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[Destructicus]

I know many players like to create arenas, either for the purposes of training their dwarves or to make a spectacle for their own amusement.  Obviously, arenas have been used throughout history, so maybe there could be a dwarven equivalent?  I'm imagining that you could define an arena zone and spectator zones.  Dwarves would get a happy thought when they witness things like goblins being beaten on with wooden training weapons, or actually just slaughtered outright.  In the future, you could even do chariot races via minecarts.  Keeping with the circus theme, why not have your animal handlers actually train exotic animals to do tricks, and parade them in front of your dwarves.

You could use burrowing to get the dwarves to go to the spectator zone and then entertain them.  In this way, you could actually have your dwarves get a happy thought from watching goblin sieges die by drowning or by magma.

[Manveru Taurënér]

I guess the only way it'd work would be if the arena zone could make dwarves not trigger the flee response when seeing enemies, and instead make them want to watch and get happy thoughts from watching the slaughter.

[aka010101]

I can see a problem with that, but there's also an easy solution. On the off chance an arena monster escapes, the dwarves wouldn't flee, and would likely get slaughtered. The way around this would be to have 2 parts to the arena: the fighting zone, and the spectator zone. Dwarves in the spectator zone lose their fear...as long as any enemies stay in the arena zone.

Also, maybe it would be possible to schedule fights, letting you pick and choose who fights what. Siccing your rising star axedwarf against a half dozen goblins seems like it'd make for a good show. Alternatively, you can simply have the militia conduct training battles in the arena, for the amusement of your fortress watching your recruits get the tar beaten out of them.

Edit: Okay, didn't want to double post, but a few more ideas came to me.

First, when scheduling fights, should be possible to determine the type of fight, such as whether weapons are allowed or not, what kind of weapons, (adamantine hammers only! battle of the squeaky mallets!) or if the fight is to the death or not.

Second, a few other uses for the arena, for concerts (once toady adds music), displays of tamed animals (the more exotic, and the better trained, the better the entertainment value) and perhaps for some kind of sport, if those ever get implemented in some way.

[Destructicus]

The music idea is brilliant, I love it!

This could be the start of a whole slew of new skills for your dwarves: performance based.  You could have a legendary Lute Player.  Imagine the unhappy thoughts if your world-famous Lutist takes a goblin arrow through the eye!  Maybe famous musicians could help make your fort more attractive to migrants as well (not that there is any problem with that currently, quite the opposite).

I thought about the scheduling thing, but it seems tricky.  Maybe you could have a "schedule performance" job that would encompass all phases: retreiving necessary items, such as caged prisoners/animals/whatever is on display, then making an announcement to the rest of the fortress, then actually performing.  Otherwise there's no guarantee that a scheduled performance would be ready to go on due to sleeping/drinking/eating dwarves or other random acts of Armok.