
2010-07-13, 04:27 PM
if they happen to do with lava make them Azer
(Page 23 monster manual 1) they are fire dwarves! thats interesting huh?

ToySoldierCPlus
2010-07-13, 04:43 PM
All right, let's see here, what hasn't already been covered?

The fish are hardcore, perhaps too hardcore. It is not only not safe to go near the water, it is even less safe to go in the water.

In addition to the war against the elephants, there are also regular attacks by goblins and mandrills.

In addition to the cat pit, there should be a room filled with cages that contain domesticated animals, including dogs, mandrills, elephants, and more cats.

If one of the cats dies, the dwarf it adopted will go into a rage and kill everyone around before killing himself, probably by drowning.

Y'know what? Boatmurdered (http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/). Possibly also Headshoots (http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Headshoots/).

Coidzor
2010-07-13, 05:43 PM
rather than dying from HP loss, they're simply a collection of different body parts with their own ACs and HP.

Their axes are treated as keen weapons as long as they're being wielded by those dwarves.

treat grappling as a skill for them and give them a bonus to their grapple checks equal to their ranks in it. Assign suitable DCs to the grapple check to decapitate or otherwise remove a limb from an opponent.

super dark33
2010-07-13, 05:49 PM
first of all:they only import armor, cuz the dwarf fortress dwarves are bad blacksmiths.

second:thay are good archers and fletchers (bow makers)

third:thay are famed for their lovely cave potato juice (just dont ask)

forth:thay have big moustaches and no beards

fifth:they also imported architects

Hague
2010-07-13, 05:59 PM
Well, the fish aren't so deadly any more now that it's easier to swim out of lakes and rivers.

You'd definitely have to add a Martial Trance encounter power of some sort.

Also, DF dwarves would be very susceptible to fear-based effects unless they were officially inducted as military dwarves whereby they'd become immune to fear-based effects. "Ahhhhhh! A fox! RUN!" <Ureg Hamgilded canceled Win: Interrupted by fox.>

Consequently, if a dwarf does enough digging and acquires enough wealth, he'll randomly create an artifact with an infinite amount of Craft Pool points. However, the DM will be required to roll from a really large, random, complicated table of different items and materials to determine what the artifact actually does.

Fortuna
2010-07-13, 06:22 PM
second:thay are good archers and fletchers (bow makers)

Technically, that should be bowyers (and possibly fletchers if you want them to make arrows as well).

Also, reading with interest.

James the Dark
2010-07-13, 06:48 PM
So.

Carp aren't as hardcore as they used to be, but everwhere these Dwarfs settle, they inevitably get attacked by demons from below. These demons take the form of nothing seen in a Monster Manual or Fiend Folio. Some of them are a group of organs floating in gelly, propelled by poisonous tentacles. Some of them are slimy monsters made of eyeballs with no internal organs, and no head, ergo cannot be Vorpalled. But the Dwarfs try anyway.

If the Hammerer is ever disarmed, he bites 'criminals' to punish them, then carries their flesh in his mouth until it rots.

They can eat anything that was alive at some point. They make roasts out of candles. Everything menaces with spikes. Even the food. Only the maces don't.

Nobles regularly give mandates for the denizens of their fortress to build something (even if they demand 'an item', with no further information as to what they want), with complete disregard to whether the substance is available in the continent, let alone the fortress. Then, when the mandate fails, they punish somebody random, usually the most vital person to the fort who had absolutely nothing to do with fulfilling the mandate. The Hammerer is a noble's arm, or if disarmed, mandible.

If it is really, really hot outside (38 Celsius), and it starts to rain, Dwarfs melt. They begin to sweat blood as their fat melts, and then they die if they don't get out of the rain. Even if they don't melt in the rain, after years underground, any contact with sunlight for more than a few rounds, causes Dwarfs to projectile vomit an unlimited amount for a few minutes. But this does not impede any task they're doing, just slows them down a bit. And their vomit is so dense that it can be used as an effective throwing weapon.

A Dwarf can pinch your head off. Pinch.

Dwarfs farm crops, true. They also farm Obsidian by flash freezing magma with water. They build towers out of green glass and soap. They use a portal to hell as a garbage dump.

Dwarf women are ruthlessly faithful, ruthlessly fertile, and as long as they are married and the husband is alive, produce offspring as often as her body will allow. Often, she has three children hanging off of her in slings by the time the oldest begins walking on its own. Even the warriors. Especially the warriors. Dwarfs never remarry. Dwarfs can also undertake courtships which can last fifty years, leading to a level of sexual frustration so intense that by the time they actually 'dig into the new vein', they spontaneously create an Artifact Infant. It hangs with looping rings of beard, and menaces with spikes of Dwarf. It is masterfully worked with dried Dwarven Rum and Vomit. On it is an image of a Dwarf and a Demon in Birthmark. The Demon is in the fetal position. The Dwarf is laughing.

EDIT: Corrected for updated versions.

Hague
2010-07-13, 06:58 PM
So.
Don't try doing bludgeoning damage to the Dwarfs. Unless your hammer is made out of something at least as dense as Lead, you won't do anything worse than bruising their fat. Subdual damage, with regeneration which is tuned specifically to subdual damage recieved via bludgeoning damage.


This just got fixed. Latest version makes bludgeoning weapons and projectiles work properly.

Fayd
2010-07-13, 07:21 PM
Actually, my DM did just this. The dwarves ate cat-and-hydrochloric-acid soup, had beer brewed from... everything... had a design fetish with switchbacks (they had no ladders, even for bunked beds). The dwarves were polygamous, and their beard status determined how many wives they had. More facial hair = More wives.

