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[krisslanza]

A bit. I do try to design my fortresses in some kind of way that seems planned or at least appealing to the eye. I do however tend to spend so much time doing this, I forget to make tradegoods lately - or make anything but the outer wall and realize it's Autumn, and no one has beds and we're running out of food/drink.

[Baron Baconeer]

I love forts with themes. I've had a fort where nobody goes above the ground, and the population slowly dies under FB assault while boasting the largest menagerie in dwarvenkind. (Including a voracious cave crawler named Spiterippers due to his many elf and kobold kills - my favourite!) another one was a fort where only nobles and other VIP:s could live under the ground, and all the others lived in an upside town in the middle of a desert. Getting beer was... Frustrating. In one I built a huge pyramid as my duke's grave. But my absolute best thing is Soundgate, my newest fort, which has a castle, an underground town and a warship with crew and pitchblende-based engine.

Damn do I love this game.

[CinnibarMan]

I like writing little side journals for the dwarfs I get dorfed as in other people's forts.

[Smitehappy]

I guess this is role-play but has a bit of utility as well. I got tired of my dwarves dying when trying to recover corpses but thought turning off corpse retrieval was boring so I came up with a rather cool solution. I removed corpse handling (Burial, retrieval, etc.) from every dwarve but a few female dwarves. They have their profession name change to Valkyries and are trained non-stop for a year or two in a special squad. When they're done training I put them in special housing right above the catacombs where they hang out till their needed. When a dwarf dies they make their way to retrieve it and return it to the catacombs for burial.

It's marginally effective and kinda cool to see them descend on a dead dwarve during sieges, swatting away the occasional goblin that manages to get in their way.

[Max White]

Hell yes I role play! As much as possible.

Building a fort that works is nice, building a fort that is full of win is even better.

[plisskin]

Always. This is why I started my community fort.

Without RP, DF is pretty much just alcoholic Sim City.

[thegoatgod_pan]

I've been trying an above ground fort, which really sets-up a good roleplay situation.  Mudhut savannah town, everyone paranoid, scarred, drinking in taverns, decking crossbows. I had gates, dragon burned out the mechanisms, so I just left it open. Built a few aztec pyramids. It's the wild willd west. with ogres.

[Tanelorn]

Now I'm curious, what's it called?

DF Designer, but it seems to only be downloadable as uncompiled source code and I have no idea what to do with it

Quickfort is another utility that can be used to design your fortress and execute the design with minimal intervention (like playing a macro).

I highly recommend it.

Now that I think of if, I need this utility so much because  I roleplay: I like my fortress to have great halls will pillars to support the structure, Moria style (when Gandalf light up the mines, in lord of the rings). I know the pillars are not needed, but it's how I think a dwarf fortress should be.
It has no functional purpose, it's purely roleplay. And it's too painful to place these pillars by hands, hence Quickfort.

[Chessrook44]

I haven't thought about it much, especially since this is only my third fort and I forget what happened to the other two buuuuuuuuut... some moments pop up.

First, when making the fort, I created a Vault which will contain ALL our valuable metals (Gold, Silver, etc.).  The only way to it is two narrow passages lined with cage traps, and a war dog chained out front.  Above it is the catacombs... the dead resting on the riches of the future.

Another thing I made was a Dwarven Bunker.  The idea is that, when the traps out front are defeated and the military crushed, the surviving dwarves can run into the bunker and seal it off from the outside world.  There's a well, 60 beds, emergency food and ale stores, and small stone and wood stockpiles.  If they can't recover the fort, they can open the other entrance and escape, sealing the foe inside the fort to prevent it from terrorizing the countryside, and allowing a reclamation team to come back and recover the fort from the bunker.

Current plans involve making a Divine Quarter.  Or Temple District.  Or whatever you want to call it.  A large empty square with temples to each of the Gods the dwarves worship around it, of which there are 8.  Each temple has a unique and themed look, and has an icon for the god on the floor.  Or it will, I drew up designs on graph paper and JUST finished that.  Mining will start soon.

Future plans involve making mini-forts in portions of the caverns I found, or creating safe areas of those caverns.  I have two areas I'm looking at, one of which will be hard, but profitable (Narrow and short passages in, but there's a flying slime FB in there, as well as one or two other FBs) and the other... well just for fun (It's pretty much barren and thus has no real use, but having a LONG, narrow arch of the cavern all of my own would be NEAT.).  I may stockpile THEM with extra food and ale as well, just to keep them as backup safe zones.

There was also a moment that stood out a bit in my mind.  A pair of goblin ambush parties appeared, one of them killing a child.  The military went out and killed one squad, then I sent them back in.  One dwarf though, a wrestler, was caught by the other ambush party.  I tried to get him to run, but he didn't.  I tried to get the military to go for him, but then realized... the goblins in the party were all running!  All but one.  I watched in amazement as the wrestler proceeded to beat the crap out of the goblin (Knocking out a tooth at one point), the goblin constantly trying to crawl away from him, before finally the goblin died.  I imagined the dwarf was furious at the child (Not his I think) dying, and was taking it out on this goblin.  Brutally.

[Urist is dead tome]

I just design to forts to be efficient (well I try). It seems that the dwarves would do that. In my last fort I even had a kitchen right next to the dining hall. Of course I never had enough dwarves to stock the kitchen with anything other than a butcher shop and an unfinished kitchen.

[Necro910]

I generally have complex personalities for my dwarves. The cheese-obsessed noble, the psychotic miner, the stalking woodcutter, and so on.

After the original 7, personality is granted on merit. If you're the general, you get one. If you make a planepacked statue, you get one.

[Sandrew]

I tried to make a fort with a background story recently. It only lasted six months before it fell to a skeletal yak (which was very much the way I hoped it would turn out), but I had so much fun with it. Took a bunch of notes, might turn it into a short story if I have the time and motivation. I also had plans for a reclaim, but I found out that my civ is dead so I probably will not.

So yea, I guess I roleplay and I must say that I enjoy it much more than simply playing a gameplay fort where everything is focussed on more and bigger.

[MasterMorality]

Mix of both. Mainly I just do everything as I go along. I've sorted out a basic pattern in my fortress progression, but mostly I just dig here and there and see what happens.
This does often lead me to dig channel through the middles of my stockpiles or rooms, which causes the dwarves using them to witness falling elven caravans....
Nowadays I just incorporate this as a feature of my main hallways: a big pit in the middle where dwarves enjoying a chat are sometime interrupting by a great thunderous crash as the bridge is taken from under their feet, and then the hellish screams of falling merchants and animals, cut brutally short by the sudden crunch of bone on hard stone. I always make sure that it's not deep enough to kill them outright usually (around eight Z levels) so there's always the amusement of watching them crawl up the stairs or simply lay there moaning until they either recover or die.
Those that survive, I allow to leave. I feel that if you're badass enough to survive a fall like that, then you deserve to live.

[IcarusOne]

Most of the time. My last fort "Cryptpurge" was made in the middle of a few evil biomes with both zombie and skeleton wildlife. My militia commander was a proficient axe man and the first strange mood i got made me a golden battle axe (what are the odds?) encrusted with some gems. Renamed his profession to paladin.

His militairy squad is dedicated purely to kill as much undead as possible. All the time. And no civillians are allowed out, unless all the undead are "dead". They respawn like crazy though, but they must be purged by steel, iron and golden axe. (No cotton candy is used.)