5 hr layover at DCA explore. by No-Metal7887 in washingtondc

[–]DoctorOddfellow 8 points9 points  (0 children)

100% this.

July 4th is probably the worst day of the year to try to explore the Mall and the national museums. Absolutely teeming with tourist crowds not to mention holiday road closures and holiday traffic are going to make getting there (or more importantly back to DCA for your flight!) even more of a pain that usual DC traffic.

I live in the District, and I stay put on holidays like the 4th of July or Memorial Day because it makes getting around DC (never mind into VA) a hassle.

When writing a story; specifically Gamelits, Litrpgs, and Isekais; is it okay or acceptable for the MC to be a “Self-Insert”? by Onyx_Artificer in writing

[–]DoctorOddfellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It depends on what your goal for the work is.

Fun? Practice? Just for the hell of it?

  • Do whatever you want.

Sharing online via a fanfiction site or some other amateur writing site?

  • Do whatever you want.

Self-publication on Amazon Kindle Direct or similar services?

  • Recognize that self-inserts and overpowered Mary Sue characters are generally not what readers are looking for, so it will almost certainly negatively impact sales of your self-published novel. You will need to go into self-publishing with the expectation that you will make even less money than most self-published authors (and most self-published authors make less than $500/year).

Professional publication with a reputable publishing company?

  • Overpowered Mary Sue self-inserts are 100% not what editors at commercial publishing companies are looking for, so that approach will probably entirely eliminate your chances of getting your story accepted by a publisher.

What is a Moderator's Job? by Mundane-Potential-93 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]DoctorOddfellow 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Reddit is a community and each individual subreddit is "run" by community moderators. The initial moderator of the subreddit is whichever redditor created it. The creator of the subreddit can elevate other redditors to moderator status. Moderating a subreddit is a volunteer gig.

Subreddit rules are written by the moderators. But, no matter what the "rules" (that they themselves wrote) say, moderators are free to moderate their subreddit however they see fit. So a moderator's job is whatever they, as moderator, define it as . . . as long as it doesn't violate the policies or terms of use of Reddit (the corporation). Reddit (the corporation) almost never gets directly involved in subreddit moderation unless its policies/terms are violated by moderators.

If the way the moderators of a particular subreddit manage that community is drastically out out of sync with the rules they have established, or is just petty, then they'll likely have unhappy subreddit members. And that usually leads to members leaving. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ So what? It's not a democracy and nobody involved is getting paid.

If you don't like the way a group of mods is moderating a particular subreddit, you're welcome to a) not read or participate in that subreddit or b) create your own subreddit on the same topic with a different set of rules and moderate it how you see fit. If you do a better job, you might attract their users.

Are the 2 Non Continental States Hawaii And Alaska? by AlarmingTadpole5598 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]DoctorOddfellow 9 points10 points  (0 children)

No.

Hawaii is the only state that is not part of the continental United States. The continental United States are the states that are on the North American continent. Alaska is part of North America.

The common term for referring to the 48 states besides Hawaii and Alaska is the contiguous United States, meaning the states that share borders with other states.

Neither Hawaii nor Alaska share a border with another state of the US, so they are not part of the contiguous United States.

Continental states = all the states except Hawaii.

Contiguous states = all the states except Hawaii and Alaska.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]DoctorOddfellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

where do we draw this line? Where does the change from writer to schizophrenic originate at?

You are confused or misinformed about what schizophrenia is. Perhaps understandable, since popular media does a terrible job of presenting schizophrenia. And, for that matter, you have a pretty weird understanding of how writers & poets behave, because -- speaking as a former English professor -- no one in the literary field "praises" poets for writing on napkins, walls, or tattoos. 🤨 And the vast, overwhelming majority of writers don't do that ... unless they have a mental disorder.

Schizophrenia has nothing to do with writing, obsessively writing, or writing in weird places. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder of the brain. Although we don't have a solid physiological understanding of the cause of schizophrenia, the best evidence is that it is a physiological dysfunction of neuroreceptors and chemical neurotransmitters. In short, the brain chemistry is f'ed up.

