So why Angband for you?

[Therem Harth]

Eh.. If you think Angband game logic doesn't make sense, check out some of the commercial stuff that's come out lately. Not naming any names, but by the standards of novels in the genre, a lot of SF and fantasy game plots are unbelievably, unselfconsciously bad.

(Mind, I'm just saying this because I'm an SF snob... As some of you have probably figured out from my username.)

[runequester]

Oh yeah, video games tend to have notoriously poor stories and characters.

[NoSurrender]

I think I keep getting drawn back into Angband by:

A. Never knowing what be around the next corner. Perhaps if I play one more level I'll find a Ring of Speed +20 or Ringil or PDSM (which I still have never found). All these possibilities engage my inner dreamer...

B. A great and relatively clean set of three overlapping optimization problems:
1) What to wear?
2) What to carry?
3) What to keep in the house?

I actually hated dealing with these problems until I started solving it in my spreadsheet. But now using the spreadsheet when solving these problems, I am at one with my inner geek.

I view Magic the Gathering as a set of optimization problems as well, and I love the challenge of engineering good, interesting, and original decks.

[fruviad]

In addition to everything that Malak wrote...

1. Hope? Whatever makes a golfer drag out the golf clubs every spring when they've played for decades without ever getting that hole-in-one they've always wanted? Same for me and Morgoth.

2. Reading "The Silmarillion" is a lot easier when you're recognizing names and places you've previously seen mentioned in Angband. (Admittedly, this is also an option with some variants. I'll get to them when I've taken care of Morgoth.)

3. Angband screenshots are a fun way of testing my OCR software at work.

4. Short answer: Addiction?

Long answer:

I started playing Angband (or something similar?) when I first started playing with Linux back in 1995. I started to get a feel for the UI, but stopped playing for reasons I don't recall.

A few years later I picked up Angband again, learned the UI better and dived deeper, but I soon found it consuming too much of my time. I forced myself to stop playing (I vaguely recall that required a lot of willpower.)

I forgot about Angband until I rebuilt my workstation a few years ago and was reinstalling software. My cube-mate and his friend had been talking incessantly about NetHack for months, so I added that to my list of things to install on Friday night after I got off work; I installed Angband as an afterthought. I continued to download apps for my newly-rebuilt workstation and I thought to myself "I only have a half-hour before dinner...maybe I'll look at NetHack after dinner and fire up Angband for just a few minutes."

I ended up playing Angband virtually every waking moment that weekend.

Today, NetHack sits ignored and lonely on my hard drive.

[Raxmei]

I like the purity of Angband's dungeon crawl. No need to worry about quests, plot, or scheduled events. Here's the dungeon, go kill letters and loot punctuation until you win or die.

I got started in roguelikes playing Adom, which has quite a bit more features than Angband along with a remarkably rich plot and setting for a roguelike. I eventually got tired of Adom and never seriously got into Nethack, but I keep coming back to Angband. I specifically prefer V because it has the best interface and I find the single most common feature in variants to turn me off is a wilderness map.

[saarn]

Very similar to Fruviad. Angband is not just hard, it is amazingly hard. It punishes you mercilessly, but it rewards you too-- if you are good and you are lucky, you get cool items, beat scary monsters, steal their loot, and learn neat spells. Even when you get killed at DLVL10 by a white louse that ends up being thirty white lice that bite you and bite you and bite you and
-you are dead-
you can look forward to making it to level 12 next time and by golly you won't make the same mistake twice.

So yeah, permadeath, random dungeons, umber hulks, out of depth objects, monsters that you find out too late have paralysis, dying, and wondering how on earth anyone ever made it to DLVL90 relying entirely on devices for damage (no melee/shooting).

[Elsairon]

Something I noticed during my last game (Just downloaded Vanilla 3.3.2).

The random dungeons, coupled with the goals of item collection and kit building for end game make Angband for me a game that easily produces a flow state.

I know what I need to do next, and I do not need to stop and think strategically about what to do next. This allows me to stay totally focused on the turn by turn tactical flow of the game.

Plus, while I'm playing my mind is translating the ascii on the screen into a full immersion dungeon crawl, where I see the character heroically bashing and blasting into the depths... kind of like reading a good book, except it's mostly non-stop action!

Thats why I like Angband.

[Magnate]

Something I noticed during my last game (Just downloaded Vanilla 3.3.2).

The random dungeons, coupled with the goals of item collection and kit building for end game make Angband for me a game that easily produces a flow state.

I know what I need to do next, and I do not need to stop and think strategically about what to do next. This allows me to stay totally focused on the turn by turn tactical flow of the game.

Plus, while I'm playing my mind is translating the ascii on the screen into a full immersion dungeon crawl, where I see the character heroically bashing and blasting into the depths... kind of like reading a good book, except it's mostly non-stop action!

Thats why I like Angband.

+1. That's exactly how I would describe my love for it too.

[Feloniousmonk]

Angband's glory days are over. When I play it I play either 3.0.6 or earlier or a patch Eddie Grove made around that time that I like a lot.

Not for nothing but 3.0.6 is pretty clunky compared to how sleek the game is now. Of course, you're free to play whatever you want

[Feloniousmonk]

Also, I love that I can play my own soundtrack.

[Arphod]

my reasons....

1. I loved Moria growing up.

You said it all right there. I started playing Moria 5.0 on a VAX/VMS at Ball State University in 1989 in a 24-hour computer lab with a bunch of C coders who needed baths and social skills. Angband is simply Moria on 'roids, and I've won several versions over the years. I like to keep current-ish (just won 3.3.0) , and I keep various offerings around. It's a mood thing. My all-time favorite is 3.0.9b.

[Zappa]

Moria was the first video game I ever played. I also use the apwborg screensaver so it has the effect of drawing me back into playing from time to time.