A Knight to remember
11/22 '19
My trusty steed Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin was killed by a wand of death.
Then I managed to explode my bag of holding, my two primary weapons, and quite a lot of other useful things.
And Ki-Rin-Tin-Tin-Too was disintegrated by a black dragon!
So I limped onward, no longer a mounted knight but determined as ever.
"The guardian Angel of Lugh will not accept the name Cool Hand of Lugh."
I went to my reward with 3285282 points, happy just to have made it.
MORE
* nethack the original, v3.6.1 and counting.
* unnethack - kitchen sink of additions, harder than vanilla, very actively developed.
* Slash'em/Slash'em Extended/SlashThem - I play this one a lot, basically 3.4.3 with new roles, races, monsters, artifacts, longer dungeon, shorter Gehennom. Kinda hard. Playing as a Vampire wizard is super fun. Playing as a Doppleganger is OP AF. Dev seems stalled for most of these subvariants.
* dNethack - new and actively changing as we speak, new mechanics for almost everything, WAY harder monsters, new roles that are basically impossible to ascend, Elbereth replaced with a series of Wards and spirit bindings that convey an intrinsic but only if you don't break conduct...easily the most complicated and difficult of the current variants. You can play as an android or a convict or a time traveler from the future who doesn't know why he has all these crazy plasma weapons etc.
* FiqHack - mostly UI and QoL improvements...didn't do much for me.
* GruntHack - intended to be harder; can't say, never tried it.
I think that's the major ones? AceHack and NitroHack got folded into one or more of those...NetHack4 became FiqHack I think...NetHack Fourk might be active.
Still a great (set of) game(s).
https://ascension.run/hterm/ appears to have many of the variants Paul listed.