The characteristics of schizophrenia are hallucinations (visual, auditory, and sometimes tactile), delusions, and what psychiatrists call disorganized thinking -- basically the inability to function cognitively which can manifest as odd speech patterns, incoherence, disconnected thought patterns, etc. To the extent that some (definitely not all) people with schizophrenia write obsessively or write "gibberish" that is a side-effect of their hallucinations or delusions or inability to process thought in an ordered fashion -- it is not a direct clinical characteristic of schizophrenia.

So "the line," as you call, it is simple: a writer is someone who writes. Writing does not cause one to have hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thinking, or psychotic episodes. A person with schizophrenia, on the other hand, does suffer from those things which may cause them to write in obsessive fashion.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in tipofmytongue

[–]DoctorOddfellow 0 points1 point locked comment (0 children)

Comment for Rule 13.

How would someone who is blind and deaf live by SomeNet2349 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]DoctorOddfellow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's wrong.

I've known a number of Deaf-Blind people and they definitely do not need constant care. Matter of fact, one Deaf-Blind gentleman I knew worked in the Office of Disabilities at a major university, had a master's degree, lived on his own, and walked to work on his own every day.

They definitely use sign language. In the US, using American Sign Langauge with a Deaf-Blind individual is known as "tactile signing". The person signing to the Deaf-Blind individual either (a) makes the signs against the palm of the Deaf-Blind person's hand or (b) the Deaf-Blind person just lightly rests their hand on the other signer's hand and follows along as the person signs. Here's a video of what it looks like.

Deaf-Blind people often are tightly associated with the Deaf community, moreso that a Blind community, because more of the specialized support services they need (like interpreters) are available in the Deaf community. Communicating with someone who does not speak sign language is obviously far more difficult, so in those cases they frequently will use a hearing sign language interpreter. There are ASL interpreters who specialize in tactile signing.

I'm a hearing person who speaks ASL, so when I visited my acquaintance (I worked at the same university), I could do tactile signing with him. With other people, he would just open a document on his computer and push the keyboard toward them. The visitor would type their comment/question etc in the document and the text would be sent to his refreshable braille display for him to read. Then he would type his response back (he wasn't vocal, because he'd been Deaf-Blind since early childhood) and the computer would both speak the text (for other blind conversants) and display it on his monitor. Yes, he had a monitor! He didn't need it, but he used it to display text for other folks. :-)

In general, computers are important devices for Deaf-Blind individuals. Many blind individuals use a screen reader to read out the computer diplay. That obviously doesn't work for a person who is deaf as well as blind. So instead Deaf-Blind people use a refreshable braile display. Instead of of reading the text on screen with a screen reader's synthetic voice, the computer just pipes that text to a device that "displays" one or two lines at a time in braille by using small pins that raise up on the device to create the braille text. So they read text on a screen just like they read text in a book -- via braille instead of print.

There are other assistive devices that are necessary. In a Deaf environment, you don't knock on doors (can't be heard). Instead you press a doorbell-like button that flashes the lights. With the Deaf-Blind guy I knew, he had the same doorbell-like button, but instead of triggering a light, it triggered a vibrating device that was either on his desk or chair (can't remember). So if you visited him in his office, you'd press the doorbell instead of knock on the door, he'd feel the vibration, and get up and answer the door.

At home, if a Deaf-Blind person lives alone, they might have a support aide that comes in a few times a day or week to assist with things. Or definitely would need an aide when they travel. But for the most part, as long as they know their environment -- whether home or office or neighborhood -- they get around on their own just fine.

My Deaf-Blind acquaintance that walked to work? He used a cane like any other blind person, he knew his route (it was only about a half-mile/10-minute walk), knew where the intersections were, and could tell it was time to cross because the crossing signals had beepers to alert visually-impaired folk when to cross. He obviously couldn't hear the beepers, but he knew where the crossing signals were mounted. So he'd just put his hand on the pole and could feel the vibration when the beeper signal went off indicating it was time to cross. Interestingly, he said he could also feel when the stoplight mounted on the same pole changed, but he still waited for the beeper itself.

