Text Fortress: Legends

A journaling game / solo RPG where you play as the Chronicler in charge of recounting the trials, successes and failures of a group of dwarves set on building a fortress, by fate or by choice.

Each season the fortress will face a few challenges generated by dice rolls, and your role as a player is to relate in the Chronicle how it affected your kin, so that other dwarves can learn from your success when you become a successful Mountainhome.

To play, you only need this book, one six-sided dice and something to write on.

The game is only text for now, but I will turn it into a full-fledged book once I've had enough feedback to settle the rules, so feedback and suggestions are welcome!

---

A new Text Fortress!

I made Text Fortress about two years and a half ago as an effort to replicate on paper the experience of playing Dwarf Fortress by Tarn and Zach Adams. While I'm happy with the vibe of the game, and it's design goals are more or less achieved, I also realized that the buildings, jobs and resources made for a lot of accounting, making it more of a spreadsheet game than a journaling game.

That's okay, but that's also not what I wanted to play. To me, Dwarf Fortress is more about the stories that evolve from the events, rather than about keeping the right numbers up and keeping track of what everyone is doing. I ended up rewriting Text Fortress from the beginning with clear design goals, and although it took longer than expected, it turned out nicely if I may say so myself.

Design goals:

• First and foremost a writing game, rather than accounting.
• Failure should be as interesting as success
• Dice are here to help the player tell a story. They inspire the chronicle, but the game is not about dice.

Also, I used AI-generated pictures as the foundation of the pixel art in the original Text Fortress. I have developed a strong opinion about these since then, so this new edition was also a way for me to make things right with myself. Once the rules have settled a bit I am set on making a book that will be "made by humans". I'm terrible at drawing but I think I'll be prouder of myself with something that I drew rather than something based on stolen art.