Challenge Builds

If repeatedly defending a besieged fortress isn't difficult enough for you, here are a few challenges you can set for yourself. You might also want to check out the List of goals for other ways to challenge yourself.

Exiled Warlord

Seven starting dwarves with no military skills
All immigrants immediately activated into the military
No killing them off on purpose!

Hermit

No skills
One pick and no other supplies

A well known and popular challenge. Kill off the 6 starting dwarves and any immigrants as they arrive, and try to make a living for the last dwarf.

Outcast

No skills
One pick and no other supplies

Same as the hermit challenge, only with multiple hermits. Turn off immigrants or kill them.

Roughing it

No picks

Don't dig or build at all. Bring no picks, and don't ask for them in trade. Watch as the more "weather-averse" dwarves slowly go mad.

Gone to the dogs

One pick
A ton of animals

Replace the starting equipment with an equal value in dogs or cats.

ASPCA

No animals

Don't bring any pets. Furthermore, due to the possibility of animals being caught in them, don't build any traps, either. If immigrants bring pets, get rid of them somehow. (If you're a particularly rabid ASPCA member, you could get rid of the pet-bearing immigrants, too, but that's probably excessive.)

Diplomacy

Six dwarves with only social skills
One skilled dwarf

Six courtiers of the king's court made some ill-advised remarks within earshot of the king, and as a result have been ordered to go found an outpost. They've hired you to make sure they survive. The six nobles only have social skills and refuse to do any work that is beneath them.

Luddite

No mechanics or mechanisms
No machines

Traps and moving bridges are forbidden, farming must be accomplished by hand.

City-States

No skills
7 or multiple of 7 of everything you bring

At the start your dwarves split everything equally and move to 7 different locales that are not interconnected. They have to mine their own rooms, plant their own crops, use their own craft piles. This will probably require a bit of cross-fertilization until you get doors and can lock everyone in, but after that it is every dwarf for him/herself!

<insert material> Fort

Wooden

Start on any treeless map and make everything that you can out of wood. That means no underground forts, though you may destroy hills and such. You lose points for bringing wood at the start.

Glass

Construct an above-ground fortress made entirely out of glass. Bonus points for not using magma, constructing your fortress under water, or using clear glass exclusively. No stone may be used. Metal may only be used for creating stuff that cannot be made out of glass.

Dieting Dwarves

Fishing Village

Give your dwarves only the fishing skill and other fishing related skills (like bonecrafting.) Try to survive off a fish only diet. Flood the river and build houses above it so the dwarves can fish through their floors. There will be an extra challenge if the river freezes in the winter.

Carnivore

No plants or seeds

Only eat strays, pets, and animals you trap and hunt. No farming or plant gathering. Keep all your pets in cages and care for them as little as possible. Eat your dwarves' pets first for an extra challenge. If this upsets your dwarves, ridicule or ignore them. (If you are particularly heartless, you could cage those dwarves as well because anyone that empathizes with animals doesn't deserve any rights either.)

Vegan

Obviously, no meat, fish, or dairy
Also, no leather, silk, or shell
In essence, construct an Elven Forest

A fairly easy challenge. Take no meat and buy no meat. Butcher no animals. Gut no fish. Use no animal products like the elves.

IOGT/AA

No alcohol

Quite possibly, this is the cruelest challenge that your dwarves can be given. Don't ever brew any alcohol. Build wells instead and watch your now teetotaller dwarves work slower and slower by the season.

Hunting Party

One marksman/ambusher
Two camp servants (e.g. one cook/brewer/herbalist, one butcher/tanner/leatherworker/woodcutter)
Four clients, all dabbling in marksman/ambusher but with primarily civilian skills.

No anvil, lots of hunting dogs ... and a haunted wood. (In a terrifying wood, you may find all the trees & plants are dead, severely reducing long-term prospects.)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement

One miner/mason/architect
One woodcutter/carpenter/architect
Five military dwarves

No anvil, lots of food, in a canyon - spend the first year building fortifications to interdict traffic. Immigrants can build a town around you, but your original dwarves remain dedicated to their mission.