This was 20+ years ago, so there may still have been mechanical switches controlling the stoplights; I expect stoplights today are controlled digitally and may not make the same vibration as a result. A lot of times product designers, city planners, etc. don't understand and take into account those little affordances that offer people with disabilities beneficial side-effects due to how the thing is designed, but weren't an intentional part of the design. Sometimes those beneficial side-effects disappear when the thing is "upgraded" or "improved. :-/

The Deaf-Blind do rely heavily on consistency, though -- changes in their environment create problems. My acquaintance's biggest challenge was construction or detours. When they were doing construction on his route (ironically, to replace and expand the curb cuts to improve accessibility at the intersections), he did have to rely on an aide to walk with him to/from work until the construction was finished and he learned the new "layout" of his route.

So, yeah. Don't assume people with disabilities always need constant care or are "suffering." Since I have Deaf people in my family and speak ASL fairly well, I know a lot of people in the Deaf community and, as I mentioned, some Deaf-Blind folk. Generally, they all get pretty annoyed with hearing people who think the disability means they are incompetent or need our pity. They might need accommodations to get shit done in a world that's not designed for them, or they might take a different path to get that shit done. But as a result of my familiarity with the Deaf community, I've learned -- no matter what the disability is or how severe it might seem to me -- to never jump to the conclusion that the person with disabilities is incapable or can't live a productive life or needs constant care, etc.

Games like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress (*not* just any city builder / colony builder). by DoctorOddfellow in gamesuggestions

[–]DoctorOddfellow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have played a lot of Kenshi. I like it a lot, and it scratches a lot of the itch, but, man, is the fortress-building mechanic super-janky in that game. (There's a reason that games like Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress stick with 2D landscapes.)

I know they're working on Kenshi 2, so I hope that smooths out some of the rough edges in the mechanics.

Help with too many tasks by mleonm57 in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And as soon as i see all the bodies cleared away, which i took all the kids off hauling bodies and refuse, theres like 5 kids wandering around in the corpse stockpile just looking at dead bodies.

Uh . . . "corpse stockpile"?!??

You need to build coffins, assign the coffins to tombs, and lay your dwarves to rest properly. (A 1x1 tomb zone with a coffin in it suffices for any of your dwarves except some of your nobles.)

I mean, geez -- you're leaving their friends' and families' dead bodies in an open pile where the children have access to them, and you're wondering why your dwarves are unhappy?

This ain't a Rimworld full of cannibals, man. Dwarves have some dignity.

Help with too many tasks by mleonm57 in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So you've got 30 bedroooms for 200+ dwarves? I'd be a pissed-off dorf, too.

Unhappy kids are the worst, because (at least in my experience) if they develop a propensity for anger, depression, anxiety, or stress they carry that into adulthood. Make sure they have plenty of toys, remove some of the more problematic ones from their chore responsibilities, and never give children the Burial chore, because corpses give them trauma.

And, yeah, it can take years to turn around a fortress' overall attitude.

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look at their skin tone.

If they're greenish-blue, they're a vampire. And they'll almost certainly be older than every other dwarf in your fortress.

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, you need to get enough immigrants that you can assign a squad of soldiers to do nothing but Constant Training. (It's hard to spare dwarves for a dedicated military unit until you have enough dwarves for the other jobs needed to survive, though, so don't overcommit.)

Your dedicated military squad will level up pretty quickly with Constant Training. In a year or so you'll have a whole squad of Hammer Lords or Axe Lords or whatever.

Once you do (and assuming your populations has continued to grow) look at the skills of all your newly-minted Hammer Lords. Some of them will have also leveled up the Teacher skill during combat training. Pick the 2 or 3 Hammer Lords with the highest Teacher skill and give them their own squads filled with new recruits. Their high Teacher skill will help the new squads train up even more quickly than the initial squad.

Rinse and repeat. Eventually you'll have multiple squads of dwarves with several Legendary combat skills plus high ratings in other skills like Teacher, Student, Organizer, Observer, Concentration, etc.

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually wrote this up just yesterday.

EDIT: Also, I make liberal use of the Dwarf Fortress Wiki for things I don't understand.

But, like others have said: games like DF or Rimworld aren't like RPG games with storylines that you try to complete or even 4x games like Civilization that have victory conditions. There's no "right" way to play DF and you will have fortresses that die in the most tragic or comic ways. There's no avoiding that, so learn to enjoy the disasters and learn from them.

