How I thought would be basically that the first, like, 7 adventurers wouldn't be made by their owners, but the person leading the community fort.
They'd be instantly retired at the fort.
The original seven would be killed.
Pop cap would be 0, if that still allows adventurers to retire at forts successfully. Hard pop cap COULD be higher.
Migrants are instantly killed if they're not stopped by the pop cap.
(Also the fortress starter would have invasions and shit turned out, could even cheat to get the fortress of the ground.)
After the fortress is ready, people get the ability to create and wander off with their adventurer if they so wish, but they MUST return to the fort.
As for fortress players, well, the problem here is that they might not necessarily keep the adventurers alive. I thought of implementing a weighted random turn system, where
- playing a round gives everyone else +1
- dying during an adventure gives everyone else +5
- letting an adventurer die gives everyone else +5
Or something like that.
I'd assume if you kill off every dwarf the fortress will be considered "dead". Unless of course you first settled all the adventurers there and then killed them off in fortress mode...hm...sounds like it could definatly be possible, as long as the settling of adventurers now works; when I settled a brown recluse spider man in one of my previous fortresses he was shown as "hostile", not as part of the fortress population sadly.
Heh, of course, the True 7 (the adventurers) would be put in first, THEN the False 7 (the starting dorfs) would be killed.
And, well, I heard about that hostile thing, though I've never seen it. I could start at my fort as a brown spideyman, but I could also retire back there without difficulties.