Text Fortress

A Fortress management pen-and-paper game

A solo game that aims to recreate the experience of Dwarf Fortress by Tarn and Zach Adams, with dice and paper. Manage an underground Fortress, mine caverns, manage your resources, construct buildings, defend your dwarves against invasions, and try not to get overwhelmed by random events.

A 36-page rulebook, complete with random events. In a typical game of Text Fortress, the following might happen

• Repel a giant weapon-wielding Forgotten Beast with Rangers in a tower, then lose half your dwarves and all your treasure to Goblin Raiders the next week.
• Have a simple normal guy (Totally Not A Necromancer) visit your Tavern, and to everyone's surprise, turn out to be a Necromancer, but one that is really weak to punches.
• Delve too deep and too greedily, and flood your fortress with lava (incidentally stopping a Troll from invading), but also find diamond along the way
• Have your Brewer die in a Tantrum Spiral, resulting in half your fortress going on strike from lack of Beer

In Text Fortress, every week you roll for an event (ranging from "it has started raining" to "A Dragon attacks your fortress"), then allocate tasks to your dwarves, based on their skills. You need to manage your food and beer, along with your resources, to construct buildings that will significantly improve the life of your dwarves (and their chance of survival). You only need one or two dice, a notebook and an eraser. One turn (=one week) takes about 3-5 minutes, allowing both short sessions and longer runs.