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[doublestrafe]

• No rules.

[melphel]

No cage traps.  Only exception is where I want to capture wildlife for war training, and then the traps can't be in my entrance.
No mechanism traps.  Traps should be elaborate set ups that require more than a mechanism and some saw blades.
No danger rooms.
No water reactors.  More because of the fps drain than the difficulty.
No unfortunate accidents.  Mandates are carried out to the best ability, offenders take their jail time or nobles go insane.
Airlocking and sealing the fort is okay, but only to give the military time enough to mobilize, no extended isolation...I rarely need to do this anyway.

[Flying Fortress]

No danger rooms because I'm generally too lazy to setup military anyway and just use live training when I finally get around to it.  But danger rooms do make sense even in real life, throw someone in a room with automated attack dummies, he'll learn quick.
No metal multiplication exploits

Other then that I don't see much point in limiting what the game allows, if I want more challenge I don't limit myself.  Instead I setup hard goals or embark in almost instant death areas, then try to live. 
I'm very surprised at some of these rules people have for the sake of difficulty/realism when similar things could be done IRL/its a fantasy game.  Things like small number of weapons in traps, no locking the door (name 1 castle in real life that ever did this lol) no choke points, etc seem to me like bad fortress design when you compare it to what real life fortress are meant to be:  Impenetrable strongholds that were extremely well protected with traps, bridges, soldiers, and tactical building designs meant to increase enemy fatalities.  This is a single player game though, so everyone will play differently, and no one way is correct.

[Berossus]

.) no weapon traps any more
.) cage traps for training purposes until marksdwarves are fixed
.) no metal replication/multiplication by smelting
.) no danger rooms
.) no DFhack
.) no 7 tunics- 4 mailshirts - breastplate uniforms. Plate over mail is ok.
.) Dwarves chose their own weaponry
.) no automated killing devices

Basically, i started that way and intend to keep it.

[jellsprout]

My restrictions vary from game to game. But I don't really have any restrictions across all games. I try to avoid traps because wagons can't go over them and they tend to jam, which could create dangerous situations during large sieges. I don't use atom smashers either, because I don't think they handle the actual destruction of the items very well. Instead I prefer to dump them in magma.
Instead, I try to optimize the fortress as much as possible. Make every industry as efficient and valuable as possible.

[Hans Lemurson]

I'm very surprised at some of these rules people have for the sake of difficulty/realism when similar things could be done IRL/its a fantasy game.  Things like small number of weapons in traps, no locking the door (name 1 castle in real life that ever did this lol) no choke points, etc seem to me like bad fortress design when you compare it to what real life fortress are meant to be:  Impenetrable strongholds that were extremely well protected with traps, bridges, soldiers, and tactical building designs meant to increase enemy fatalities.  This is a single player game though, so everyone will play differently, and no one way is correct.

No REAL Fortress has indestructible walls, gets assaulted by enemies without ladders or sieging gear of any kind, or can feed a 100+ population indefinitely on farms that fit within its walls (and that's not even counting the crops that can grow without sunlight).

[kaijyuu]

I don't use power, mostly because I don't know how to use it and haven't really had any ideas that needed it.

[NESgamer190]

Rules I often follow through on:
Danger rooms prohibited (Goes hand in hand with another rule.)
I am NOT to murder any dwarf intentionally.  (Hence no Danger rooms)
Cave-ins are prohibited as weaponization!  (Exception made when there's an embark-wide aquifer...  CURSE THOSE THINGS!  They're worse than bronze collosi!)
Strips of traps are permitted, but only 1 cage trap per strip o' 10.  (I love my sport of crundledisk now.  Can't catch 'em all!)
Exploits in the AI are forbidden.  (So the gobbos have to storm a whole row o' traps, and aren't particularly forced back through.)
I am NOT to intentionally murder a merchant in the caravan!  (Even then, sometimes, the dwarven wagons break down in the trade depot itself for NO reason!)

[Bralbaard]

No farming, and all food (hunting, trading, plant gathering for wood) needs to be produced outside the city walls. In other words it is ok to wall myself in in the event of a siege, but I need to break the siege quickly or my dwarves will starve.
I've never tried danger rooms, training on living targets seems to increase skills fast enough, I tend to send my military on "training missions" (with no or poor weapons) when new groups of crundles, or other harmless foes show up.
I do build (normal) traps, but not to protect my entrances. I usually have some to protect my burial sites from necromancers, as I tend to bury my dead outside of the fortress, and I have some scattered cage traps to catch random animals. Traps that release undead, giant cave spiders or bridge fired weapons and boulders are ok for fortress defense.

[Crioca]

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.

Ha, that reminds me of my Sheep Fortress; all food and drink (I modded in milk based booze), all cloth and leather had to come from sheep. And I wasn't allowed to move the sheep underground.

[Nathail]

After seeing everyone with all these complex rules about metals and trees and trading, I feel a little bad that my only one is "Never engrave the floor", and that's only because I don't like looking at a cluster**** of depictions of that one minotaur that coughed violently at a cat.

[xoseph]

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.

This is exactly why I love DF.  I've been playing it for 2 years, and I had no idea you could use pots instead of barrels.

[Foamybeard]

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.

This is exactly why I love DF.  I've been playing it for 2 years, and I had no idea you could use pots instead of barrels.

I'm pretty sure rock pots are new.

[Foffy123]

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.

This is exactly why I love DF.  I've been playing it for 2 years, and I had no idea you could use pots instead of barrels.

I'm pretty sure rock pots are new.

They were in 31.25 when I first started playing.

[Xob Ludosmbax]

After seeing everyone with all these complex rules about metals and trees and trading, I feel a little bad that my only one is "Never engrave the floor", and that's only because I don't like looking at a cluster**** of depictions of that one minotaur that coughed violently at a cat.

I'm so sorry.  I'm going to ruin your perfectly good rule.

d-v  = "Toggle Engravings"


With that said, I like the rules about all food production being outside of the fortress as an alternative to the "always a path" rule.