Tried that High Fantasy mod. Decided I'd go with a "safe" option with dwarves. Fort abandoned immediately following the entire founding party getting pulled into a fight with a mass of river drakes when I had the militia try to save the hill dogs I'd brought along. One dead, multiple people wounded with permanent injuries, no supplies for treating injuries (I'd swapped a bunch of stuff for some starting weapons and armor specifically to avoid unarmed civilians being my only option for defense) and no way to get them in a timely manner that wouldn't just invite a party wipe in a week or two instead of immediately (and also invite hordes of monster slayers I don't want or need and don't need wasting my EL's time.)
I need to gen a world where dwarves have somewhere to live too. This world genned with a garbage layout (giant-ass ocean in the middle of the map, the most variety of neighbors in an unpleasant climate. Oh and an allosaur showed up, which would have probably killed everyone anyway when it inevitably got into a fight with the surviving dogs.
I don't think I've ever noped out of an embark that quick before, but having one guy dead and having multiple people with permanent injuries isn't fun in an entertaining way, it's just frustrating.
With my own crap, SVE, I've been playing a human fort for a while. For some reason this civ was taken over by kobolds (I sincerely have no clue how this happened or what chain of events needed to transpire for it to happen,) and the local wildlife was far less interested in picking fights with my guard dogs. A hippo started some shit at one point and I'd had my... "Militia" try to beat it to death with thier bare hands and presumably some harsh language, but had them back off when it was becoming clear they couldn't smash its head in that way.
Things are mostly going fine, with the crown of that gem right now being a dude literally named "Isman Greatmuscles," who I can only imagine as giga-chad in peasant clothes.
I've also been playing the LISA: The Dwarf-ful mod, and that's gone about as well. A tavern built entirely out of scrap metal is just about finished, though I need to put some window slats or something in the walls to finish it properly. Out of necessity I had to tap the caverns and so far out of the dozen or so monster slayers that have come knocking, six have been killed by the various over-qualified garbage cans and head-spiders. There also isn't a single woman in the town.
Oh, and some Rando Army prick and his Joy Addict buddy dropped by looking for the glaive one of my weaponsmiths made. Former got his throat cut open by a Yakuza monster slayer, latter got his head caved in by a trash mech.
Construction of personal housing is underway as well as building a proper barracks for the local goons to train in. Granted they're gonna be training mostly with scavenged pipes and bits of rebar, but still. Something's better than nothing, right?