Hah, this is like EVE Online for me. I love reading about the espionage and cloak and dagger and pure insanity, but other than a brief toe-dip...oh no I will not play it.
If DF is too daunting try RimWorld. It's based mostly on DF, but has graphics and is considerably more approachable. It's also heavily modded and with mods can get just as complicated as DF can.
I've put in probably over a thousand hours on it, and have played it over the years as new releases come out. I've gotten to the point where I usually hit FPS death (too large a fortress that it overloads the CPU) even on the harder starts and with dfhack to help.
The draw for me was the steep learning curve that rewards you with logical complexity when you finally understand it. The lore that your fortress generates, as well as the random stories, is just icing on the cake. It's definitely not for everyone though since the UI requires additional programs like DF Therapist and DF Hack to be manageable still.
I love reading about it, but have played for maybe 30 minutes. The game doesn’t intrigue me, but the building of it does.
Same for Minecraft and similar. Figuring out the software and the cool way it came into existence is the problem to solve, actually playing it is (perhaps incorrectly) predictable details and so boring.
Its worth the effort and likely easier now than before. The myriad ways that a fortress can die amazes me. Its easy to get a fort that can survive invaders but ultimately your fortress will die. The number of times I have been nonplused by a new fortress failure is amazing. Those crazy dwarves keep finding new ways to destroy themselves.
