I've been relying on Dwarf Fortress to stop me from staring off into space while listening to Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden all day today, and I figured I'd share a look at my fortress so far, but for some reason the steam overlay doesn't seem to want to work with DF and so taking screenshots is slightly more annoying so I probably won't do a lot of screenshots like this in the future until that gets fixed or I start making things worth looking at. Also - I don't mind a little advice but part of the charm is learning and losing on my own so there's no need to point out everything I'm doing wrong here!
First there's the ground floor which has a hastily-built trading post because the caravan showed up and I was like "oh no I need to trade with them or I'll die I think" but I actually have no idea what supplies are critical and what good currency has (or even how much I have?) so uh, we'll see how that pans out.
The next two floors I think show off what I'm having the most trouble with figuring out on my own, which is the scale I'm supposed to be building at. I don't know how much I'm supposed to pack into one floor or how much space should be dedicated to any given facet of my fortress, so I'm just kind of trying out different spaces. That poor lady sitting alone in the third screenshot is my record keeper, I wanted to get some paper and books made for her but it turns out there's actually a lot of steps involved with creating paper from nothing so she might have to wait until I figure out how to fuel a kiln. So far, I'm just sort of seeing what's making my dwarves unhappy and trying to address their needs as best I can, while the various animals that came with the expedition wander around aimlessly and occasionally starve to death because I don't know how to encourage them to go graze on the surface instead of hanging out in meeting areas.