Angband Humor

Tolkien and his poor writing

by Chris Kern

• Beren goes through all the trouble of having Luthien put Morgoth to sleep, sneaking in, etc. All he has to do is read some glyph of warding scrolls and shoot him with some bolts. He should have found some if he went down to level 100 of Angband. And how did he get down so low with only Angrist? This story is obviously not well thought out.
• Hurin manages to slay Mim, and the story makes to mention of his stuff getting disenchanted. I guess mabye he didn't have magical things, but Tolkien could have given us a little clue.
• According to Unfinished Tales, in the final days before Hurin's capture he would not wear his iron helm. Why the hell not? Didn't he notice when he put it on there was magic light and he suddenly could see all the monsters around him? No wonder he got captured.
• Gothmog fails to summon anything in his fight with Echtelion, even though there is no mention of an anti-summoning corridor.
• Turin somehow manages to use Mormegil, with its huge minuses, to off Glaurung in one blow. I don't think so. Glaurung also has "Gothmog syndrome" when he doesn't summon any ancient dragons. "Father of Dragons" indeed.
• Excuse me, Mr. Tolkien, it's "Mugash" not "Muzgash", and he's a kobold, not an orc. Geez.
• It is impossible for Bard to kill Smaug with one arrow using the Long Bow of Bard, unless our redoutable human has hacked the source code. One wonders exactly what the "black arrow" is.
• This could be attributed to luck, but while in Moria the party manages to completely avoid the Evil Iggy. Gandalf also uses an unorthodox strategy of beating the Balrog which involves no invulnerability potions.
• Okay, I thought Gandalf was supposed to be honorable. But he had cheat death on! Glorfindel also uses cheats.
• Is Samwise Gamgee at some kind of negative level? Sting provides at least 3 attacks, but he only makes two seperate swipes against Shelob. Also, Shelob exhibits "Gothmog Syndrome" when she fails to summon even one spider.
• Okay...how did Aragorn turn a Broken Sword into Anarion? The book mentions "forging". Nice euphemism for "hacking"; he obviously went to the Forge of Hex Editing. I think he took cheating lessons from Gandalf.
• Gandalf was putting on a show for the Fellowship. With Narya and its immunity to fire, he had nothing to fear from Muar. He obviously had some ulterior motive, probably to cover up the fact that his Cheat Death option is on.
• Beren somehow gets the Iron Crown of Morgoth even though he doesn't slay the evil fiend. There's some heavy duty cheating going on here....
• Tolkien overestimates the power of the One Ring. Sorry, but "Control Ringwraith", "Resurrection", and "Rule the World" are not innate powers of the ring, nor are they in the list of "Bizarre Things" that it activates for. Perhaps Tolkien misread the spoilers?
• After slaying Muar, Gandalf does not pick up Calris. (Or maybe he didn't read the spoilers to find out that it was good; although this is unlikely given his other cheating.)

The Variant Maintainer

by Julian Lighton (author of SAngband)

Effects of too much Angband

by various people on rec.games.roguelike.angband

• Sizing up your friends thinking about how many hit points they have.
• Hitting on girls saying, "Hey, I'm so tough I could kill Tiamat"
• Thinking about how many XP's you would get if you killed your neighbor's stupid dog.
• Your girlfriend is lying on the couch watching "Facts of Life" reruns.
• Rummaging through your closet hoping to find Ringil.
• Screaming 'MCA', when hungry.
• Screaming 'MAB' and 'MAH' every hundred yards.
• When you've been playing a good 10 hours and going outdoors, you start to 'cringe from the light'.
• Trying to read WOR's when waiting for the elevator.
• Hitting on girls saying, 'Hey I just *killed* Tiamat'.
• Making silly pick-up lines like 'Wanna go home to my place and look at all my weapons of Westernesse?'.
• Ordering 'potions of confusion' instead of beer.
• Eating mushrooms of hallucination and watching all the ascii symbols appear.
• Searching the walls of every building you come in for secret doors.
• Trying to disarm your flight bag.
• Only carrying a maximum of 22 items at any given time, regardless of size.
• Refusing to use a bank and carring all your money on your person only to get mugged by a filthy street urchin while leaving your house.
• Asking the bookstore if they have Raal's Tome of Destruction.
• Trying to frost bolt your worst enemy.
• Automatically killing singing happy drunks whenever you find them.
• Carrying a flashlight in one hand, a pencil in another, and a notebook in another.
• Putting on clothes you find lying around, just to see what happens to your AC.
• Resting for the better part of a day wherever you happen to get tired.
• Hunting around for a potion of Cure Light Wounds for that paper cut.
• Hacking away at where you think clear icky things are.
• Continually walking up and down flights of stairs, refusing to enter a floor until you get a 'special' feeling about the place.
• Wishing that you were on the wizard-list for real life (ie. reality).
• Letting every dog that you meet breath on you in hopes that your physique will be improved.
• Spending entirely to much time wondering what NEXUS or CHAOS would smell like.
• Refering to male-genitalia as a Rod of Probing.
• Hoping that yours is not a Rod of Speed.
• Bashing down every door you come to after you find that you not dexterous enough to simply open them.
• You know you have compiled too much variants when: you know which order the files are in, and their relative compilation speeds. (Mark Howson)

