When Dwarf Fortress creators Tarn & Zach Adams talk about the games that inspired them growing up, they're almost all RPGs—so how did they end up making the PC's most famous management simulation and not an RPG? Part of the answer is that they did make an RPG. They just decided to build it inside their management sim. Adventure mode in its current form lets you create a party and go on a roguelike journey through a world you generated in Fortress mode, to directly explore what you were once lording over from above.
But Adventure's always been a bit aimless (and for years at a time, pretty broken) because it lagged behind as a secondary mode, gaining new possibilities as the primary Fortress mode grew more and more complex. Now that Dwarf Fortress has launched on Steam, the Adams brothers are planning to give the mode a major update, beginning with its own UI and graphics overhaul. It's a big project, one that will likely take 2023 to complete before Adventure makes its way to the Steam version of the game.
