I generated a mostly default world which is called Mon Slospu. I stopped worldgen at year 25 so that there would still be a lot of big baddies hanging around, and also turned up the number of civilizations and sites to allow for the lack of time for a more natural spread of civilizations to occur.
I just started playing Adventure Mode in DF2012. This is my first real crack at it, and it's hilarious. I used to play a lot of Nethack but not any more!
Anyway, I played around a bit on the very large continent but ended up really focusing in on a rather small island, perhaps a day's travel north to south, and half a day's travel east to west at the widest point. It sort of tapers off both to the north and south of that point. On this island are only two civilizations, a human one centered at the very southernmost point, in the large city of Asluowba, the seat of the warleader of the Cobalt Kingdoms, Mekgos Watchbusts. He's a rather ineffectual ruler who, despite having one large city brimming with warriors, four large towns, and a number of villages has simply ignored the repeated kobold and bandit attacks on the human settlers in the north. The northland only has one small town, with bandit lairs everywhere and a dread lair called Ngedlurusmo Asubanu, home of the kobold civilization Throdolodleengus. This is the source of the plague spreading over the island called The Scalded Plane, and in Adventure mode I will defeat this plague and make this place safe for human civilization!
I started by eliminating some bandits and the typical hyena or two near the capital and eventually was sent steadily northward when I asked about Service. One particular bandit crossbowman leader, by the last name of Buttonpants, gave me much trouble and killed a number of my adventurers. He had a trio of bowmen which made it especially difficult, because I am not really into ranged weapons. I eventually learned about keeping a tree between myself and the bowmen, and attacking at night when their vision is limited.
My most successful adventurer just passed away. Spishab Ilpimogem Ebbakdurpal Utesh, "Spishab Aceden the Branded Glove of Crevices" died after wading deep into the very heart of the kobold civilization, killing many warriors and also a surprising number of clerks, administrators, and other bureaucrats. He didn't actually ever take a serious wound from these kobolds. What happened was that I eventually entered some sort of underground cavern (it gave me a message) and while battling on a steep slope, a kobold charged him from above and behind and knocked him off this long slope into a sheer vertical space which went down for about 15 z-levels and he was crushed by the fall.
I will recover his skeleton and place it in the temple in the city, and then I will send every last Kobold on The Scolded Plane to Hell!