A little deeper but not too advanced? It might also be nice to have a little blurb about the variant on the competition page, so people who haven't played Entro (or whatever) before will have some idea of what to expect.

I have always been interested to try a competition, but am discouraged by all the unfamiliar variants.

What if each month there were a V competition and also another one with a variant that changes every time?

Out of curiosity, how are the savefiles created?

It would be handy if we knew a way to hack the savefile to turn off the "cheater" bit so that Wizard mode could be used.

Ahhhg, you make it sound so easy. "I'll submit a depth 45 char tonight"

I can hardly make it past 300' without getting canned by orcs.

Nick, I've emailed you a save file for an Oangband-110u High-Elf Assassin. He's at clev 15, 1500' with no resists. Comments are welcome (from everybody).

Is he at 1 HP surrounded by Hydras with empty inventory? :)

Seriously though, any uniques killed? Any artifacts lost/found? Egos?

Is he now in town? Is there enough food/oil/WOR/ID/whatever in town right now? If not in town, is his backpack overfull? Does he have enough consumables on him?

How many 1d5 daggers in his quiver? (I like O assassins.)

Why such a cheesy race? I'd prefer a Hobbit, for example.

No uniques (...except maybe Lotho Pimple and some Maggot dogs), no artifacts, no egos.

He's in town, with enough essentials. Pack is empty except for basic kit.

Two {good} 1d4 daggers.

Well, this was my second [O] character ever, so I wanted to make a character that at least had a shot. Besides, I always cherish the fact that you don't have to worry about see inv.

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I'm gathering from the tone of your post that you think this char is too tough... My idea was to have an essentially blank-slate character that starts at stat-gain. I figured folks would like to find their own artifacts and have the thrill of killing Wormtongue.

The inexperienced can scum for stat pots if they want to, and players are forced to learn survival skills that don't involve spending an eternity at low levels building their kit, i.e., the kind of tactics that become necessary if you want to survive past 2000'.

So yeah, it's a bit of a challenge game, but a useful exercise, IMO. But maybe that's not what people want in a competition char.

You've got me all wrong. It's really great that there are no artifacts nor uniques killed. If the character is too tough for some lousy players (like me, for example) they can always get to some shallower depth and scum there (if there is WOR depth reset in O, I don't remember). I'd play in that compo.

A later starting point would be interesting - it would give a chance for newbies to play an advanced character even if they can't normally get that deep on their own. Which isn't really the point of the competitions I know, but still fun...

Also just thought of another idea: a series of mini-competitions that last only a few days or a week each. The point of these would be to accomplish some specific task: for example they would be given a savefile with a certain unique on the level, and you have to kill that unique in the fewest turns. Or you need to retrieve a certain item from a vault. The players would be limited to the kit they are given (or can find on the level), because they wouldn't be allowed to leave the level. Perhaps give them an odd set of equipment and make the players deal with what they have. Would this be fun? Thoughts?

I was thinking of chess: playing full games is fun and all, but once and a while it's also fun to solve the "mate in three moves" problems.

This sounds really cool. But I wonder how difficult it would be to set it up. I'm not even sure how you'd go about it. At the very least, it sounds like a fruitful idea for an intrepid developer...