When I was your age...

by various people on the Angband IRC channel

New ZAngband Features!

by various people on the Angband IRC channel

Save Our Slime Molds!

by Aidan Ryder, Eric Bock, and DSCreamer on rec.games.roguelike.angband

Aidan Ryder:

Does anyone else collect and name slime molds?

My home looks a bit like this:
a) A slime mold {Milton}
b) A slime mold {Jeremy}
c) A slime mold {Thomas}....

:Eric Bock:

:LOL!
:That's probably the strangest Angband ritual I've ever heard of.
:AFAIK, you're the only one :)

The only one in the "Save Our Slime Mold" association?
And I wondered why the conventions were underattended...

And I do it in RL too...;)

:Any particular reason?  And do any of them look even remotely close to
:something one would want to munch on? :)

I've always visualised a slime mold as sort of a green lump with little
eyes on stalks on top. They are my friends. Do not eat them.

You know, I cry whenever I find Slime Mold juice.

::DSCreamer:

::Don't! Slime mold juice is artificial!

Must be some errr... interesting E numbers in it...

::Artificially produced by magic in the alchemy shop, of course.

What Angband *really* is

by Adam Horowitz on the Angband IRC channel

Robert: What is a "cow-ear"? I hope it's not what I think.

Newbie .. just coming in: What is Angband?

Adam: It's exactly what you think. Kind of scary, eh? A little doggie chew toy. And it's in the middle of my carpet.

The amphibious Whale

by Remco Gerlich on rec.games.roguelike.angband

Your ancestors have killed thousands of these creatures. It is fed up with evolution, and returning to dry land. It is often found on beaches, where groups of helpful treehuggers will try to pull it back into the sea. It doesn't move; it hopes the environment freaks will think it's dead. A kill of this creature is worth tons of blubber for any character. It can claim to be a mammal, repeat that it is a mammal, repeat that it is a mammal, and explode (in very gory fashion).

Famous last words

by various people on rec.games.roguelike.angband

• It did HOW MUCH damage?!
• Just one more round before I use that potion of *Healing*.
• Cyberdemon? What's that?
• Hey, I didn't know those things could breathe!
• I'll be fine unless he hits with ALL his attacks.
• I'd sure get a lot of XP if I could beat that guy...
• OK, I'll save just enough mana to cast Teleport.
• Great Hell Wyrm? No prob, I resist fire.
• The Angel of Death? Who needs nether resistance?
• Either he's going to kill me or I'm going to kill him.
• WHO summons Ancient Dragons?
• Hey, I'm stunned, what's that?
• I think I've finally gotten the hang of this.
• Wonder what that is?
• If I try this staff it's bound to get me out of here
• Why can't I find the cure serious wounds when I need one?
• I'll be safe down these stai....arrrgh!
• I wonder what a Sky Drake breathes?
• What happens if I drink this? It'll cost less than IDing it.
• What does 'breeds explosively' mean?
• It took me for /how/ /many/ HP?!!! (killed by the Tarrasque)
• Argh! Get of the keyboard you bloody cat... Oh No! <sob> (killed by a small fluffy cat... grrr...)
• Just one more turn... C'mon, recover damn you! Oh. (poisoned)
• I'll just start windoze on the 2nd processor - no need to save... (killed by a software bug ;)
• He's stunned, I don't need to heal quite yet...
• He can't possibly mana storm three times in a row. (After of course getting sauron down to 1 star.)
• What's it doing this high in the dungeon?
• What's toxic waste?
• Aaargh!

Journal of a Barbarian Monk (YASD)

by "Azhrarn" on rec.games.roguelike.angband

This is Bob Hayworth, reporting live for Dungeon News at the scene of another brutal slaying. Officials have just finished removing the body of Yet Another Dumb Adventurer, who was apparently killed by a magical book. The exact cause of death is unknown at this point, but preliminary reports suggest water bolts, fire and poison were involved. Eyewitness monsters describe the battle as short but bloody, with all of the blood apparently coming from the adventurer, who did not actually even hurt the magic book. I will now try to get a few words from the victor. Mr. Raal's, do you feel this killing was justified? Mr. Raal's? Mr. Raal's, just a few words, please? Mr. Raal's? Do you have something to say? C'mon, out with i- aaaaarrrggggh!!

