Borges × Dwarf Fortress

Written March 03 2026

Recently I finished Jorge Luis Borges’ short story collection Ficciones/Fictions. The first half of it (The Garden of Forking Paths) was definitely my favorite part; that’s also the one containing some of his most iconic short stories, like The Library of Babel and Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. I was a bit skeptical at first, seeing as Borges has a pretty dry writing style, but over the course of reading this collection, I genuinely came to adore his writing and the entire conceit of writing this kind of ‘fictional non-fiction’. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius was definitely my favorite in this regard and not just because I enjoy the whole subject matter of secret cults and supernatural conspiracies a whole lot. He effortlessly creates these fictional worlds and expounds on their central concepts with very little in the way of a traditional plot, yet it doesn’t feel boring or like a straight ‘lore dump’. Now, Tlön does have a plot, detailing the narrator’s discovery of the conspiracy to create an alternative history, but the descriptions of those fiction-within-fictional histories are also incredibly captivating. Similarly, Pierre Menard, An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain and The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim are stylized entirely as essays talking about (fictional) literary subjects; Pierre Menard especially is, I think, an absolute masterclass in philosophical fiction.

While I’m not really interested in writing purely fictional essays à la Menard, I do find Borges’ capacity to weave these intricate worldbuilding exercises into his stories. I really like writing but feel like I’m not that great of a character writer (yet?), so this has actually somewhat inspired me to try writing a story in that particular style. I’m also a nerd and a big fan of fantasy, so of course I have two or three worldbuilding projects floating around my head at any given time. I tried writing them down at some point, but just listing disconnected trivia felt kind of pointless and not very rewarding. I did think about making a wiki out of it, as a sort of reference, should I ever try to write a larger story within that universe or use it for TTRPGs, but, again, I didn’t really feel motivated to do so without a larger goal. Trying to write an actual story around or within such a project, picking a particular subject and spinning a pseudo-narrative around it or describing it in a documentary style—that sounds much more interesting.

Another piece of art that Borges reminded me of or that I thought more about in this context was, and I’m being serious, Dwarf Fortress. I’m one of those people who bounced hard off of the original DF and only really picked it up after it released on Steam, but I did have a lot of fun with it since. The sheer depth and interconnectedness of the world generation is absolutely mind-boggling and—despite being essentially completely randomly/procedurally1 generated—surprisingly delightful to sift through.

For example, some time ago I created a world just to browse through all of the history entries, which is fun, I swear. I found a dwarf who became a physician at some point, invented lymph drainage and proceeded to write some five or six books exclusively on lymph drainage. Lymph drainage. For decades, raiding parties stormed fortress libraries just to steal these valuable books. Vendettas were fought over lymph drainage manuals. It’s such a delightfully boring but weird factoid. Yesterday, I created a new world to actually play in this time and I found a codex written by an elf about the physical origins of rainfall called ‘Never Underestimate Rainfall’ that was—ironically—lost in a place called Rainwiped (it sadly wasn’t destroyed in a flood; it was a troll attack).

I actually thought about using these entries or at least something like it as basis for writing or at least a source of inspiration or names (which I’m always struggling with). Back in high school we did a whole semester on aleatoric art, which is when you use (semi-)random processes to create art. That meant drip paintings à la Jackson Pollock, blowing watercolor paint across a surface with a straw, throwing dried beans on a piece of paper and drawing a line around them to get weird shapes. It was really fun (as evidenced by my ongoing drip painting obsession). These procedurally generated Dwarf Fortress entries strike me as a bit of a literary equivalent, though you’d really have to polish and work them in order to make them shine.2

Anyway, I’ve been really motivated to write more, especially now that I have some free time on my hands between semesters. I’d also really love to experiment with genre and narrative style a bit more, but it’s also really difficult. I’ll just have to see what I can come up with.

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