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[Myth]

I have 2 suggestions , I hope it can be applied .

1 - Family: Your character may have wife and children.

2 - Control your descendants : Once your children or grandchildren are older, you can control him.

This would allow the existence of dynasties controlled by the player , which would make the game more fun .

Sorry for the mistakes, i speak spanish.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

This is frequently suggested. Search before posting, you lunatics! and the title should be more representative of the suggestion.

[Myth]

Really? Ok, sorry.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Just so you know, I welcome all "escaped lunatics", but it's important that they know to search (or that you can limit your search to a specific subforum, etc)

[Shonai_Dweller]

Controlling decendents is also (I think) on the big development page.
If it's not, Toady's definitely mentioned it somewhere as a planned feature (build a farm, settle down, skip several years (or play elsewhere) then come back and play your heirs.)

[CaptainMcClellan]

Just so you know, I welcome all "escaped lunatics", but it's important that they know to search (or that you can limit your search to a specific subforum, etc)

I got bored and went for the first one though. ;p

Also, since I don't think we should subject the Toad to the nastiness of simulating the reproductive act, I'm thinking we have "Go to bed with spouse" be in the "x" menu and it just acts like sleeping for game purposes except that there's a chance of conception. If a child is conceived, then after the gestational cycle you or your spouse will go into labor, which will take around 1 in game day and result in your offspring. For fairness sake, even if you play the male you should be required to wait through the labor with your spouse. As per caring for your child... I'm unsure the specifics there. I know though that I for one want to first-hand experience raising my descendants and would like it very much if a full-fledged "family sim" became a potential Adventure Mode happening. Fighting off bandits, homesteading, teaching the children ( and thereby focusing their stat-get ), etc.

As per your children's stat allocation, I think it should be based both on your rearing of them and your lineage, but that when they are selected they also get some new points to allocate in their attributes and skills based on their parents' status. ( For example, demigods' children will have less stat points to allocate than a demigod, but more than a hero's and will have some stats/attributes be above average by default based on your own. )

[Shonai_Dweller]

Just in case you haven't read it, here's the quote from the mammoth development plans page (link at top of suggestions forum):

RELATIONSHIPS ARC: You should be able to take a spouse, make a household, and create playable heirs as an adventurer. The dwarven relationships and personalities can also be expanded upon. Related to Core59, Core60, Bloat51, Bloat93, Bloat95, Bloat105, Bloat123, Bloat374, Bloat375, Bloat380, PowerGoal20, PowerGoal21, PowerGoal109 and PowerGoal119.

I'll let you discover what the Powergoals and Bloat sections are like for yourself. Really, everyone with interest enough to add suggestions should read through this and Threetoe's stories/analyses to see what direction Dwarf Fortress will eventually be heading in.

[Timeless Bob]

It would be very interesting if "wooing" were added to this aspect, though.  Acquiring a mate shouldn't be as simple as "OK, now you're mine."  Instead, it should be "show me that you're good enough"  In which case, it would be a specific impetus to become a hero in the eyes of some civilization or other, AND the potential mate should have "dreams of raising a family" as their dream, which would further narrow the field of possible mates.  This would create an in-game motivation for why a character should go to the trouble of "slay such and such, to bring glory on all of us". 
It could become,
<kiss "target name">
RESPONSE: <target name> dodges! "If you would woo me, you must prove your worth!" <insert quest gossip here>
The Player could then attempt to convince the intended that <quest gossip> has been completed, regardless of the truth, using the "rumor" conversation tab, or by actually doing the deed and coming back to tell him/her.
Conversely, the Fame value might be enough all on its own to overawe the intended mate, so that they're "honored" to become famous by relation. (increase their fame rating to one less than the adventurer's, which would then make them targets for night creatures, attacking civs and possible goblin abductees - all good hooks for story-telling.  Children would add to the "Companions" number, as well as conveniently mark anniversaries, since one is usually born per year.  The children would have to receive one level less than their mother or previous sibling at the time of birth, to simulate the "13th son of a dynasty is unknown/must prove himself worthy of the crown" dynamic.  Upon the adventurer's death, it would be simple enough to list the mother and all of the siblings who have reached adulthood by fame level and give the "head of family" title to the one with the most fame, but selecting the one with the least fame as a new possible adventurer.  This simple system would allow for "off screen" fame increases for killing monsters, acting as mercenaries or becoming great artists or religious figures becoming the motivations for the least famous descendants as adventurers to aspire to best.  A famous singer-adventurer's daughter must prove herself better than her sire, or always have people saying "aren't you the great so and so's daughter?"

