How long have you been playing without winning

[Zikke]

Originally Posted by Tenka

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]

Originally Posted by Zikke

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.