Review:
Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress, by Peter Tyson
Publisher: |
O'Reilly |
Copyright: |
May 2012 |
ISBN: |
1-4493-1494-5 |
Format: |
Trade paperback |
Pages: |
219 |
If you're unfamiliar with Dwarf Fortress, you're in good company. Most
people are, even people who play video games regularly. It was heavily
inspired by roguelike games: games such as Hack and Rogue and their more
recent variations, which have been around since the 1970s and are still
frequently played with simple character graphics on 2D maps. Dwarf
Fortress even has a roguelike gameplay mode, but the core of the game (and
the only part of the game covered in this book) is the fortress mode,
where the player controls a band of dwarfs in an attempt to construct and
maintain a fortress. All of this is done (by default, at least) in a
simulated-text interface filled with a barrage of strange characters and
symbols. A Dwarf Fortress game in progress is almost incomprehensible to
the uninitiated. (There are graphical tile sets available, but all the
illustrations in this book assume the default display mode.)
Dwarf Fortress gains its cult popularity (sufficient to support the
primary developer solely through voluntary donations; the game is free)
from the incredible depth and richness of the world. Almost everything is
modeled in startling detail, down to the individual items of clothing that
each dwarf wears, their personalities and history, and a considerable part
of the industrial lifecycle of any goods that the fortress needs to
produce (such as food and all-important alcohol). That's where this book
comes in. The game is so massive and involves so many variables,
industries, needs, requirements, and perils that the first-time player is
likely to see their first games collapse due to resource problems they
have no idea how to address.
Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress
walks the player through the initial fortress setup, the resource cycles,
and the fundamentals of the various parts of the game one has to monitor.
The fact that this discussion takes over 200 pages should give you an idea
of the depth of the game.
I should stop here and warn that, similar to my RPG sourcebook reviews, I
read this book somewhat against its intended purpose. I haven't played
Dwarf Fortress and don't currently intend to. It's not quite my game
type: I don't like open world construction games in which it's possible to
lose (and thereby lose all the things that one has built). But the idea
of the game, the way it's developed, and the fact that O'Reilly would
publish a book about it is so delightfully strange that I wanted to get a
feel for the game without investing the time required to learn it.
Thankfully, while the book is designed to be a tutorial, it also does an
excellent job at conveying the feel of a game.
Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress is divided into eleven
chapters. After a chapter of introduction, it goes over site selection,
some of the options for your initial party, and recommended settings for
both. It then provides some advice for the initial rooms and initial
fortress layout to get started. Subsequent chapters are more
topic-oriented, covering food, merchants, resource management (including
Strange Moods), digging, and the various chains of industry. The final
chapters cover some of the more intricate details of dwarven life, such as
justice, vampires, and hospitals, and then provide an introduction to the
military and to dwarven engineering. The engineering chapter, in
particular, makes it clear that vast complexity and possibility is left
unexamined.
One drawback of the printed version of the book (I don't know if this also
applies to the ebook) is that all of the screen shots here are black and
white. This makes Dwarf Fortress's already-forbidding presentation even
more difficult to understand. At times, I had a hard time picking out
features that were described in the text. A look at on-line screenshots
quickly shows that color is massively helpful in making sense of all the
little glyphs. I'm sure color printing would have made the printed
version prohibitively expensive, but it is a loss.
The text, though, is excellent. Not only is it clear and helpful
(although with the caveat that I've not personally tested it), it captures
much of the humor and feel of the game. Dwarf Fortress incorporates
computer-generated storytelling that narrates the events of the game (and
the backstory of the world), which has sparked a tradition of delightfully
wry commentary on games, game mechanics, and events in the game
(particularly the ones that cause the cascading destruction of the whole
fortress). Tyson captures that tone brilliantly, weaving it throughout
his descriptions. This is a tutorial that's genuinely fun to read.
(Although the Tim Denee comics ending chapters sadly didn't work for me.)
It's certainly possible to get started with Dwarf Fortress without this
book. There are other tutorials on-line, as well as an impressively huge
wiki. But this is a great introduction and is entertainment in its own
right. If you've thought about playing the game, or if, like me, you want
a good feel for what it's like without investing the time in actually
playing it, I recommend it.
I should probably note that this book covers Dwarf Fortress up to 0.34.07,
and the dead tree version that I have obviously won't be further updated.
O'Reilly does note on the back cover that if you purchase the ebook
edition, it will receive free updates for the "life of the edition"
(however long that is). If you're worried about subsequent changes in the
game making the book obsolete (given the ongoing active development, this
is something of a worry, although this book mostly covers fundamentals),
you may want to grab the electronic version.
Rating: 8 out of 10