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[Craftling]

If you play DF for too long you can get bored with your current fortress and start again right?
But if there were goals/scenarios...
When selecting "Play Now" or "Prepare for the journey carefully" underneath should be select goals/scenarios.
Things like:
Amass X amount of wealth.
Kill X amount of dwarves.
Only have 1 dwarf to start off with and have no immigrants. Hermit Scenario.
Gain wealth by pillaging caravans. Bandit scenario
7 seperate city states. State scenario
Kill X goblins.

Sandbox would be set by default.
Anything else?

[Rysith]

What's wrong with setting goals for yourself?
"Wall off the Forest of Funerals, tame the wilderness, and provide a forward outpost to hold off the Orcs when they turned their attention from the Unions of Responsibility to the dwarves further south."

[Warlord255]

With the coming of Next Version™, the unending attacks from underground ought to help make mere survival more of a challenge, especially when added to the significant expansion of threats via the new venoms system and the creatures that can be modded in with the new biology.

Beyond that, however, setting one's own goals is one of the staples of Dwarf Fortress. For myself, past failed goals have included...

-A wild bear farm
-A fortress dug straight down through a river (thrice)
-Glacier forts
-Tower inside a bottomless pit
-Fortress with a bridge over a bottomless pit
-Chasm in an aquifer region

[Craftling]

Some goals are difficult to keep track of. Like trying to kill 700 mountain goats. And some goals chosen would have specific rules, like starting with one dwarf.

[irmo]

What's wrong with setting goals for yourself?
"Wall off the Forest of Funerals, tame the wilderness, and provide a forward outpost to hold off the Orcs when they turned their attention from the Unions of Responsibility to the dwarves further south."

There's no way of knowing whether they're challenging, interesting, or, for that matter, achievable at all. The game needs to be designed with specific player goals in mind so that risk and challenge can be balanced around them. Optional challenge games and weird projects can fit into that system but can't replace it.

And, no, "try it and see if it's interesting" is not a solution. Most of the random weird things I might set out to do--kill 700 mountain goats, or turn an entire mountain into stone mugs--are unbearably tedious. If the game requires trying hundreds of tedious things to find out that they're tedious before hitting upon something interesting, then it is a tedious game.

[Warlord255]

What's wrong with setting goals for yourself?
"Wall off the Forest of Funerals, tame the wilderness, and provide a forward outpost to hold off the Orcs when they turned their attention from the Unions of Responsibility to the dwarves further south."

There's no way of knowing whether they're challenging, interesting, or, for that matter, achievable at all. The game needs to be designed with specific player goals in mind so that risk and challenge can be balanced around them. Optional challenge games and weird projects can fit into that system but can't replace it.

And, no, "try it and see if it's interesting" is not a solution. Most of the random weird things I might set out to do--kill 700 mountain goats, or turn an entire mountain into stone mugs--are unbearably tedious. If the game requires trying hundreds of tedious things to find out that they're tedious before hitting upon something interesting, then it is a tedious game.

This is a valid argument, but any given sandbox game is bound to suffer these complications - reasons like this are why Fallout 3 fell apart for me about halfway through.

I stand by the stance that making mere survival more difficult - as difficult as that in itself is, given players' ingenuity - is a good way to enhance the sandbox experience. The tedium of constructing a megaproject goes down considerably when your workers are fighting off Batmen from the scaffolding, as a far-out example. These (usually) random events present new problems to solve, and solving those problems provides you with a new open-ended goal.

Care should be taken to avoid "Dammit, AGAIN?" repetition to the point of annoyance where possible, and there shouldn't be a predictable rythym for "Nothing's tried to attack me recently", but these occurances are generally conducive to interesting games of DF.

[Variance]

OH LAWD, it's campaign mode. Use your squad of 3 masons/carpenters and 4 crossbowmen to defend the town from the scripted goblin onslaught that starts in six months. Following the RTS cliche, once you protect the townspeople, they become your minions and the map doubles in size to reveal the heavily defended goblin fortress. You'll have to fight them as they send their forces at you, until you can amass an army to triumph! Game over. Also, you have to option to convert everything into a normal fortress after. There are 3 or 4 pre-loaded scenarios that come packaged with DF for you to choose from.

