Bay 12 Forums

The Bay 12 Games Forums are the main hub of fan-based activity and discussion surrounding the game. Users can ask questions about game play, exchange stories of their exploits, advertise their own contributions (mods, tools, pregenerated worlds), make suggestions for improvements, or discuss the game in a more general fashion. Toady One is known to read the forums and occasionally respond to posts when he sees fit. In the past bugs were also reported here, but they have since been moved into the domain of the Bug Tracker, although workarounds and such are still discussed on the wiki.

Subforums

Bay 12 Games

• Announcements: This is where Toady One posts general announcements, mostly the Bay 12 Games Report, a monthly report on the status of the game's development. It is read-only.

Dwarf Fortress

• DF Announcements: This is where announcements on Dwarf Fortress specifically are made, usually specifying new release. As a matter of procedure, the most recent announcement thread is open to fans, but the rest are locked.
• DF Bug Reports: This used to be where bugs were reported, before the Bug Tracker was created. New threads cannot be created, but old ones are still live, and occasional necromancy is common.
• DF Suggestions: Where suggestions on the game are made, and players can freely discuss ways of how the game could be improved. Any suggestions are welcome, ranging from minor changes to the display up to major additions like magic systems. While Toady One is known to visit this forum, non-trivial suggestions are very rarely implemented into the game. Vote counting will not win him over either.
• DF Gameplay Questions: This is the place where you can go if you encounter something you do not understand, which neither looks like a bug nor is explained sufficiently in the wiki. Questions about specific game mechanisms are common, but people also often ask for advice about how to implement certain ideas or features here. Topics range in complexity from "how do I start a farm?" to "is it possible to use perpetual motion to your advantage outside of power generation?"
• DF Wiki Discussion: A subforum of the above, this is where the wiki (you're looking at it) is discussed. Grounds for discussion is rather more niche than the other forums, so activity is low, but the wiki admins and contributors do watch it.
• DF Dwarf Mode Discussion is especially dedicated to discussions about dwarf fortress mode. This forum usually contains discussions about either ideas for ways to play in fortress mode or experiences with fortress mode. The content therein ranges from anecdotal to inspirational - it is a place of humor, revelry, fun, and occasional !!SCIENCE!! alike.
• DF Adventure Mode Discussion is the counterpart to the previously described forum. It is dedicated to discussions about adventurer mode. Like its fortress mode counterpart, this forum ranges from ideas to anecdotes as people describe both their experiences as well as their ideas for adventurer mode playing.
• DF Community Games & Stories, dedicated to discussions about community games and stories. In this forum, fans can advertise their community games, succession games, and the like and also handle the actually post exchange that is required for organizing such events. And they also exchange the stories of what happens in the game. Please note that, like the other forums, this forum does not offer upload facilities.
• DF Modding is dedicated to discussions about modding. Fans use it to advertise their mods, exchange experiences with the modding process, and also ask and answer questions about how to mod the game successfully. It has multiple subforums as well.
• DF General Discussion is the catch for all forum for dwarf fortress. Any discussions that do not fit nicely in any of the other DF forums go here. Topics here range from random ranting only losely related to the game, over dwarf fortress' public image, fanart exchanges, general thoughts on the game, Toady One, and the developments surrounding both. A noteworthy special feature is the Future of the Fortress threads started by Toady One as a community Q&A meant to discuss future development. This is the main source of dev news, alongside the dev notes.

Other Projects

• Slaves to Armok: God of Blood is the very first forum from the site and is dedicated to discussions concerning the predecessor of dwarf fortress. It was locked in 2010, but looking through it you can find some 2001-era Toady One commentary.
• Curses is dedicated to discussions about other ASCII based games by Bay 12 Games.
• Other Games: Ever wish you could discuss your thoughts on games with probably the most eclectic gaming community of them all? Well, now you can!
• Play With Your Buddies: Just what it sounds like, LPs and the like. Subforum of Other Games.

Finally

• Creative Projects: Visual arts, music, writing, and anything else you are working on that you'd like to share.
• General Discussion: Discussions, commentary, reviews, news, friendly debates. All thoughts welcome.
• Life Advice: Please do not solicit medical or legal advice from the Internet.
• Forum Games and Roleplaying: You can participate in the only multiplayer games B12 is likely to have anything to do with here. Feel free to start one of your own. Has Roll to Dodge and Mafia sub-boards.

Rules and suggestions

The forum rules have been more or less laid out in this thread.

Some suggestions:

Use the Search Function

The forums offer a search function (look in the upper right corner). The forums see a lot of activity day by day and thus chances are great that someone already asked the same question before or made a similar suggestion previously.

Please note that the search function offers searching a single forum or all forums, defaulting to the forum from where you visited the search function. There may be cases where people posted in an unexpected forum, so you might wish to search in all forums the issue you wish to discuss might fit in (for instance, questions about how to create certain structures in fortress mode could fit both in the DF Gameplay Questions or the DF Dwarf Mode Discussions subforums.

Support Existing Threads

Instead of starting new threads, consider participating in threads already dealing with the issue. This is especially an important issue for suggestions as some of the obvious ones tend to resurface regularly.