The new adventurer would have the benefit of having relations with resources, and if they are mercenaries, it would be possible to recruit them as companions, (or even murder them in their sleep), but killing family should become itself a rumor option that diminishes the fame of the targeted individual.  "RUMOR: <Target> is an evil monster, it is said he/she slew her own mother/father/brother/sister/ect...!"

If an adventurer has wooed (woo woo!) the potential mate, then the simple act of "sleep for Z hours" while that mate is also present should have a chance of creating a reproductive event in the female during the unloading/reloading process.  "Between scenes" basically, which keeps the game minor-friendly the same way that not adding defecation has kept it minor-freindly. (I'm arbitrarily assuming that polygamy isn't an option for adventurers based off of Fortress Mode, even though it's a cliche that sailors and traveling salesmen "have a wife in every port/town", and many traveling musicians, artists, ect... basically keep a harem in the form of "fans" or "groupies" so why an itinerant Hero/Heroine should be any different, I'm sure I don't know.)

(Although, the choice to keep certain universal biological truths from being in the simulation does point to the various cultural taboos that Toady has.  Vermin are OK, but dirt isn't, blood is OK, but not poop, one mate for life is OK, but not multiple mates, either serially or tangentially.  I suppose that's another conversation entirely.)

[CaptainMcClellan]

As always Timeless Bob, a well thought out post. I'd disagree with "dreams of raising a family" being a requisite,  but perhaps it can be a contributing factor in how one goes about the wooing process.

As per the cultural taboos, please to not open that can of worms. Besides, for all the über-violence and cthulian horrors, I've always considered Dwarf Fortress to be a world better than our own, so certain aspects ( drug abuse, [other crimes],  infidelity, defecation and so on ) have had to have been shaved off. Besides, given the nature of the situation, I'm unsure polygamy/infidelity/etc. would be a particularly pragmatic unless we're going for ensuring every living thing of our race is descendant from us as the "adventurer". On that note, despite all the animal people, I doubt hybrid children will occur, but that really remains up to the decision of the Toady One, all we can do is discuss or suggest.

[GoblinCookie]

It would be very interesting if "wooing" were added to this aspect, though.  Acquiring a mate shouldn't be as simple as "OK, now you're mine."  Instead, it should be "show me that you're good enough"  In which case, it would be a specific impetus to become a hero in the eyes of some civilization or other, AND the potential mate should have "dreams of raising a family" as their dream, which would further narrow the field of possible mates.  This would create an in-game motivation for why a character should go to the trouble of "slay such and such, to bring glory on all of us". 

NPC romance in dwarf fortress would ultimately still basically be a mechanic along the lines of "insert coin in slot and get drink", basically boring and with problematic implications for RL.  There is no way that it can be otherwise because a computer NPC cannot really have real agency, which means that it is either going to end up as a mechanical excercise if we make the romance simply something that is the result of a sequence of actions that is deliberately done by the player or it is an entirely random response system which will be frustrating. 

I think instead that we should start by making random people be attracted to random other people given the right sexual orientations and take care of factors like fame/attractiveness by basically rolling the dice a few more times to get more hits.  The attraction status would however inherantly be secret and the player would have to figure out what the feelings of the other character are, using their judge of intent skill I think.  The lower the skill the greater the chance of not picking anything up or detecting attraction where it is not.  The active wooing should depend upon a previous attraction between the target character and the player, if you woo people who are not interested then it should harm your reputation with them and possibly their group as well.  After intially getting a negative response persisting should lead to ever greater penalties.

Again, social skills.  The aim should primerily be to figure out how the other character feels towards your character, not to manipulate the other character into doing something, those with bad social skills might even end up with false positives, thinking that their wooing has succeeded and the other character likes them when they do not.  Basically creepy stalker territory where the character is too inept to figure out that the love interested is not interested in them should be an option.  This leads me to think that maybe we should have different levels of wooing, the more extreme options lead to more explicit/faster results that require less social skills to figure out the true result but have an increasing chance of ending in a bad place (prison maybe?).  The less extreme options are safer, but require more social skill to read the outcome and take more time to pan out. 

Of course there is still the option of simply waiting for the npcs to woo the player, I guess the way around that is to randomly assign an active/passive role to the parties in the generated potential relationships.  So if the player simply waits to be chased then they will have 50% (or less?) of the options than if they actively woo other characters and risk their reputation in the process.