By: Derek Yu
On: March 3rd, 2008

Finally got around to reading this Gamasutra interview with Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams (the other half being his brother, Zach). It’s a really great read that covers a lot of Dwarf Fortress’s history and pre-history, and also gets into a lot of geeky stuff like pathfinding and fluid dynamics.
But this is the best part:
What’s left to answer is why’d we be so into doing a fantasy game. That’s probably the same as everybody else: Tolkien, D&D, myths, and of course, the movie
Beastmaster. (We like the part where the evil priest is like, “You’ll be sacrificed to ‘The God of AAaa,’” like they didn’t even bother thinking of a name, just powering through on the power of their badassedness.) But there were all kinds of things like that. In the movies, books, the arcade, PC, consoles, we were surrounded by that sort of thing.
Yes, frickin’ Beastmaster! I love that movie! I love you guys!
The image depicts YADFA (Yet Another Dwarf Fortress Anecdote), from DF forum member goldminer:
Its [sic] pretty fun to capture invaders and then devise crazy ways of getting rid of them. My current method happens to be a gold arena over an active volcano with an enraged bronze colossus. Goblins get dumped in through a hole from above.
Every year or so, the dwarves lower the bridge, re-capture the colossus and ‘clean’ the arena for future use. I had to build walls around the arena because too much precious iron was getting thrown into the magma.
Via this DF forum thread.