Dwarfsicles

Select a map region in the northern extremities (or another very cold area), where water is frozen for much or all of the year. All construction that can be undertaken with stone must use ice, instead. Be sure to bring plenty of Plump Helmets for brewing drinks!

For an insane challenge, forbid yourself from digging in any material that can yield resources other than ice.

This. Is. SPARTAAAA

At least 50% of your dwarves should be military 100% of the time, and train in spears, shield use and wrestling. All other dwarves are "helots" and shouldn't be given any skills – they can be pressed into the military during times of war, but given no equipment or at most a bare minimum of inferior weapons.

You should refuse trade with caravans, instead attacking them if possible. You should forbid the use of gold and silver, the making of crafts, and the smoothing of walls or any other task that makes your fortress "beautiful."

You shouldn't create chainmail or plate armour. You should only brew wine.

The Mad Butcher

_{(this requires a tiny amount of editing to the raws)}

Edit Dwarf Fortress\Raw\object\Creature_Domestic.txt. Remove the tag [BUTCHERABLE_NONSTANDARD] from cats and dogs.
Start with a normal build except:
- One dwarf should be a dedicated butcher/leather worker
- buy minimal food
- bring as many puppies or kittens as possible
Drop all your puppies or kittens into cages or into animal pits as soon as possible.
Dig a shaft 10 or more Z-levels deep, mark the top an animal pit.
At the bottom of the shaft set up a butcher shop, a tanner shop, a bedroom, and some food and leather stockpiles.
Set it all up so that the mad butcher cannot escape.
As you need food, begin selecting animals to be dropped into your deep pit, next to the butcher.
See how long a single butcher, butchering splattered kittens, can keep your fortress fed! Cooking and farming are cheating... raw meat for everyone!

Fort Geneva

Build only nonlethal (cage) traps
Sentient creatures (Goblins, etc.) are to be considered prisoners of war and treated humanely
Suggested provisions for prisoners: a bed, a personal cell, a commons area, aboveground exercise yard, and the clothes the creature was wearing when captured
Inspiration: Geneva Conventions

Jack Of All Trades

No starting skills for any dwarfs
All starting dwarfs and all immigrants immediately have all possible jobs activated
All workshops must be available at all times for all dwarfs of all skill levels

Pray for strange moods!

Master Of One

All starting dwarfs can have one skill and one skill only
No changes are allowed on any dwarfs labour screen
All immigrants must stay with the profession/professions they arrive with
All peasants must be activated into the military

Note: Since all dwarfs start with all hauling activated then that's fine- alternatively you could limit the peasants to hauling duties and only allow dwarfs with military skills into the military...

Siege Master

No traps
No drawbridges
No locked doors
No magma/water based defences

Humanlike Fortress

Build a castle around the area you intend to play on.(A wall out of wood or stone. Metal if you really want to push it. It must not have a roof.) It can be extended as desired, but no buildings can be outside of it. (Farm plot and water wheel, or other mechanics (save for windmill) do not count as a building in this sense)
All dwarf residences (bedrooms) must be above ground. Communal bedrooms allowed. Pathways between dwarf housings (not workshops) above surface level allowed, but no houses must be directly linked to the keep.
Dwarf housings can be made in multipile floors, featuring only one basement floor
All workshops must be in relevant, and different buildings (for example, mason's workshop and carpenter's workshop being in the same building is not alright, but a smelter and metalsmith's workshop is just fine. )
Stockpiles underground are allowed.
The Fortress must have a keep(with barracks attached to it, or next to it) for nobles, military, and guards. Weapons must be stored within, as well as all currency that isn't owned by dwarves.
Farmlands must be kept outside the fortress.
The only things allowed underground besides stockpile is a mineshaft for getting ore and stone, a sewer system, herb growth in basements is allowed and none of the houses can be directly linked to the mine shaft, or stockpile. Keep can disobey this rule.
BONUS: Make a fountain at least 3 Z squares high in the center of the keep, with a +statue+(or better) on top of it.
BONUS: The fortress is built around a human town.
BONUS: Town has an awesome inn operating in same building as the brewery. REGULAR parties there, or it isn't good enough!
BONUS: All booze is kept within a town inn.
ÜBERBONUS : Make all of the fortress out of wood. And have a dragon attack it. Send us pictures!