Some Dwarf Fortress players do not play Dwarf Fortress. They do not manage mini-civilizations, feed dwarves, or fight elves. They do not even play the adventure mode, but instead traverse the generated Dwarf Fortress world in a ground-level roguelike.

They read. They are archaeologists who use Dwarf Fortress' procedural generation system to simulate 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years of history and then pore over the stories that come out of it. I've read paperback fantasy novels that were no more interesting than the worlds Dwarf Fortress quickly created with a few megabytes of code and CPU processing power.

But the history Dwarf Fortress can create now is rudimentary compared to what Tarn and Zach Adams have planned: after the remaining upgrades to the Steam version and a few small but important features, their next big thing will be to create the world they have been talking about for five years and have been working on for 20 years. The next big thing is the magic and mythology system they have been dreaming of since they wrote down their first notes for Dwarf Fortress five years ago.

"There are pages and pages of notes, virtually from the beginning," Zach says.

"As a fantasy game, there's not much [fantasy] right now," Tern says. 'There's a little bit of interaction with the gods, a little bit of black magic. But the big plan for this game, after going through this Steam process and a few things, is to do a procedural creation myth, and those creation myths will literally affect everything that follows."

[10 [For example, "If there were two worlds facing each other across a giant void, .......

"The magic system would relate more closely to what we have created in the creation myth, to the sense of the novel. Everything would make sense and work together, and the map could be more varied."

Alongside this radical rethinking of the way DwarfFortress' world is procedurally generated, Adams plans to develop tools that will allow players to edit the map and mythology themselves, much like the difference between Minecraft's Survival mode and Creative mode The difference is akin to the difference between Minecraft's Survival mode and Creative mode. For years, Dwarf Fortress has focused on the survival aspect of simulating a dwarven civilization, but the Mythology and Magic update will literally allow dwarves to play God while creating and naming the gods they worship.

"The idea is that people can do more static, more artistic work and build their own worlds that they can share," says Tarn. If you're creating a mod for Greek gods, you could place a specific Greek god, say Zeus, and give it a personality that fits it. Zeus can set the slider quite large.

"If you have a specific image of Olympus in your mind, you can literally draw it in the editor. When the rest of the world is generated, there's a static part that's part of the mod of the Greek gods that's glued to it. Then you can travel there in adventure mode. [The Adams brothers have a history of spending two to three years on the most complex updates to Dwarf Fortress. As Zach explains, it is not the procedurally generated aspects of the magic system itself that are taking so long to produce, but rewriting the mechanics of Dwarf Fortress' maps that is the biggest obstacle.

The current map consists of simple layers. Dig down into the crust and you hit magma. Along with magic, the layers of the world will no longer be perfectly stacked and horizontal, allowing for things like forests that magically disappear under the light of a full moon or teleporting dwarves into a fantasy pocket universe.

"We've always thought of the magic system as a giant debugger," says Tern. 'We need an API that hooks into as many things as possible in the game. Can you create a love potion that actually affects thoughts and relationships that already exist? It's not just a fantasy element, it's an actual fantasy game that can be completed. It's going to be very exciting."

Tarn spoke at length about their plans for the magic system in 2017, and now that the Steam version has reached hundreds of thousands of new players, I'm excited about it again. The Adamses plan to complete the Steam version's outstanding features and upgrade the villain and military systems. It's going to take a while yet. But if you are marveling at all that Dwarf Fortress can do now, just wait a few years. It will be a whole new world.

.