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[Crioca]

The first "house rule" I made was to limit the number of cage traps I could have to six, the second was that I could have no more than one weapon in a weapon trap. Since then I've decided that I can't start my fortress by digging straight down, I can't have a drawbridge to my gate unless there's water / lava underneath and the latest rule I'm trying is that all external facing doors have to have a metal frame of iron, bronze or brass.

What are some house rules you play by?

[Sus]

"Danger rooms considered harmful."

[nanomage]

I developed a list of them, though it's more for the sake of not feeling cheating, because those things seem quite broken for me:
1. Don't  weapon traps. Seriuosly, do you think it's realistic to have them reload themselves and be completely safe for your own dwarves!
2. Only use weapon-grade metal cages and only against solitary opponents. This mainly come to having 1 bronze or iron cage i a apecial passageway to the fortress to cage incomings hydras and rocs and dragons. This still feels as cheating. but killing them uselessly annoys to no end.
3. Don't attach bridges to mechanisms. They are undestructible, after all. That's horribly wrong.
4. Don't use wooden weapons. If you want your danger room, have your balls to load it with metal spears!
5. Don't buy or use alloys if parent civilizations have no access to component metals. That just feels wrong for me when your dwarven caravan brings the more steel items the less metals it has access to. Thins start getting bad when neither humans nor dwarves have iron though.

[Nuoya]

I never embark where there is iron. I like the caravan's to have a purpose (bring steel!). Also, I always make an entrance that blocks the wagons but allows the pack animals. They can carry less weight. That means you can't buy out a caravan with 10 tons of rock cups. You have to make lightweight valuable things like jewels or silk or high value things like gold. And you have to explicitly state exactly what you want next caravan because there's less packing space for them to bring things to you.

No cutting surface trees. (fairly moot cause I almost always embark in a glacier/desert/treeless) biome

Everyone, even miners, needs at least 2 skills.

[DNK]

1. Build primarily above-ground. This induces a supply chain issue with the block-making industry and hauling that limits how much my dwarves can do and how quickly the fortress can expand or produce things. Space becomes limiting, and it forces me to really think about how to arrange things minimally and use space in the most efficient way. This is one of the most challenging sorts of handicaps, I think, because it fundamentally alters how you approach the entire game, including defense (good luck if you piss off the elves, eh).

2. No traps except for animals. I usually keep small forts, though, so ambushes are the only things I get usually.

3. No danger rooms.

4. Realistic structures. Basically, no 30x30 rooms without supports. Pillars/columns/support walls are required.

[Starver]

I like a strict floorplan layout (although vertically I'm at the whim of cavern intrusions... but I increase inter-cavern layers to give me a good chance of a nice solid block).  That's corridors, stairs and general room areas, not necessarily the actual room configuration or indeed what they're used for.

I also like to use exactly the same building materials for all aboveground structures.  If I have to vary, I'll vary according to a rule developed in light of ground conditions, like "all ground floor walls and stairs are sandstone", but "all first floor[1] walls and stairs/etc being diorite".  Although I do prefer an all-white structure.  (Some minority stone, usually something yellow, or perhaps green olivine or blue microcline or one of the red coloured ones, is used as 'scaffolding' bits, to make it obvious that I'm removing it later.)  'Infill' walls, below ground (where I've dug gems out of future magmaduct walls, or have (despite my best efforts) intruded into a cavern void) are usually built of the general strata material that exists elsewhere around the area.

And all non-temporary constructions must be blocks (from before recent changes).  If I can make workshops built of blocks, even better, including rebuilding mason's workshops out of a block, once the original has made blocks to build out of.  If I'm setting up specialist block-masons to create any given block-material, I'll want the workshop to be of that block-type.

I also care about the material (and even quality) of mechanisms matching, within 'from' and 'to' pairings, in linkages.  And would like to match them to lever, which I would like to match (where applicable) to bridge or drawbridge material (of blocks, again, where built of stone).

I don't avoid danger-rooms, but rarely get them ready because if the ones I start to set up were ever complete they they'd be at least 3x3 (minus room defining furniture spot) and probably bigger and composed of exactly the same quality and material of training spear and linking mechanism-pairs, back to whatever trigger I have set up.  Getting multiple no-quality featherwood training spears (even with trading) is a lot harder than it seems.

I am far less fussy about things like trap-overkill corridors, etc, but I stick to cage-traps only.  More a hindrance than a help, so I suppose that's also a house rule along the lines of the thread question.

