Community game? Boatmurdered sort of thing? Should be fun, and there's less need to worry about messing up because messing up is funny and with ponies, it's slightly harder to really screw up. I'm really paranoid and picky about embarks, though, so I probably shouldn't start it either.
As for paintable houses, that's a puzzler. Two ideas spring to mind, either using a reaction to convert wood or stone into thread or silk, dye it, then change it back, or just use a mod that adds a cloth blocks reaction. Or... Glazing wooden and stone blocks, with a custom reaction and an expanded set of glazes.
I'm feeling a lot less worried about combat balance now: had a horn silver mite FB with deadly dust massacre nearly sixty cave ponies yesterday, despite being webbed up most of the time and having every body part broken(would forty wooden axes have had any effect?). Reverted to an earlier save and drafted everyone into masonry to get the caverns sealed quickly, because this embark is awesome(deep soil, massive river, gold and silver, found all three caverns and the magma sea right off) and deadly dust is stupidly overpowered for a first FB, especially since it came in my first winter. I don't even have anything to equip my ponies with yet, ffs.
