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What is Dwarf Fortress?
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Above anything else, Dwarf Fortress is a complicated game.

Enough has been written about this already, so this will simply link to
some of the better articles for a background understanding.

.. note to editors

    These quotes are suggested reading for people who have never heard
    of DF before.  Stick to official sources and the general media.


.. epigraph::

    Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a
    dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.

    Although Dwarf Fortress is still in a work in progress, many features
    have already been implemented...

    -- `Tarn Adams (developer of *Dwarf Fortress*) <http://bay12games.com/dwarves/features.html>`_


.. epigraph::

    "Losing is Fun"

    -- Community motto


.. epigraph::

    Dwarf Fortress is a mixture of classic turn-based fantasy adventure
    games and sophisticated city building that has been confounding
    observers since 2006. It's visuals appear incomprehensible and
    its learning curve not just steep and unending, but slippery and
    sometimes electrified.

    To look at Dwarf Fortress it is easy to imagine it as an
    anachronistic throwback to the likes of Rogue and Nethack, a cute
    little sort of retro tribute. However the truth of the matter,
    which becomes rapidly more apparent as you learn exactly what is
    being done within the game, is that this is not a primitive or old
    fashioned game. Dwarf Fortress is spectacularly sophisticated. The
    world that the game generates for you is created in the sort of
    meticulous detail that would typically demand several hundred pages
    of appendices at the end of a JRR Tolkien novel. Each created world
    has a history, legendary figures, towns, cities and people. You can
    create a world that is artificially aged up to a thousand years, or
    you can start with a younger world, either approach bringing with it
    different challenges. A new world might be untamed when a more
    established one might be home to established communities of potential
    foes such as goblins.

    -- `NewStatesman  <http://www.newstatesman.com/killing-time/2014/07/way-down-hole-getting-grips-dwarf-fortress>`_


.. epigraph::

    Players are responsible for the cultivation and management of a 
    virtual ecosystem — a colony of dwarves trying to build a thriving
    fortress in a randomly generated world. Dwarf Fortress unfolds as
    a series of staggeringly elaborate challenges and devastating
    setbacks that lead, no matter how well one plays, to eventual ruin.

    Many simulation games offer players a bag of building blocks, but
    few dangle a bag as deep, or blocks as small and intricately
    interlocking, as Dwarf Fortress. Beneath the game’s rudimentary
    facade is a dizzying array of moving parts, algorithms that model
    everything from dwarves’ personalities (some are depressive; many
    appreciate art) to the climate and economic patterns of the
    simulated world. ... 
    
    -- `The NY Times Magazine <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/the-brilliance-of-dwarf-fortress.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all>`_

