DnD 3/3.5 also has a lot of skills, and you only get so many skillpoints per level.
Yeah, it's a party game, and you're suppose to balance the skills between each character in your party. So you don't have two people arguing over who gets to pick the lock, and ten minutes later the same two people realize they both wanted lock picking and neither of them took disable device and they both die in a fireball trap. (I've been DM'ing to long) Kinda derailment.
Anyways, I don't think simplifying dwarf fort would ever help it. You can make your weapon smith and armor smith the same guy, and the skill set should cross a little, but a legendary weapon smith wouldn't be a legendary armor smith. Or I just have no clue what this thread is talking about and if thats the case I'll just listen.
Well, my point was, that some skills could be (perhabs) combined, while some others might be divided into sub-skills, but In any case it is not exactly clear, how namy, and what skills should there be, and people will argue over any changes anyway. Having either too many or too few skills is bad, but finding the balance between these extremes is fun.
As for wood burning, soap making, lye making, milking, cheesing, and so on: I usually enable most jobs that don't influence quality of finished product on my haulers, and don't care who does it. I find it practical, since I usually (ie when not collecting goblinite, deforest, or some such) have some unemployment anyway.
As for my DnD sessions (as a player) we had "who presses buttons on the puzzle" kinds of arguments, since everyone wanted the xp for himself to stay ahead of the rest of the party. This often ended badly. We were also not above ninjaing loot from each other. My character only stayed with them, because they increased my chances of survival (if only slightly). If possible, I'd have been quite happy if some unfortunate accident happened to their characters, and mine could take their phatz, or better yet, XP for killing a few CRs equal to my level :> Yes, I know, DnD is about cooperation and team spirit, not competition, but screw that.