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[Humdilla]

I am sort of a newbie at this and I thought I was ready when my first ambush occurred. One non-military dwarf was killed as the goblins marched up to my fort and I was waiting for them to spring the pit-fall trap. But when that one dwarf died all of my other dwarves that were currently not doing something ran out into the goblin crowd to grab the dead dwarf's belongings. How am I supposed to stop all of my dwarves from running into a massacre? Is there a place I can make them all go to during a crisis? 

[FleshForge]

When you start a game, hit o-F-(cio) and in almost all cases, when somebody dies, their corpse and equipment will be forbidden and nobody will go out and grab them.  There are a few semi-bug situations that will ignore this setting but this prevents the vast majority.

note: does no good to set this AFTER somebody dies, must be done before they die

[Humdilla]

Thanks!  I appreciate the help.

[Gullydwarf]

I don't know if this will help when the jobs have already been issued, but when you see something like this happening you can always immediatly check if the dead dwarf was deemed forbidden or not. If not you can do it yourself by using d -> (set item/building property) -> d, which lets you forbid everything on a designating area (also single tile).

[FleshForge]

Yeah in fact that's what you have to do in those semi-bug situations where o-F-(cio) fails, e.g. sometimes pet bodyparts are not forbidden, and sometimes merchants who die leave un-owned stuff.

[zooeyglass]

The other alternative is to set up a burrow with 'w' - you can use burrows through the 'w' and 'm' screens to keep dwarves in a certain area. I have one burrow that covers food and sleep areas, and nothing else, and in times of war, all dwarves get sent there. Military dwarves ignore burrow designation (except if you designate a squad to guard a particular burrow...in which case, as far as I can tell, they sort of hang around).

[Nameless Archon]

The other alternative is to set up a burrow with 'w' - you can use burrows through the 'w' and 'm' screens to keep dwarves in a certain area. I have one burrow that covers food and sleep areas, and nothing else, and in times of war, all dwarves get sent there. Military dwarves ignore burrow designation (except if you designate a squad to guard a particular burrow...in which case, as far as I can tell, they sort of hang around).

I've had great success designating a "Get Inside" burrow that contains only the indoor (behind the traps) areas of my fortress. When an ambush or siege comes along, all dwarves get added to the lockdown burrow. Aboveground dwarves will sprint to the fort, below ground dwarves won't go out, because the dropped items are outside their burrow. Everything else in the fort (item production, daily life, even trading) goes on as normal, while invaders batter themselves on my traps and defenses and the militia goes to pick up their weapons and armor.

Frankly, I can't see dwarves bunkering down in a dining room/dormitory situation against anything less than an invading (and unstopped) FB of some sort, or perhaps if an attempt to tap HFS goes wrong. (Perhaps some stonefall traps in the main traffic corridors...)

[Chocolatemilkgod]

Burrows are your best bet. Granted you will be spammed by 'Urist McAnoyingdwarf cancels job: Forbidden Area' 's messages. But your dwarves wont run into a warzone.