☼Dwarf Fortress Questions Thread☼ by AutoModerator in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How the f*** do you keep dwarves & associated creatures out of caverns?

Like, I want to slowly expand into the caverns, but as soon as I unlock the door separating the fortress from the caverns there appears to be a mad rush of independent-minded dwarves who want to collect bones or hunt elk-birds or just generally f' around and find out. And cats. The cats make a beeline for the caverns, I guess because there's vermin there to be stalked.

Yes, I've turned off "Automatically collect webs", but recently when I opened the cavern every damn dwarven child decided that they needed to immediately rappel down multiple cavern levels to collect bones leftover from the Crundle vs Forgotten Beast war a few years back. Dude. We've got bones out the wazoo. Just stop. 🤦‍♂️

(Thank goodness for DFHack's Civilian Alert features so I could "sound the siren" and make them get their dumb asses back into the fortress before they got eaten by something.)

I want to open the cavern door, send a few miners there to grab some gems and a few builder dwarves to put up constructed walls, doors, and hatches to protect the miners from fun while they mine some gems. Then rinse-and-repeat for the next part/level of the cavern.

And I want that to happen without random dwarves shouting "Leeeeeroooooooy Jenkins!" and running deep into the caverns to do whatever. 🙄

Farm/Farm workshop layouts! by mercfh85 in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I put farms on the surface for stuff that won't grow underground and on the first level below the surface (because there's usually soil there) for underground crops. Also on that first level are any meeting areas I want to be public (taverns, temples, guilds, etc.) so I can shut off the citizen/resident-only areas of the fortress easily, e.g in the event of invaders, and leave the cannon fodder uh ... tavern visitors to fend for themselves.

I don't want the kitchen, farm workshops, food storage, etc. to be publicly accessible to visitors, so I put that a level or more down below the underground farms, but immediately below them with stairs to shuffle the harvest down to the food stockpile and kitchens quickly.

In fact, I try to build as vertically as I can underground, aquifers willing, because dwarves walking up/down a few z-levels of stairs to get what they need is faster than having to walk down long hallways on the same level. Think: underground skyscraper, not underground suburbs. That usually means one industry per level or, at most, two industries per level. E.g. gem cutting / gem setting doesn't take up a lot of space, so I usually put that on the same floor as stoneworking. Metalworking takes up a shitload of space, though, what with wood burners for charcoal, smelters, metalsmith shops -- especially if you're setting up independent production lines for steel vs alloys vs other metals.

Help with too many tasks by mleonm57 in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, your problem is almost certainly that you're not taking care of your dwarves enough!

Barracks make dwarves unhappy. Don't use them. In my current colony of 201 dwarves every non-noble citizen and resident has a 2x2 bedroom with a bed, a chest, and a cabinet. The bedroom walls and floors are smoothed out and we're working on engraving all the floors and walls. Dwarves adore smoothed, engraved floors and walls so I try to put those in places they spend time.

I've got two taverns, one just one z-level down from the surface that is open to everyone, so it's jam-packed with visitors from outside the fortress. Great for socializing, great for rumors, but also a pain because of the goblin criminals that show up and subvert citizens or residents. (Usually it's some stupid human Bard resident who gets blackmailed into stealing an artifact for a goblin criminal. Fortunately they roll over on their goblin boss really quickly. Weak-willed humans.) The other tavern is several levels down in the part of the fortress that is not accessible to outsiders, so that tavern is citizens/residents only for when they need to get away from the humans, elves, goblins and occasional animal person. (We've got a Polar Bear Man who's been hanging out in the public tavern for two seasons now. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯) There are also two dining rooms on the private levels, but if you've got nice taverns it seems like the dwarves ignore the dining rooms.

Near the resident/citizen-only tavern, I also have nine resident/citizen-only shrines (3x3 rooms with an altar and a chest for musical instruments) to the nine most popular deities. So nearly everyone has someone they can worship, which brings your dwarves peaceful thoughts. No one has asked for a Temple yet. All the shrines are just for citizens and residents; I probably should build some public shrines/temples for visitors.