Bob? Are you there Bob? We've lost the satellite feed, Bob. Are you still there? Excuse us, folks, we're having some technical difficulties. We'll be back after a short word from our sponsors, Bad Idea Jeans...

Murphy's and Sod's Angband Laws

by John I'anson-Holton, Mischa E Gelman, Gwidon S. Naskrent, Chase Tingley, "Vicarys", and "Jeff" on rec.games.roguelike.angband

"If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong"; and
"If something is going to go wrong, it will do so at the worst possible time and place".

These two laws govern and explain everything that happens to us from why our toast always fall with the jam side (or jelly side for our American friends :-) )down to why the queue you are in at the Supermarket is always the slowest. It is a sad but inescapable truth that these two laws and their corollaries extend themselves into the game of Angband.

Murphy and Sod's Angband Laws

1. If you are fighting a monster and are down to single digit hitpoints and quaff an un-id'd potion, read an un-id'd scroll or use an unid'd wand in the desperate hope that it will save you, they will be a Potion of Poison, a Scroll of Summon Monster and a Wand of Haste/Heal Monster respectively
2. All un-id'd items sold will be of immense value.
3. If your character dies, when reviewing their inventory and equipment you will find a minimum of three items that could have saved you.
4. If you find an out of depth Ring of Speed, it will be cursed. If it is not cursed, it will be destroyed by a lightning attack just after you pick it up.
5. If you are a Mage, you will maximize your wisdom before finding your first Potion of Intelligence. The opposite will be true for Priests.
6. If you desperately desire an item, it will show up in the Black Market several times for far more AU than you currently have. Once you have saved up enough, it will never appear again.
7. If you wield a Two-Handed Sword 4d6 without first id'ing it, it will be Mormegil.
8. The first several dungeon spell books you find will be for the wrong discipline.
9. Only warriors can find Raal's Tome of Destruction or the Prayer Book Wrath of God with any reliability.
10. If you accidentally read a Scroll of Curse Armor/Weapon it will target you most valuable piece of equipment. Heaven help you if you do it on purpose.
11. If you desperately need to cast a spell/prayer, you'll fail three times in a row irregardless of your fail rate.
12. Other people will boast about finding the Hard Leather Boots of Feanor on multiple occasions. The only time you'll see them is when you fall asleep at night.
13. If your computer is going to crash, it'll wait until just after you have found the best item in your life to do so.
14. Never throw flasks of oil at a monster if you are carrying healing potions for obvious reasons.
15. Reading a Scroll of Acquirment will give you a Dwarven Pick of Digging nine times out of ten.
16. High level mages who've found that quaffing a Potion of Detonations while invulnerable can be kind of fun, will innevitably try it with a Potion of Death. Whoops!!
17. If you are a high level character who dies while battling a horde of ancient dragons, greater undead, greater demons and/or deep uniques, you can be sure that your tombstone will show that a small kobold got the fatal blow.
18. The one time you decide to go below 2,000 ft wothout Poison Resistance will be the one time a Drolem breathes from offscreen.
19. A well kept secret: All powerful artifacts are actually carried by Green Glutton Ghosts and not monsters like Tiamat.
20. If you get hit by an unresisted Nexus attack, the two stats swapped will be the exact combination that you would have least wanted to be switched around.
21. A priest or paladin will never be granted the prayer they were hoping to learn the first time around.
22. If an item in your inventory is destroyed or stolen, it will be the one you need next.
23. If you leave Thorin at home in favour of Celegorm or Anarion, the next unique you meet will be Ancalagon the Black. Simiarly, any choice to leave out a vital resistance will result in the majority of all monsters generated having an attack to exploit that opening.
24. All special feelings between 2,000 ft and 3,000 ft are graveyards.
25. Unique monsters will often drop the one item that would have made them incredibly easy to kill.
26. (preserve mode only) Every special level you explore fully has a jelly pit at the very end, or orc pit. Every one you give up on had a key artifact.
27. You are guaranteed to die five turns after you've found an awesome OoD item. (Especially true for Ghost Beastmasters)
28. The random invulnerability mutation will always activate in the town, and never when the Cyberdemons appear.
29. The moment you find something you can sell for loads and loads all the shopkeepers change and the shop limits plummet to 5000.
30. Each time you find that Holy Avenger Whip at 250', your character won't have DEX/STR enough to get more than one blow with it.
31. The damage done from spells and weapons is calculated as being inversely proportional to the danger posed to you by the creature you are fighting. If you have a weapon that is 4d6, any creatures that can give you trouble will receive 4 points damage. Superb hits calculated on top of 24 points damage are reserved for the scrawny cats and the white louse exclusively.
32. If by chance you *do* get an artifact from "Acquirement", you are guaranteed to die in ten turns.

© 1997/98 by Robert Rühlmann, rr9@thangorodrim.net