A medieval executioner with two broken arms bites off the limbs of the condemned; a farmer accidentally plants his bed in a field. Nobody scripted these moments. They emerged from Dwarf Fortress, the simulation Tarn Adams and his brother Zach have built for over two decades. This episode follows Tarn from a BASIC game called Dragslay and self-taught C in high school, through the abandoned 3D project Slaves to Armok, to the 2006 decision to turn down a $50,000 postdoc stipend at Texas A&M and live on $15,000 in savings to finish a text-based dwarf simulator.

It explores the mathematics behind procedurally generated worlds, Zach's ancient-history background driving centuries of simulated lore, ASCII graphics where a green G is a goblin, PayPal donations that brought in $300 in five months, the $300,000 licensing deal Tarn refused, and the ...