Index, readme stub, what is DF

misc/what-is-df.rst

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+#######################
+What is Dwarf Fortress?
+#######################
+
+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>`_
+