I don't know HOW many fellow story-gamers play DF, but I am a nut for catching the details that make it interesting. As it stands, however, it takes a little bit too much micromanagement to keep track of everything. I sometimes try and go back into the announcement history and find something I've missed, but if I wait too long its gone. Add this too the fact that the board is continually spammed with dozens of irrelevant (but still very important) messages that make finding the timeline for a specific dwarf frustrating.
So I have an idea. On the view creature list you already have several different stats you can view about your dwarves. Health, Kills, Relationships, etc. If we could add a category which acts as a mini dwarven journal that would make dwarf fortress infinitely more narrative. It wouldn't have to be more complicated than setting up a link every time the dwarf has an announcement pop up and put them all into a list. I would love to be able to open up a screen which lists all the major events in a dwarfs life over the past year.
For example. If Urist marries, kills four goblins, starts having a grudge, creates a special artifact, and creates a masterpiece armor breastplate one year, you have the option of viewing these as a list off the view creature page. We can even see how close these events fall to his birthday, or anniversary. Would this be too much information to hold in the system? Or can the data just be stored externally to be accessed when we want to view the screen?
(And I really don't mean to repeat an earlier suggestion. I tried finding one and failed)