Also, I'm very protective of my dwarves.  Probably why I largely used ranged troops from atop sealed-off-from-the-outside walls, when enemies arrive.  A lot of effort is put into giving myself multiple sealable/controllable entrances, and even time-wasting entrances with switchable through-routes and back-ambushing by-ways attached, accordingly, depending on whether it's friend or foe that's heading into my fortress-heart.

And never let any dwarf idle, for any longer than can be helped.  Keep the buggers busy.  (There's always hauling to be done.  And if there isn't, I'll make sure there is...)


[1] The (sensible) UK definition of "1st floor", with the ground being "0th".

[pisskop]

No danger rooms and I build a complete fort for the starting seven (meaningI have to constantly redesign).

[Telgin]

I don't have any hard and fast rules, but I don't use danger rooms either.  For traps, I don't use cage traps (mostly because they are a logistics pain), and for weapon traps I rarely put more than two weapons in them (for realism, balance, and production reasons).

I don't really have any other common rules I employ in my forts.  If I don't use a feature, it's usually because I'm just too lazy, or don't know how. 

[Hans Lemurson]

I tend to avoid the use of traps and adopt a "The gates are always open" policy. 

I've also recently attempted a fort whose sole food supply comes from Rock Nut Paste.  No edibles allowed except for delicious nutritious Rock Nut paste.  No meat, no fish, no cheese, and all booze must come from plants which are not edible raw.  I found out to my dismay that Rat Weed is in fact edible by desperate dwarves.  Also, although quarry bush leaves can be easily dumped to free up bags for more nut processing, it seems that the processed leaves don't decay.  I have 2,000 units of quarry bush leaves sitting in a dumping pit, and even exposing the pit to the sky hasn't seemed to matter.  Although challenging, it's a little but micro-intensive, so I may set up my next food-based challenge to be pure carnivore...but ONLY my own grazing livestock (no hunting).  Alternately I could try a setup where I must subsist solely on gathered crops. No active farming, just a crew of highly trained herbalists.

[Canadark]

No cheating with dwarf hack (e.g. creating magma and water)

No violating the law of conservation of energy (e.g. no water-powered perpetual motion devices)

[Phibes]

I change things up from game to game, but I generally avoid trap-spam and danger rooms. I sometimes limit exports to goods requested by the caravans. I prefer to moderate the difficulty by requiring certain actions or goals instead of forbidding the use of specific game mechanics.

[Xob Ludosmbax]

My house rules vary from fortress to fortress, but in general, I play with:

• No weapon traps, no cage traps.  (Cage traps can be built to capture a specific critter, such as a necromancer, but only after the creature is on the map and visible.)
• No atom smashers.  (I allow them for maintenance, such as clearing out the cistern to clean it, expand it, or whatever, but not for regular use, and definitely not as part of the fortress defense.  Lately, I've been moving away even from that use.)  This makes zombie embarks a lot more !!FUN!!
• No gathering of outside plants and no hunting.  The fortress must provide. 
• No danger rooms.
• All buildings must be of the same material.  (The first few can be different, but must eventually be rebuilt to match.)
• "The gates are always open" policy.  Locked doors are allowed until I get a foothold, but nothing that a troll can't break, and you can't (AFAIK) protect a trade depot with locked doors. 
• Assorted rules about dfhack usage.
• And assorted layout rules about things like no temporary fortress, room size, etc. 

Other assorted rules as my interest waxes and wanes.  I probably forgot a few. 

[Foamybeard]

It isn't much but...

-No danger rooms.
-Vampires get a magma bath, I don't lock them up to get an immortal fort.
-If I can't find magma, I'll make a tempoary TRUE danger room, and fill it with steel spikes, and then put the vampire in it.
-Once vampire is dead, I deconstrut the spikes and turn it into something nice, like a mist generator.

[Noodz]

Mine is simple, but i like them:

*NO rock pots. While i understand carved stone pots may exist somewhere in some IRL archeological site, i find it implausible that dwarves can carve a large, heavy, concave object from a chunk of very brittle material. Utensils like a mortar are ok. Large pots (2.5x heavier than barrels of the same material) are not. Earthenware/stoneware is ok since it is molded, not carved. So unless i have clay/magma at hand, i usually make wood barrels.

*No danger rooms. Simple as that.

[Loud Whispers]

1. No traps (exception to stealthed necros)
2. No power levelling military exploits
3. 98-100% recruitment rate
4. All constructions above ground
5. No trade
6. No choke points
7. Enemy must always be allowed a path inside
8. Limestone/Marble constructions only allowed