Actually, DF would be great as an objective-oriented RTS. It would just be insanely more in-depth than anything else out there, though it probably works better as a straightforward sandbox game.

[Warlord255]

OH LAWD, it's campaign mode. Use your squad of 3 masons/carpenters and 4 crossbowmen to defend the town from the scripted goblin onslaught that starts in six months. Following the RTS cliche, once you protect the townspeople, they become your minions and the map doubles in size to reveal the heavily defended goblin fortress. You'll have to fight them as they send their forces at you, until you can amass an army to triumph! Game over. Also, you have to option to convert everything into a normal fortress after. There are 3 or 4 pre-loaded scenarios that come packaged with DF for you to choose from.

Actually, DF would be great as an objective-oriented RTS. It would just be insanely more in-depth than anything else out there, though it probably works better as a straightforward sandbox game.

Once we get the ability to send out armies and/or start sattelite forts, fortress boredom isolation may well become a thing of the past.

Consider how the word "megaproject" might be redefined when it becomes possible to terrascape the ENTIRE WORLD.

[Faces of Mu]

I really liked my idea here about being only able to build in areas that are a certain distance from your civ's forts. This is related to resigning forts, but has even more applicability now that we see dwarves and all races fight each other and conquer new territories and towns.

It means if you really want that awesome location with all the features you have ever desired, you are going to have to work towards it by building up forts between here and there so that your initial migrant party has a good chance of surviving the trip to the embark location.

[Fieari]

The problem with objectives as you described them is that they run counter to the idea that you're running a fantasy world simulation.  There's no in-world reason for the things you're talking about.

On the other hand, it's easy enough to MAKE them in-world, and doing so could be awesome.

Consider a case where your initial seven dwarves have to float a loan in order to get the supplies they need to embark, and have to repay it.  Or consider the king giving you the assignment to defend a pass.  Or consider receiving a tip from a prospector.

Then, you still have the sandbox, and you even have consequences.  What if you want to renege on the loan?  Will the bank send muscle to rough you up?  Or will they complain to the king who will try to take leadership away from you?  Will you then declare independence, and start a war?

What if you want to defect and aid the goblins instead of defending against them?  Can you manage the diplomacy?  Can you manage the consequences?

That sort of thing.

[Granite26]

*idea*

nice

[Craftling]

Goals and scenarios should be customisable in game. Maybe once we get the armies arc a objective that could be chosen while you are roaming around the country side might be :butcher all humans in the general vicinity of the fortress or something like that.

[Tigershark13]

I like Fieari's idea personally... it makes more sense and its the kinda thing I tend to think up when i start a fort anyway (such as my failed 'glacial 'stop anyone from entering' defensive fort) but it could add more flavour... especially if you could declare independence.. that would be rather epic....

[knightedskull]

Everything would be scripted and played out, thus not a freedom style simulation of a fantasy world where near anything can happen, we love dwarf fortress because it allows us to do said freedom and because of said freedom we can set our own goals for nearly everything.
Unless the goal/scenario takes place in a different world, it would seem to fit more to the adventurer.

And this is starting to sound like some achievement for a valve game... one in dwarf fortress would be more badass because of said freedom that allows us freewill to do nearly everything within the said freedom.
Example:
Wolf in Sheeps clothing (some name like that) achievement
Kill 700 goats (or some herdable animal, sorry i stole your example)
If this was to be an achievement than the player would continue to play the game with the feeling some sick twisted sense of a good job.
Where as if it was a goal/scenario... the game would most likely end there   
Although to edit some parts of the game to say... increase the rate at which something happeneds,what herd of animal or thing shows up next at your fortress and the rate they come... (zombie madness anyone?), would be more fun than the average undead groundhogs I get.
[NOTE TO SELF: undead sonic the hedgehog  is a must to mod in... will show results when I mod it in unless its already been done.]

[Granite26]

Achievements has a big thread... buried by now.  (still a neat idea, but hey).

I really like the idea of a starting handicap, or else a starting goal that ticks off...  Something monitored