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[thunktone]

With guilds like the weaponsmiths, stoneworkers or rangers I see some benefit to my dwarfs teaching each other a few skills. My steel forges can be reserved for my legendary smiths who teach the next generation without letting them waste too much metal for example. But members of a farmer's guild or a craftsdwarf guild seem to become jacks of all trades. The skill categories are just too broad.

Perhaps the most DF way to get around this would be to have guilds form around clusters of skills based on what the citizens know, and perhaps who they want to spend more time with. So in one fort the player might have all their fisherdwarves and woodcutters gather fruit as it ripens. These dwarfs might get together and form a forest worker's guild based around those skills while the fish cleaners get together with the cooks and the butchers instead. In another fort the fisherdwarfs, fish cleaners, butchers and hunters might get together.

Just before I move on from who dwarfs want to spend time with, it'd be neat if children went to their parent's guild(s) even when they are set to members only.

A simpler approach would just to be to recategorise the skills. Here are my suggestions for this:

• Food workers work in butchery, brewing, cookery and cheese making. Lots of cooks do a bit of butchery and lots of butchers do a bit of cookery. Cheese making is largely about controlling live cultures, much like brewing and some cooking - pickling, and a lot of baking for example.
• Herders work in milking, shearing and gelding. They should probably take animal care from the rangers too (I realise it's academic for now).
• Alchemists work in wood burning, potash making, lye making and soap making.
• Farmers work in planting, pressing, milking, plant processing.
• Beekeepers work in beekeeping.
• Rangers take over plant gathering.
• Firers work in pottery, glazing, glass making and strand extraction.
• Carvers work in woodcrafting, wax working and bone carving.
• Stoneworkers take over stone crafting. The tools are closer to those used for large stone furniture than those used to carve wood, wax, bone or ivory.
• Leather workers work in tanning and leather working.
• Paper crafters work in papermaking and bookbinding.
• Textile workers work in spinning, weaving, dyeing and clothesmaking.

This nearly doubles the number of categories, which may be an issue for colour coding. But they seem more natural groupings to me and a fort doesn't need to have a guild hall for every one of them.