No danger rooms!
Yikes.
My failure will be swift.
This rule kinda saddens me. Not because I too rely on danger rooms - I've never used one and only tentatively considered the idea of ever trying one. And not because I consider them exploits either
But because I am very bad at reading your mind. For all I know, you might think that 2/3 of how I play is exploity
You also mentioned you were a fairly new player - may I carefully suggest that you use this interesting mutual lets play to examine playstyles and techniques that you may think of as exploitive. If a technique like 'danger rooms' have both upsides and downsides, or are very hard to use, they may not be as much of an exploit as you think... and too, it's a chance to really see what works and fails in specific techniques and why you might want, or not want, to use any specific techniques in your own play.
Forts that use danger rooms, I've heard, still fail. I don't know of a single trick that means 'DF is now boring, I win', short of maybe a few mods that rarely get much attention, because they bore even their creators.
Failing that - please make the rules clear and strong from the start. Instead of saying 'nothing exploity', please specify clearly what is not allowed. This will avoid a huge amount of bad feeling from me when as I'm merrily playing and updating and having a grand old time, but then am hit by any form of 'Imp you broke our rules/Imp you're cheating'. Be clear so I can stay 'clean', and please don't make me read your mind.