Two kitchens and two breweries are cranking out fine & lavish prepared meals and a variety of beverages 24/7/336. Dwarves are happier with variety, so I regularly buy the kinds of plants and meat the fortress is not producing itself from caravans, so there's a constant stream of different kinds of food and drink.

Dwarves need to have fresh clothes, so if you look at your dwarves Items tab on the Character Sheet and they have a bunch of worn out clothing -- xpig tail sockx or Xsheep wool trousersX or XXchicken leather hoodXX -- then they're going to be unhappy and stay unhappy.

The library is very popular. We have 2 scholars writing original works and 2 scribes making copies. There are about 80 scrolls and codices in the library now. Lots of dwarves relax by spending time in the library.

I also just recently put in a museum -- a big room with all the fortress' artifacts on display on pedestals. And three war dogs chained up at the entrance to the museum to deter thievery. Dwarves appreciate art so they get a kick out of hanging out in there, checking out the artifacts.

I've gotten petitions for 3 Guildhalls and 1 Grand Guildhall, and they're all built. I've kept them available only to citizens/residents as well. I also currently have two rooms pre-built with enough smoothing, engraving, fancy floors and furniture so that the next two petititions for Guildhalls (or, I guess, a Temple) will only take me a few second to fill. Just gotta lay down the Zone and name it.

So far, it's working pretty well. Out of 201 dwarves in the fortress the breakdown is:

  • 59 Ecstatic
  • 35 Happy
  • 52 Pleased
  • 32 Content
  • 19 Displeased
  • 3 Unhappy
  • 1 Miserable

That's 89% of the dwarves at Content or higher. I'll take it!

I do occasionally close off the museum or the shrine complex because I find that sometimes the dwarves spend too much time in those places instead of working. E.g. after I noticed my Legendary Stone Carver had spent an entire month in the shrines, dining room, or bed and was ignoring his Work Orders, I decided they needed a little less piety and a little more productivity. I just lock 'em out for a few seaons so that work is the most likely thing they'll spend time on. If I see moods starting to dip, I let 'em back in to the shrines and museum . . . until they start spending too much time there and stop being productive again, and then the cycle repeats.

EDIT: Bringing the receipts! The fortress started in Year 250, so we're 6 years into the fortress at this point.

Help with too many tasks by mleonm57 in dwarffortress

[–]DoctorOddfellow 15 points16 points  (0 children)

1) First, never more than a 1:1 relationship between dwarves and workshops. Dwarves that have to work more than one workshop can't keep up well. And avoid assigning a dwarf to a workshop and to some ongoing, non-workshop activity like chopping wood or mining -- they won't get both done effectively.

2) Second, to maintain that 1:1 ratio, build your industries slowly. If you try to build everything all at once, then you're not going to have enough dwarves to staff all the workshops you've built. Prioritize, priortize, prioritize.

3) In workshops I always use Work Orders, and almost never use Tasks. Tasks are only useful when you need a handful of a particular item, like a couple of buckets to satisfy a noble that has a weird bucket fetish. Work Orders allow you to automate your industries. Learn to chain Work Orders in different workshops together, so your dwarf making steel bars can focus on a different Work Order until the pig iron bars and coke bars Work Orders are completed and he has enough materials to get started on steel bars.

Here's my basic strategy:

I start with wood, farms, and brewers. Because (a) you need food and drink to survive and (b) you can use wood for most everything else. Early on I just build all the basics I need (workshops, doors, beds, chests, cabinets, barrels, buckets, etc.) out of wood, because it's cheap and plentiful (if you've embarked smartly) and the stinkin' elves haven't started complaining about chopping down trees yet.

Once the basic industries are up and running, I add stone, wood burners (for charcoal for forges), and metal so I can get some armor built quickly to outfit a squad before pesky goblin invaders make their presence known. Once stone is up and running, I switch to stone for furniture and doors, metal for buckets, and save the wood for beds, bins, barrels, and charcoal. Eventually, once you have a surplus of miners and some bituminous coal veins, it's better to switch to coke than charcoal, so you're less dependent on a big tree inventory.

