#losing is fun

[necromanticowboy]

I think some people would just be happier as anime villains. Specifically in the context of tabletop wargames, board games and card games.

Like you don’t need to build an Ur list or deck that can handle any possibility and learns from past mistakes, that’s main character shit. Just find a dumb gimmick you like and lean hard.

But I know what you’re saying “but cowboy, I’ll lose. I don’t like to lose” but what you don’t see is you’re not losing. Winning and losing games is for kids and main characters. You’re having fun with your dumb gimmick AND you’re helping some loser MC learn a valuable lesson about token mitigation or anti tank or something.

[explainslowly]

A human bard in my fortress randomly died... no signs of struggle such as blood or missing body parts... no one reports seeing a struggle so I'm chalking it up to a heart attack and not worrying about it. I'm sure it's gonna be fine.

[dwarvendiaries]

New Dwarf Fortress soundtrack just dropped!

[voidwerks]

It had to happen eventually. Seizedbrook has fallen.

The goblins came to make demands, insisting we took 'their' artifact, despite having crafted it in our halls. The ant-folk on the other hand had no goal, at least that any civilized race could understand. Though an accidentally unbarred gate, a trickle turned into a raging river, their many eyes fixed on Seizedbrook. Goblin and Dwarf and Ant all met in battle infront of the visitor's tavern, and for every ant slain by goblin and dwarf hands, 3 more arrived to take her place. The fighting was fierce, but before long all 50-some goblins and the 20-strong guard were wiped out, with well over 100 ants ready to storm the fort. What resistance remained was short lived, and before long the only sound echoing through the halls was the chittering of insects.

[yourwindgodgirl]

a giant hamster broke into my hospital and killed half my dwarves

[moss-the-dog]

Huh, they said these caverns were supposed to be dangerous. This is a walk in the park! Surely--

Oh, a Forgotten Beast! Nothing we can't handle. Our subterranean realm shall never kneel! Glory to Pillarthundered! Feel the bite of our steel, fiend! you cannot defeat--

Oh. They're dead. Well Fuck. It killed 50 of my best Axe-dwarves, over half of my army. It shot its foul webs, trapping them and killing them before they could do a thing!

Its fine, I still have 22 Marksdwarves, 10 Speardwarves, and a Hamster Woman Bowman. Plus my legions of mighty Miners! I'll just lock up the entrances to my fortress. We have thousands of units of food and drink, we can out-wait a single beast! Surely nothing will be able to breach our defenses! Wait, what's that?

Oh yeah. My werelizard infestation. A threat from within! I kinda forgot about that. At least it can't get much worse.

I'm sorry, did you just say there's two more forgotten beasts?

Fuck. Ok, we're really not doing so great.

My remaining citizens are all throwing tantrums and turning into werebeasts. They won't go into the food stockpile because of all of the miasma from their dead families and friends, so they're starving too. Not to mention that my plan to drown the forgotten beasts backfired, and now my main staircase is a watery deathtrap.

Yeah, I'm down to 11 Dwarves. All of my picks are trapped underwater, all of the miners dead or insane. No recovering from this.

I'm going to call it a day. It was fun, Pillarthundered, but I'll see you later.

[deafmangoes]

Every year around Christmas I start a new game in Dwarf Fortress and play it until I lose - my interest or all my dwarves, whichever is first.

This year my inaugural fort in the new Steam version died as many have done before: through a profound personal failure to understand the fluid mechanics and flooding every level of my settlement in the attempt to build a well.

One survivor of the deluge was the sole patient in the hastily constructed hospital - they'd left him tied to the traction bench, and only the hospital doors held back the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of floodwater from drowning the poor bugger before he died of thirst.

Losing is Fun.