When in council, they would pensively stroke their beards in complete unison. They had mastered the concepts of fluid dynamics (flow and pumps and such) for the sole purpose of the consumption of alcohol...self refilling mugs, a delivery service to the bedrooms, etc. And they had heated floors. They were holed up in an active volcano that they channeled for their own ends.

We got a map for a woods that was magically perpetually on fire. Scribbled in the margins were orders like "When on fire, do not touch other dwarves." Each an every one was slightly crazy. And thus was a quite fun place to visit. An awful place to live.

SurlySeraph
2010-07-13, 07:47 PM
The only available food is alcohol, alcohol biscuits, cheese, and meat whose origin the dwarves are reluctant to disclose.

Pretty much everyone has a Wisdom score in the low single digits.

Everyone has a level in Frenzied Berserker.


Off the top of my head:4) The toughest dwarf in the whole fortress is the guy who keeps the records. The Fortress' stocks of everything is carved in the walls, door and desk of his office. A DC30 decipher script check reveals that all future stocks are accounted for.

Stat-wise, an Archivist using Divine Might and other such buffs would work great.


5) There is a pit filled with cats. The pit has scortch marks all over it.

Encounters should include flaming ghost cats and demons wielding flaming cats as weapons.

Beelzebub1111
2010-07-13, 08:15 PM
Surrounded by ridiculously cute kobolds. (http://www.google.com/images?q=Cutebold&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi)

dgnslyr
2010-07-13, 08:24 PM
Stat-wise, an Archivist using Divine Might and other such buffs would work great.

Ah, but the brilliant part is that said Archivist's strength is entirely natural. No spell was needed for the incredible strength the accounted has. Makes much less sense than a constantly buffed Archivist, and is all the more dwarvenly for it.

Anything functionally useless and needlessly complicated is considered to embody the very principles of dwarveness.

The Dark Fiddler
2010-07-13, 08:36 PM
1) Fire up Dwarf Fortress
2) Play a game
3) Stop just before losing. This is the place your players will spend the next five sessions in.

Coidzor
2010-07-13, 09:09 PM
1) Fire up Dwarf Fortress
2) Play a game
3) Stop just before losing. This is the place your players will spend the next five sessions in.

This. Oh 12 gods, this.

OzymandiasVolt
2010-07-14, 01:21 AM
1) Fire up Dwarf Fortress
2) Play a game
3) Stop just before losing. This is the place your players will spend the next five sessions in.

Thirded so hard.

ToySoldierCPlus
2010-07-14, 06:51 AM
1) Fire up Dwarf Fortress
2) Play a game
3) Stop just before losing. This is the place your players will spend the next five sessions in.

Jumping on the bandwagon. Do this. DO EET!

BobVosh
2010-07-14, 07:36 AM
1) Fire up Dwarf Fortress
2) Play a game
3) Stop just before losing. This is the place your players will spend the next five sessions in.

The fifth. One should never refuse a fifth.

TricksyAndFalse
2010-07-14, 07:50 AM
Why has no one mentioned milking purring maggots to make dwarven cheese?

EDIT: I guess you can milk other things in the latest version, but for a long time, this was the only way to make some of the best happy-thought-provoking food in the game.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/40d:Purring_maggot

Jergmo
2010-07-14, 11:10 AM
I've always hated the stereotype for Dwarves. Especially since I am Scottish and it's never made sense why there is that connection.

In my setting, Dwarves grow their hair long and have no beards, speaking in a Welsh accent. :smallbiggrin:

Psh. My dwarves are old school! Pale as a ghost, with dark hair and eyes, and only drinking beer because the water in the beer is clean due to boiling. Thick German accents.

Hurlbut
2010-07-14, 11:27 AM
Psh. My dwarves are old school! Pale as a ghost, with dark hair and eyes, and only drinking beer because the water in the beer is clean due to boiling. Thick German accents.Actually, the water doesn't have to be boiled, the alcohol in the beer does all the work making it safe. So you can try watered down beer and it'll be good to drink, but it won't be as strong as what the dwarves want to drink. :smallbiggrin:

kjones
2010-07-14, 11:28 AM
Levers. Levers everywhere.

Jergmo
2010-07-14, 11:59 AM
Levers. Levers everywhere.

Also, by this time, they've forgotten what half of them do.

Ormagoden
2010-07-14, 12:27 PM
*Munches popcorn and passes bag*

Kaulesh
2010-07-14, 12:29 PM
The fort must have a solitary lever in a forgotten, dusty section. It must be covered in cobwebs. The adventurers will eventually get curious.

I'll leave it up to the reader to come up with a reasonable deathtrap.

NEO|Phyte
2010-07-14, 12:32 PM
If they stay the night, their "guest" rooms are noble execution chambers, with magmaproof furnishings, suspicious scorchmarks, and a lever.

Beorn080
2010-07-14, 12:45 PM
If they stay the night, their "guest" rooms are noble execution chambers, with magmaproof furnishings, suspicious scorchmarks, and a lever.

And every square inch of floorspace that doesn't have furniture on it has retractable spikes in the floor.

Honestly, Boatmurdered gives you a wonderful prebuilt dungeon. Anything from at its height, to after its fall and abandonment.

STRIKE THE EARTH!!!

Edit: Oh yes. Every dwarf has every possible crossbow reloading feat in any book, they all stack, and they get 4 attacks a round with them at a -20 penalty.

Nu
2010-07-14, 07:48 PM
Recreate my favorite noble-extermination trap:

A ten-tile long, one-tile wide hallway leading to a lever. Every square of the hallway contains an upward spike trap, linked to the lever.

2xMachina
2010-07-15, 01:15 AM
/me shrugs

I do trap design in DF. I did a Tower defense juggle. Got boring though, since they can't get in... They just go, and turn back, and turn back...
All while getting shot at by crossbows and ballistas.