Like {nethack}, {moria}, and {rogue}, one of the large freely
distributed Dungeons-and-Dragons-like simulation games, available for
a wide range of machines and operating systems. The name is from
Tolkien's Pits of Angband (compare {elder days}, {elvish}). Has been
described as "Moria on steroids"; but, unlike Moria, many aspects of
the game are customizable. This leads many hackers and would-be
hackers into fooling with these instead of doing productive work.
There are many Angband variants, of which the most notorious is
probably the rather whimsical Zangband. In this game, when a key that
does not correspond to a command is pressed, the game will display
"Type ? for help" 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time, random
error messages including "An error has occurred because an error of
type 42 has occurred" and "Windows 95 uninstalled successfully" will
be displayed. Zangband also allows the player to kill Santa Claus
(who has some really good stuff, but also has a lot of friends),
"Bull Gates", and Barney the Dinosaur (but be watchful; Barney has a
nasty case of halitosis). There is an official angband home page at
http://thangorodrim.angband.org/ and a zangband one at
http://www.zangband.org/. See also {Random Number God}.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {moria}{nethack}{Random Number God}{rogue}]