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[Ulfengaard]

One of the big draws for me in Dwarf Fortress is the thickness of lore. I know there are some significant plans yet for this game, but it tells some really great stories already. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at keeping track of who is who in the game, and I'm wondering (hoping) that there is a modification somewhere that can help me to more easily recognize my dwarves. One of the things I really appreciate about games like Rimworld or Prison Architect is that I can fairly easily recognize the characters at a glance. Is there some sort of modification available that will let me do the same in Dwarf Fortress or at least see a visual representation of each dwarf so I can put the name to a static image?

I realize it might seem an odd thing, but if anyone knows of something like this, it sure would help.

[Thisfox]

I don't have many dwarves in my fort. This is not only because it helps my fps, but because that way I can have a closer relationship with a few of them. Dwarves who are of specific interest to me I might ennoble, etc, or give special rooms to.

I go by the colours. I usually know the purple ones quite well: One is the broker, another that damned mayor who keeps mandating things. Red dwarves I might follow around watching them make traps and wells and pumps. I love watching miners mine. I rarely watch green dwarves go hunt, although I often intend to.

Most recently I've been watching this:
See the red mug? That's a pink gemstone artifact mug. It was the first artifact in GuildPlunge, and is a really popular drinking vessel. It moves around a lot, and as I have unbinned mug stockpiles near all the food storage areas, I can always see it somewhere. I will admit, for me, that is one of my main characters in my fort, and a very active character too, that mug.

Here it is downstairs:
Someone walked up 100 flights of stairs, just to get the most favourite mug of the fortress. It's almost always in someones hands, unlike the brass goblet next to it, which is pretty, but not as popular. Later on, the mug was again seen upstairs, abandoned in the middle of the still.

I've not heard of any mods that make dwarves more recognisable, but I think I'm managing to recognise specific characters, even if they aren't dwarves. It's like an ant farm: I might not be absolutely sure who is who, but I can make some guesses from their work.

[FakerFangirl]

You sir, need some commemorative image artwork sewed onto your bags & such.

[mikekchar]

It would be nice, but I don't know of anything. I use 'v' a lot.  I also play at 20 fps so I can see what everyone is doing.  The last trick I have is to use squads liberally.  Any fortress can easily run on 20-30 dwarfs, so usually I have that many active at any given time.  The rest are training, or patrolling or whatever.  Just knowing which squads are active makes it much easier to keep track of the dwarfs I'm interested in.  Like Thisfox, I often follow individual dwarfs for a while just to see what they are up to.

[Ironfang]

I Have a few recognizable dwarves that I generally recall by skills, or exeptional traits. Like my legendary crutchwalker who is a high master bower and decent gem cutter who his a leg to a ghost wo didn't get the silk he wanted for his project. Another is my best dwarf, the 14 year old girl who is a legendary metal crafter. Worse comes to worse, use custom job names. Like the girl has the special job name of "Gobletsmith".

[PatrikLundell]

I think the reasonably simple usage of a tile set will satisfy the request to a large extend.

I'm using a tile set (Phoebus) where different professions have different images, and I believe most (or all) other tile sets work the same. Thus, once the dorfs have settled into their professions you can see at a glance which one is which (I play dead civs, so, like Thisfox, I don't have that many dorfs, but unlike her I don't use "ASCII").

I also extensively use nicknaming (like Ironfang), but that's only visible upon selection.

[YetAnotherLurker]

I use nicknaming for jobs as well, since I run large (200+ population) fortresses with a fairly high degree of specialization. Dwarf Therapist and DFHack are a godsend though, and I doubt I could manage such high-population forts without them.

For at-a-glance recognition, I highly recommend installing and using a tileset. I personally prefer GemSet, because it's very clear, colorful, and crisp. Major profession groups are colorcoded, so it's easy to tell what a dwarf's primary job is without selecting them. I find most of the other major graphical tilesets too murky or blurry at high resolutions.

[Sanctume]

I use custom profession and nick names. 

Having custom profession helps identify the individual in battle reports. 
So instead of "Mason is hit by..." I would read "Mason Urist is hit by..."

[Nilbert]

I use .ascii like ThisFox, don't have a lot of 'working dwarves,' and also follow a group of my dwarves (not all) by color.  I further work on having ones of the same color related (husband/wife typical but also sometimes children, brothers, or sisters if I want more in a profession).  This way if I wonder what Urist McMason is up to, I select the nearest white dwarf and then if I get his wife, then go to relationships and find him easy.  I presently have 19 dwarves that run all the production, entertainment, and library portions of the fort with I think 8 of them nobles, scholars, scribes, and performers (all purple but related or from a different race which I only have a few of).

The rest all go in the army.  For them, I have the militia commanders squad filled with the interesting dwarves who are trained in a variety of weapons except crossbows and swords.  The others all get either crossbows or swords so not to mistake them with the cool dwarves.  If by some crazy chance one of the cannon fodder not so exciting dwarves becomes interesting, then I put him in the interesting dwarf squad and give him a different weapon.  Takes a little time to train and change color, but really its only a year or two.

[anewaname]

I think the reasonably simple usage of a tile set will satisfy the request to a large extend.

I'm using a tile set (Phoebus) where different professions have different images, and I believe most (or all) other tile sets work the same.

The simple tilesets (I've used Phoebus and Mayday) will help a lot in recognizing dwarfs. Nobles (leaders/brokers/bookkeeper/militiacommanders/etc) get images that help you recognize faster what is happening.

If you switch to using a tileset, learn to use the F12 key to flip between the text output

[PatrikLundell]

If I want to know what's up with a specific dorf I simply bring up the unit screen, find that dorf, and zoom to it (it helps not having two pages full of dorfs to look through, though). Most of the time I just use the unit a jobs screens to find out what's happening, without needing to actually zoom to the dorfs.

[oldmansutton]

I use Spacefox's tileset, every profession has its own image, and they're all frankly kind of adorable.  I find it relatively easy to find my more important dwarves at a glance.

[Baffler]

It helps to know what dwarves will have business in a given area, or give them their own workshops. A larger fort should mostly be running itself, so you'd just know that Vabok is the dyer, or Catten uses that particular farmer's workshop, or that Urist and Rimtar alternate that guard post by what season it is, and so on.

[Iamblichus]

It takes a bit of work but I like to give my dorfs family or clan names.  When I get a wave of migrants I look through their relationships.  I trace the genealogy back to a founder of the family and name all of the dorfs after him.  I've gone so far as to have separate wings of bedrooms for each clan.  I make sure the eldest dwarf in each clan get really nice rooms.  Unfourtunatly you starting 7 don't seem to have any family history but most migrants do.

[Thisfox]

You could give the starting seven the clan name of the fort you've just founded...