As I said to Psychotic on XBL tonight, I'll take the next go after Demon Dude, figure since it's early and the fortress needs some serious beefing up (for example our Military is currently 2 dwarves, with no weapons or experience, our "fort" on the surface is a wooden wall and a ditch, and Demon Dude made the grand hall open to the air which can definitely be fixed easily enough, just take some patience and micro-management) If we want to get to the truly fun levels of Dwarf Fortress with Forgotten Beasts etc we really need to go digging down to find caverns, however if we find them without a strong surface fort (it'd be just our luck that BoB would be in charge, a forgotten beast would spawn in the lower reaches and a siege would strike on the surface, can't expect him to manage that well, at least with the strong surface fort he can put a marksdwarf squad in a tower to snipe down at enemies whilst the fort is sealed up)

That being said, don't expect it to be plain sailing with me beefing things up, on more than one occasion in my current "practice" fort I have either 1) not produced drinks fast enough and lost massive amounts of workers to thirst deaths, 2) caused cave in's by accident, 3) suffered losses at the hands of enemies of the fort, 4) offended the elves considerably (I accidentally offered up a wood item for trade, they got most upset and were unwilling to trade with me. I think it was a crutch/splint what snuck in to my shipment. This resulted in me angrily seizing the entire caravan's worth of goods and sending the elves packing!) resulting in their refusal to trade with me for around 2 years! So whilst year 3 would be relatively quiet if I am beefing it up (mostly you'll see new walls/rooms/production lines going in) it won't be a complete white wash, or at least I'd try to make it interesting.