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[PWRFLSTRGN]

It seems every time i find an embark with a waterfall created when two rivers or streams meet it's invariably just a river width hole in the ground that runs off the map with almost no open ground at water level. What causes this and are there ways around it? this is a somewhat frozen example of what i mean.

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[Eric Blank]

As far as I know that's simply how the game handles rivers, and there's no real way around it besides massive dorfly excavation of undesired cliff face. Further downstream you may find that the ground simply slopes towards the river, without many actual cliffs, but very near the waterfall you will almost always find it's a canyon eroded into the hillside. Occasionally you will find more desirable over-the-cliff waterfalls where one river on high ground runs straight into a river far below it, if most other terrain is also on the lowest level, but it will still have a short canyon ahead of the falls.
If Toady later on allows rivers to sometimes simply run off preexisting cliff faces then you may get the more attractive waterfalls that often become tourist attractions in reality.

If you want to try getting something else, go into the custom world gen parameters and make a world with periodically erodes cliffs turned off, erosion cycle count set to 0, and 800 minimum river start locations, then embark on every waterfall in the world. You may very well find one that is relatively close to what you want.

[CapnUrist]

My first thought is that you might get more of what you're looking for if you don't wait so long in your world generation. Since DF tries to emulate real-world physics and geology I'd say the longer you let time flow, the farther back the rivers will erode into the cliffsides. Granted, there should be more of a triangular shape to that cliff edge, but there's my guess.

[Brandstone]

You can try using Isoworld to find what you're looking for, but they are pretty rare. I've never seen one, but I haven't actively looked either.