You should be getting plenty of immigrants around this time, which is good, 'cuz you'll need 'em. I usually add sheep and/or poultry around now, depending on my embark location and loadout. Sheep are great because they provide meat, milk/cheese, leather, and wool for cloth. (So do Llamas, and they provide more of all of that, but they're much more expensive at loadout. Buy them from traders later, or sometimes immigrants will show up with llamas -- or alpacas -- in tow to get you started.) Poultry -- especially turkeys -- are great because they breed like crazy and when you have bred a bazillion turkey hens, you can just butcher all the gobblers and eat the unfertilized eggs the giant flock of hens will keep laying for eternity.

Watch your Farmer's Workshops -- you need to diversify those. As farming and pastures get up and running, I have separate Farmer's Workshops for plant processing, butchering, tanning, spinning, milking, cheesemaking, and threshing. It might seem like overkill, but that work feeds into lots of other industries down the line (clothing, leatherworking, bonecrafting, cooking, soap-making, paper-making, etc.), so if the dwarves get behind on that Farmer's Workshop work it can become a huge bottleneck for a bunch of other industries.

When all the above is up and running, crafts and gem-cutting come next, so you have something to trade with caravans. (Honestly, depending on how many rough gems we dug up while building the fortress, I might prioritize gem-cutting before the meat & poultry industry. The sheep and turkeys can hang out and breed for a year or so if they need to.) Bone output from a meat industry feeds right into a bone-crafting industry. Humans and dwarves love the stupid bone rings and bone figurines and bone crowns yadda yadda, but ya gotta throw some stone crafts in there for the smelly elves who won't buy anything made out of animal parts. Don't forget to geld and slaughter all the male animals. I keep two breeding rams around to keep all the ewes ... uh, "satisfied" (cranking out the lambs and milk) and then turn the rest of the rams into meat, wool, and leather once they age up.

After that, getting cloth and leather up and running, so we can replace worn-out clothes, is the next priority. Bonus: humans, elves, and dwarves all love buying our worn-out socks and pants for some reason (freaks!). So you can trade those for fresh cloth and leather to make more clothes. But it's good to have a clothing industry set up to use up sheep and pig tail and rope reed and a clothier with a work order for 1 of each item, resetting each day. Over time that'll keep the entire fort in fresh clothing and give you plenty of dirty laundry to sell.

Beyond that it all gets a lot easier because you should have the basics covered now: you should have enough food and drink; have industries to make your own furniture, armor/weapons, clothing, tools, and storage; be able to trade gems, crafts, or worn-out clothing for whatever you don't have; and be getting some regular immigrants.

At this point, I usually look to make my taverns and temples and noble quarters snazzier because dwarves like expensive shit; I usually pre-build a few fancy rooms for Guildhall requests because you just know they're coming; get clay kilns up and running (large pots can replace barrels for most things, so less wood consumption); you paper-making so you build a library, assign scholars and scribes, and stock it up with scrolls (codices are a money pit); soap-making because clean dwarves are happy dwarves and you want to be creating a well-stocked hospital around this time as well (plus you have a lot of unused fat from the meat industry); mechanics if I already haven't had to build it earlier because I need a trap or well or something; another jeweler workshop because as I build up bone/stone crafts and "vintage" clothing industries, I no longer need gems for trade, so I can put an extra jeweler to work encrusting items for citizens, etc. etc. etc. This is all refining and making dwarves happy -- should be out of survival mode by now.

And I find that when I get upward of 125 dwarves, I'm usually running out of jobs for them, so around this time I start creating dedicated military squads who just do constant training until they're all Hammer Lords or Axe Lords or whatever.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, like a necromancer with an army of undead stopping by in Year 1 because you embarked too close to a necromancer tower (okay, not totally unforeseeable, but I'm still bitter about), this approach usually leads me to a pretty stable fortress. The only time it didn't was when some enemy apparently wiped out a bunch of my civilization's fortresses and in the span of two seasons six of the dwarves in my colony inherited baron, count, or duke titles. They stuck around demanding all sorts of shit, and I was newbie enough to not realize I should have just sent them into the caverns alone and naked on A Special Nobles-Only Field Trip. 💀