By the sounds of things, it's going to be around another week before .22 comes out—which, given the number of bugs Toady One has fixed already, is actually quite encouraging!
I would say that if you want to take a turn on this fort, and you have no experience, you should play through at least the first few steps of this tutorial:
http://afteractionreporter.com/dwarf-fortress-tutorials/Make sure to download the copy of the game that's actually included in there. That's an old version of the game, but it has the same basic principles. It's how I learned to play, and I've got a fort that's successfully repelled sieges and invasions without resorting to simply trapping the entire overworld (which, in my view, is a valid way to do it, but takes too damn long!). Anyone who wants to play that, I'll be happy to help run through some of the differences between version 0.28.181.40d and 0.31.22 once you feel you have the gist of things.
I think the only real rules for this should be that everyone must play in good faith. You can play a dwarven overseer who's a bit eccentric or quirky, but you cannot deliberately sabotage progress on the fort.
I would
suggest that, once we have decided on a suitable embark site, we take a look at it using the dfreveal utility and plan out the general structure of the fort collectively, among at least the initial players. This will help avoid a problem I've seen with some succession games I've read through, where things go randomly off in all directions because no two consecutive managers share
any common goals.
While this can increase !!Fun!!, in my view, it is more fun in a traditional sense for most people—including those simply spectating—if the fort makes real progress toward at least a few specific goals.
Finally, for anyone who doesn't really know how a succession game works, I would propose as required reading the tragic saga of Boatmurdered:
http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/Introduction/
