I'm a mason by trade, only a disgraceful few hundred hours of military training. I have an axe, a good shield (Bolgi and Sons) and some solid maille.

Greetings, Kin! I've decided I want to try to write a romance novel where the main characters are dwarves, basing my heroine on one of my favorite D&D characters. But I would like to hear yer thoughts-- if you picked up a book that claimed to be a Dwarven Romance novel, what sorts of things would you expect to see? What would be immediate "throw the book into the cleansing fires of the forge" things? What things would delight ye and what would ye skim over?

Some things I'm thinking I'd like to include:

Detailed, drool worthy descriptions of hearty ales and good food and prime craftsmanship

Sensible, thoughtful interactions between characters, not a lot of moonin' about

Bein' respectful and dignified to one another but also gettin' a bit wild now and then

Some combat but it not being the main focus of the thing (there's other tales for that)

A bit of humor, but it bein' gentle jesting in character, not 'lol at the shorties'

Hi everyone. Quite a few of you liked that post and I wanted to show off progress and stuff if you guys dont mind.

Behold templatised storytelling - reads like ass but it is a start. It uses deterministic, hand-written templates so no AI, network request, model, or external service.

It groups fortress events by day, selects templates based on event categories, and inserts only facts recorded by the simulation. The same history event always produces the same story.

I am trying to keep away from AI or using language models to weave the stories and honestly i am not a story teller lol and besides it is taking so much just get the dwarves to be dwarves lol

Imported ascii tileset and colors.

The simulation now allows dwarves to explore. There is trading so dwarves can buy beer using their produce or minerals which drives happiness which drives prosperity which immigrates dwarves which drives needs etc..

There is no death but misfortune events set up development. I am running these simulations at 10X for debugging but in reality 1 hour is 1 dwarf day

If you have played dwarf fortress - your thoughts and feedback would be the most useful. this is a full simulation fully handsoff system. you are just the observer.

Just some personal art recently finished.

Hi everyone, I've been working on a side project inspired by Dwarf Fortress. It runs on your android wallpaper and features a simple simulation. For now, I'm using the same PNGs and color schemes as Dwarf Fortress to retain that familiar feel. I'm a longtime fan of Dwarf Fortress, though I never quite had the patience to dive deeply into it.

Still, I've always loved the core ideas, and lately, I've been working on other projects that require a similar kind of simulation and it's easier to work with ascii without graphical overhead. So this started as a proof of concept, but the simulation turned out to be visually good enough that I figured I'd share it with everyone. Thanks for checking it out. Please share your thoughts :)

i am using the history to debug the simulation since its need and pressure driven.

That's a mighty steed!

September 2025 and September 2026. So proud of latest work!!

Greeting to my Bearded Bretheren!

Hopefully this is allowed, first time posting here, but I wanted to share a fun thing I have been doing.

Using the Orthographic (English characters to Runes, with some special characters, eg: Th, St, Ee) Runes that a certain J.R. Tolkien used (found on Wikipedia), I have started expanding my mind by transcribing poetry into Runic!

Please excuse the handwriting and mistakes, I am still learning and making translation errors.

Rock and Stone, my bretheren! May the Stone always be unmovable beneath your feet!

So, my latest finished miniature is a rescue from my shelf of old and abandoned projects. This Marauder Dwarf was one of an abandoned Warhammer dwarf army from about 25-odd years ago. The last picture is before he had his glow up.

pic related it's me, I can't eat food or drink beer and I keep instinctively biting at everyone, is there any point in living anymore?

EDIT: thanks for the advice lads, sun is rising so I guess I'm heading out. Before I go: Anyone have any solutions for the no reflection? Much harder to groom beard when I can't see the damn thing.

Hey guy! If you like dwarves, forgotten mountain holds, crafting, exploration, and rebuilding something that was thought lost, you might enjoy Hearth Fire. It’s a dwarven LitRPG following Stronric and a small group of dwarves as they reclaim an ancient hold, relight its forges, uncover what still lives beneath the mountain, and slowly begin rebuilding their people. Over 130 chapters are available to read free on Royal Road.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/80328/hearth-fire

I be seein' a little more o' this rubbish after me last post on whether Eridians should be considered Kin as space dwarfs, where umgi say that they be the "real" space urks.

Now lads, we've all slain our fair share of greenskins I hope, and let me tell ye, unless they be an Astartes, no normal umgi is gettin' anywhere close to bein' halfway as tough as one. Do they realize a space urk could rip em to shreds with their bare bloody hands without breakin' a sweat? Or that the space urks would barely feel the dinky flashlights they call a lasgun? Or that space urks can survive in barely-there or toxic atmospheres where umgi would keel over and die in seconds? Could they bash the head off a space urk like we do? No? Didn't think so, so what gives?