How long have you been playing without winning

[Zikke]

and it was only 2 years ago that I met another human who had ever heard of this and still played it.

I've still never met anybody IRL that plays any *band variant. I imagine the mathematics of the matter make it improbable. My fiancee can appreciate the concept, but still looks at me funny when she sees me playing (and then she log into WoW for a couple hours...)

[Tenka]

I've still never met anybody IRL that plays any *band variant. I imagine the mathematics of the matter make it improbable. My fiancee can appreciate the concept, but still looks at me funny when she sees me playing (and then she log into WoW for a couple hours...)

I was playing it at a library one time in between study (since it will run straight from a thumb drive) and I noticed some guy who had been sitting next to me was watching.
It's called Angband, I say.

I've been watching for 10 minutes, he says, and I have absolutely no idea what you are doing ..is it some kind of game?


After playing for so long I had no idea how unlike a game it looks to most people.

[Zikke]

That's how most of us can play it at work, I imagine. To the unenlightented, it looks like some warped version of DOS or kernel programming.

[Tenka]

That's how most of us can play it at work, I imagine. To the unenlightented, it looks like some warped version of DOS or kernel programming.

My girlfriend called it an 'ant simulator', and if she caught me playing it: there would be no sex that night.


Some guy at college was giving away an old laptop (really old like a '94 IBM) of course nobody wanted the damn thing ..too slow for internet, no memory. I took it.

Mobile Angband baby!

He couldn't understand why I was so pleased to have it?

[Fenrir]

3-4 months before my first win.

[GSN]

I have never won Angband or any other roguelike (or even gotten very far). Probably because I can't fit into the methodical, thorough, and accurate style of play required by most RLs (and Angband in particular). I never remember I had that wand, scroll, or spell that would have saved my character. Also, I don't have patience for wizard types, selecting spells and the like, as fighters are easier in the beginning (except in ADOM, where their effectiveness stops abruptly after a dozen levels).

Here's how far I have gotten in the various games (which I have been playing since 1997 at least):

Angband - I didn't play Vanilla much, my best character was a twenty-something lvl Chaos Warrior in Z, who fell to Khufu and his escort at about dungeon level 30. I like Chaos Warriors, because they have the potential to get good stuff quickly due to random god gifts. Searching for a good or great weapon (excluding unique drops) is *boring*, and so is amassing gold to buy them from the store.
And well, there was that ToME module which had playable spider races in it, including a green one, which could shoot poison balls at will and being a sorcerer ensured a large mana reserve. That made it ridiculously easy until mid-levels, where poison resistant monsters started to appear.

Nethack - I ran a couple of Barbarians to the bottom of the Gnomish Mines and that was that. Never could advance past level 10 or so without being gored to death by a rothe or some such. The scarcity of identify scrolls pretty much makes the game unplayable in the long run - while you can guess wands and rings by reading spoilers, it is not so easy with weapons and armor.

ADOM - this is the only game in which my spellcasters, especially gnomish elementalists with 4 talents, fared better than fighters. I think the best one was about level 20 and died in the Tower of Fire. I never made it to the Guardian in the CoC, though I did recover RotHK on couple of times.

Crawl - this is my new love, similar to Nethack but with a more sensible distribution of ident scrolls. But I still die before character level 10. I've just lost a dwarf berserker to a bunch of orcs, even though I had a wand of cold and teleport scrolls and was fighting them in a corridor.

[madtal]

Off & on for about 16 years, starting with rogue & then I think Moria. Now my son & I play angband 3.06 & I still haven't won. Beats work though.

[Jagoop]

I've been playing Rogue, Moria, Angband, Nethack and ADOM on and off for more than 20 years (actually closer to 25) ... I've won Angband once, sometimes in the early '90 - and never since.

I fondly remember my first dedicated roguelike 386 PC - this one was with me for more than 8 years. And I still have an old Compaq 386 laptop with nethack installed

[JungleBlond]

I started with Rogue on our family's first laptop - I think someone on here mentioned 'cinderblock with a monochromatic screen'? That was way back in the day. Then I took a break for several years till my brother got me started on Angband (I think Rogue was his fault too...) seven or eight years ago. Haven't won yet and just lost my best character so far. Well, he was the comp 62 character, so he had a bit of a boost to start (yay PDSM!). Lucky 2nd made it to 2400 ft and CL 38 before Ren the Unclean took him out. I may play off that start file again, just so I can have the resists to get me past the 2000' wall (he's the first I've had get that deep - the other is at 1800). The same brother is the one who just got me started on these forums - and my first comp on Christmas day.

[buzzkill]

FOREVER. I played Moria back in the day on my C64, later Rogue (with graphics) on my Amiga 500. I also seem to recall playing some roguelike, with shops within the dungeon that you could buy from or tunnel into, but then a mob of keystone cops would show up. I started paying the current RL's about 6 months ago. I consistently make CL30 with a nice low turn count, but can't seem to turn the corner. Never won.

[Crayz9000]

FOREVER. I played Moria back in the day on my C64, later Rogue (with graphics) on my Amiga 500. I also seem to recall playing some roguelike, with shops within the dungeon that you could buy from or tunnel into, but then a mob of keystone cops would show up. I started paying the current RL's about 6 months ago. I consistently make CL30 with a nice low turn count, but can't seem to turn the corner. Never won.

That was either Hack or an early version of Nethack. It's still the same way, if you are in a shop, grab something, and teleport out the Keystone Cops show up and mob you with cream pies and rubber hoses.

It's best not to do that unless you're a high-level chaotic character (with some item of reflection, for some reason all shopkeepers carry at least a wand of magic missile and usually some elemental wand) and really don't like the shopkeepers. Just leave poor Izchak alone.

I think I had a YASD at some point where I was in a shop, fighting a mimic IIRC, and stupidly decided to read an unidentified scroll. Turned out to be teleport, the shopkeeper came after me and that was the end of that character.

[Larvitz]

2 years. Haven't won Vanilla, Z, ADOM, ToME, DEFINATELY not Nethack, and I've never played any of the really old ones, (Rogue, Hack, etc) so yeah... but by God I shan't give up!

[Magnate]

Wow. It was SO good to read this thread and discover that there are so many people who have been trying for longer than me. I'm like GSN - don't have the methodical patience to win (btw, I guess you're not the author of GSNband, 'cos he'd have been playing for longer). I've been trying regularly for 9 years, but if you count Moria that becomes 19 years, though there was a long gap (~6 yrs) in between.

CC

[Solocutor]

I remember my mom talking about this guy at work who played this weird game where all the people were letters or something. Later, that guy gave us his old computer (my first computer) and a bunch of software on 5 1/4" floppies. Out of all those old games, Moria was hands-down the best.

It's been about 15 years of sporadic play, and I haven't beaten any variant legit. I beat Vanilla and Zangband through copius savefile cheating. (I'm starting to reform my ways, but it's difficult.)

[Mikael]

I have been playing first Moria then Angband since 1994, I think, and I am currently obsessed with NPPAngband.

I haven't had any winner yet. And maybe I don't want to since I am afraid that might take the fun out of the game...:

Once back in 1995 I save scummed a char down to Morgoth, but then lost intrest and didn't play for a long time. Haven't save scummed since, and never will.

/Mikael