On a Pointless Quest

And there was much rejoicing!

I found a Windows binary for PernAngband!

Okay, okay. Most of you reading this are probably saying to yourself, “Huh? Wha? Who?”

PernAngband.

There’s a computer game called Angband. It’s a text-based dungeon crawl, a Rogue-like game similar to Hack and NetHack, a descendant of Rogue and Moria. Where Hack and NetHack are generic fantasy dungeon crawls, Moria and Angband are a bit more Tolkien-based, hence their names.

There are lots of variants of Angband. There’s a version that’s based on Discworld, for instance. There’s a steampunk version of Angband. Thangorodrim has links to a couple dozen versions.

There was one version called PernAngband, mixing Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders with Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. The developer of the game received a cease-and-desist letter from McCaffrey’s lawyers, and PernAngband became Troubles of Middle-Earth, the McCaffrey material excised.

But surely someone, somewhere on the ‘net, had PernAngband files available. Surely. Surely!

So I’d look from time to time. Occasionally I’d find links to the files, but the files themselves were no longer there.

But at last, I found it. PernAngband!

I didn’t actually want to play the game. I just wanted to have the files. Just so I could say I had them. 🙂

Ah, the hours I spent playing various Rogue-likes. They’re addictive. Yes, that they are. 🙂

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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