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[gopher dude]

I don't really do anything too crazy or eccentric but what the hell.

I set up a sort of caste system for migrants:
if they have any farming skills then I give them permission to do milling clothes making cooking planting butchering leatherworking fish cleaning fish dissecting cooking thread spinning and trapping along with small animal dissection. Thats my farming caste
If they have any skills pertaining to wood they become wood workers and I give them permission to go wood cutting/burning, carpentry, bower, wood working and plant gathering/proccessing.
Wood caste.
If they have any skills in mining then they get stoneworking, architecture, mechanic, mining, stone detailing, and masonry. Mining caste.

Migrants who can smith get the obvious metal working skills, furnace operating, and mining.
Peasant not born in my fort all become soldiers...I only really train wrestlers with shields and crossbow dwarfs with bucklers.

Dwarfs with just a random useless crafting skill become craftsdwarfs and are set on all the crafting skills.
Other then that I'm pretty lax with my dwarfs.
Mayor mandates however are always ignored.


And I do have this thing about channeling all small ponds together.

[EliDupree]

Is there any semi-reliable way to relieve a dwarf of both of his arms?

Without risking their death? No.

I think the easiest solution is to lock the Hammerer in a room with no exits, and use some mechanism for putting food in once in a while. It can double as your control room, too.

[SethCreiyd]

I:

- Make custom noble professions, such as Clerics, Undertakers, Doctors, with scant labors (Brewing, Burial and Health Care respectively).  They are often my old administrators, legendarily purple.
- Always build an outdoor log cabin for my best carpenter, even if there is no wood on the map and even if the poor blighter hates working outside.
- Leave bones, skulls and shells all over the fortress in places like the dining room and kitchen.  We're talking hundreds of bones.
- Nickname all my legends based on their personalities / distinguishing characteristics.
- Dig out all the soil tiles above base level on mountain tiles. 
- Often rename my peasants' professions to "Slave."
- Build all levers in a depression in a natural wall, and engrave the walls behind them so that the dwarves know which lever is which.
- Tend to lock nobles in their tombs with a lever for them to pull for a while.
- 'Forget' about them.

[EliDupree]

Oh, I also have an obsession with automating things. Does that count? Or is it too normal?

[Cypress]

Oh, I also have an obsession with automating things. Does that count? Or is it too normal?

Depends. Are you
1. Automating your fortress defense so that it can be toggled by a single lever?
or
2. Automating your fortress so that when you pull a lever, every animal on the map dies?
or
3. Automating your Nobla-pult

[jugglervr]

For instance, right now I'm working on an automatic food transport system based on the fact that flowing water moves light items with it.

"i'm hungry. why don't you flush us up some dinner?"

[Lord Shonus]

Laately, I've been building my royal tombs with a single-tile shafet from outside, directly over the coffin. (I build the room first.)

Nice and efficient. But how do you close the coffin lid after dropping the noble down there?

I leave the gap in the wall that I used to get the miner out, then close the gap.

[kawaiidesunekochan]

I always make this:

I give one dwarf all the skills required to run these workshops,I call him the decorator. The house on the side is his.

On the top,I put all the workshops that can add decorations to things:craftsdwarf's,jeweler's,and metalforge. Next to them I put a stockpile of the stuff I want to decorate.

at the bottom,I have a mason's workshop. When a mason (or the decorator,I give him the masonry skill too) gets inside the workshop,I lock him in and I lock all the doors to the stone colors I don't want him to use. Then I can make things of the color I want easily.

[Cdizzl3]

This thread is giving me so many great ideas!

 

[Haspen]

Mass-engraving catacombs.

My catacombs (fairly large, thanks to constant hostility outside the gates) have more engranved tiles than rest of the fort combined.

Also, writing down relevant information about every dwarf, that include:
-Name, last name, title (if have one)
-Family (if known)
-Date of birth (if born at site)
-Relevant positions (exp.leader/mayor, baron, and so on)
-Date of death (obviously, if dwarf is dead)

I have additional file with deities and number of their worshippers in my fort.

Also, every occupied coffin have a small 'N'ote, if occupied, with date and a bit of info about the cause, like: "Failed artifact mood, berserk - Hematite 217".

[EliDupree]

Oh, I also have an obsession with automating things. Does that count? Or is it too normal?

Depends. Are you
1. Automating your fortress defense so that it can be toggled by a single lever?

No. Automating my fortress defense so that it kills all invaders without me having to order the pulling of a single lever.

Even when I don't manage to design something without levers, I try to make it so that I only have to pull the lever once, instead of once to turn it on and then a second time to turn it off.

[Caesar]

One of the crazy things I do is trying to keep my starting seven alive whatever happens, and, preferably, dig each of them their own palace.

I also once engraved a 11x11 room with a legendary+5 engraver. I made sure that every tile and wall was masterfully engraved, saving after every one, terminating and re-loading if it wasn't.

[OddProphet]

I don't bother executing prisoners.  I set up a custom stockpile right outside the fortress for all future invaders to see their fate: abandoned to the vagaries of surface weather, railing against their fate for eternity.

My graveyard is right next to them as well, and I don't build coffins.

[assimilateur]

I mean, think about it. I dump corpses into my plumbing to make vermin fish spawn for my fisherdwarves. That same pipe, not thirty tiles away, feeds my well.

Does this mean that the fishing industry can be made indefinitely sustainable by dumping corpses into your channels/pools/rivers?

This is important, because it was my understanding that after a couple of years of constant fishing, your vermin fish would depopulate for good. Unless that's a myth in the first place?

[Blargityblarg]

AFAIK, the corpse-dumping is a myth. You get x fish per month, and once you've fished them, that's it for the month for that embark tile. You get y fish overall, and once you fish them, that's it for the duration of the fort for that embark tile.