All is well right now in my fortress. I had a single tantrum that resulted in minor bruises to the upper and lower body of my expedition leader from a dwarf who refuses to sleep in her bed, but there have been no casualties so far. I'm in the first year's winter, have breached the upper levels of the caverns and am contemplating tossing a kitten down below to see what's there.
I don't have any dwarves with medical skills and after the tantrum I'm starting to feel like I should. Hopefully a doctor migrates to the fort... Otherwise I might have to utilize my fish dissectors and the like to provide, uh, hands on training.
I'm about to step the slope above my fortress entrance (remove the ramps, creating 'steps' that are impassable to invaders) and build an above-ground courtyard area. The only thing I'm actually lacking is running water, but I have a number of murky pools available. Other plans include using said pools to build a large cistern for an artificial waterfall, possibly in the dining room but probably just in a hallway.
I've discovered that mining out a large room and placing beds, all made into bedrooms sized to the entire room and designated, results in every dwarf having a 'good bedroom'. Nearly every dwarf sleeps there and gets a happy thought, though as mentioned above there is one who refuses to sleep there. The magma forge and smelter are set up in the caverns below... Unfortunately, no neighboring elves, humans, or goblins on the civ screen, though I do have kobolds, dwarves, and two types of beastmen. I'm considering this fortress to be more of a testing grounds for the new features since I haven't played since 40d. So far my only issue is I don't like using ESC to back out of menus.