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[GreatWyrmGold]

As a D&D player who also likes DF, this sounds like a great idea.
If anyone makes a program like this, let me know...I've been thinking of having my players visit a fortress with a slow-working water-logic calculator or something.

[Azrael001]

I have frequently thought that DF would be an excellent tool for world generation for a D&D-like game.  I once created a surprisingly dwarfy 4e Warden, he could light himself and others on fire without even noticing it and everything...

[Hyndis]

Take a look at the DF map archive. You can use some forts for inspiration.

Randomly generating rooms and tunnels is entirely sterile and pointless. Everything should have a purpose. Every room, corridor, and item should have a purpose. Digging through solid stone takes a huge amount of work, so if there is no reason for it then the tunnel would never have been dug.

Even in DF, every room and tunnel has a purpose. Every item was created for a reason.

If you know the context its extremely easy to run a D&D game without following any pre-packaged script.

[BigD145]

Take a look at the DF map archive. You can use some forts for inspiration.

Randomly generating rooms and tunnels is entirely sterile and pointless. Everything should have a purpose. Every room, corridor, and item should have a purpose. Digging through solid stone takes a huge amount of work, so if there is no reason for it then the tunnel would never have been dug.

Even in DF, every room and tunnel has a purpose. Every item was created for a reason.

If you know the context its extremely easy to run a D&D game without following any pre-packaged script.

I remember old SSI games back when I had a Mac Plus and most tunnels were there just to wear you down. Backtracking was common and far worse than even the DF cavern systems. Death awaits the unprepared party.

[Hyndis]

Same thing with a lot of oldschool RPG's, like the old Dragon Warrior games for the NES. Every tile you stepped has a X% chance of starting a fight. The more you walked the more fights you encountered. You could stand still forever and be perfectly safe as time only passed while moving. In addition the dungeons were all maze-like, so often times you would wander around aimlessly, get lost, and desperately try to find your way out of the dungeon while fighting off monsters with ever decreasing resources. There was no teleportation. Completing a dungeon often involved several expeditions to map it out, and between each expedition you had to flee back to the nearest town without ending up dead due to the random encounters in order to heal and restock supplies.

It was certainly fun, but the random nature of the dungeons mean there was no way to try to figure them out. You could only figure them out via trial and error. The dungeons didn't change between each game. The maps were static, just randomly generated by the guys at Nintendo when they made the game cartridges.

[HammerHand]

On building worlds:

I've found that my players rarely care about the worlds I've created.  It stymies their creativity because they "don't want to mess up what you have going."  They don't know or care who the NPCs are, or what towns are which, or why all the Races banded together to try and kill all the Elves a hundred years ago, or any of that stuff.  It's a lot of tl;dr, and they want their characters uninfluenced by my vision of what the world is.

Cue Dawn of Worlds.  Now my players and I make the world together.  Dawn of Worlds takes almost no preparation, and it won't give you incredibly well-made locations, but it will give your world a history, a flavor, and a racial demographic that you and your players know and care about.  It will also probably take as long as running a medium to long adventure.  I'm on my third or fourth session of it now, and we're still not satisfied with where the world sits.  Need a few empires to crumble.  Should've drawn the map smaller to bring races into conflict more easily.  Also, should've realized war (in Dawn of Worlds) is not half as resource-intensive as you would think.

But uh... anyway!  You seem more worried about making dungeons into interesting locations that are relatively accurate.  Why would you need to use Dwarf Fortress to do this?  You already know how to plan a fortress; you play Dwarf Fortress!  You know what kinds of locations a fortress might require, or what might be fun to build in or around one, and have a pretty good idea how you might design those.  And if you don't, there are certainly screenshots of others' fortresses to stir your imagination (I always build my fortresses pretty much the same once I'm 4 z-levels under, so this would be a requirement for me).

If your hard work goes unseen, don't despair!  If  you bring that trick or event back at a later date, your players will never know you've had it in waiting this long (this is known as "Shrodinger's Gun," a mix of Shrodinger's Cat and Chekov's Gun - credits to The Angry DM).  Be glad that they succeeded through their wits instead of only their dice, and move forward.  If their good thinking gets them past a difficult place with relative ease, then good for them.  Believe me, this is something I'm still working on, myself.  When I build an encounter with a giant, swinging hammer of doom, I really want someone to get hit by it.  But if the party bypasses the hammer entirely, what is stopping me from using it later?  Unless I made it really obvious that the hammer was there, nothing.