FAangband version 0.1.1

One day, a keen player of Angband said to himself: "I enjoy many Angband 
variants, and appreciate many different types of gameplay.  I would never want 
to write my own variant.  What would I have to add?"

First Age Angband is an attempt to answer that question.

FAangband is based on Oangband 0.7.0 (started by Leon Marrick, now maintained 
and developed by Bahman Rabii).  Changes have been made principally with the 
intent of immersing the player in the world of Tolkien's Silmarillion late in 
the First Age.  While it is certainly not perfectly consistent (all the bad 
guys are still alive; all the good guys are dead, or at least have lost their 
best equipment), an attempt has been made to remove as many anachronisms as 
possible.

Here are the big changes from Oangband:

- Races have been significantly changed.  Half-Orcs, Half-Trolls, Half-elves 
  and Shadow Fairies have gone; there are new varieties of Elves, Dwarves and 
  Men.  Dwarves as a whole tend to have better Intelligence than Wisdom; the 
  reverse is true for (most) Elves and Hobbits.  Different races also have 
  significantly different starting conditions.

- There is wilderness.  Wilderness is like and unlike dungeon. On the similar 
  side, it is randomly generated in rectangular pieces; the "level" still only 
  goes up or down by one in going from one piece to the next; there is a 
  structured way of advancing through the wilderness.  On the other hand, it 
  looks different (no rooms); there are sometimes choices as to how to advance
  (north or west, maybe, rather than just down); and tactics become quite
  different.  There are five basic types of wilderness - open plains, dense 
  forests, rocky mountains, harsh deserts and pathless swamps.  It also has
  day and night, which affects light-hating monsters and the player's need for
  light.

- There are multiple towns, small and large, spread throughout the wilderness. 
  Each race starts in its natural town.  This means that the starting towns 
  for some races are in the middle of quite dangerous wilderness.  In order to
  reduce extreme effects of this (instant death, or instant growth of 15 
  levels), some races have improved starting equipment, and several races start
  with some experience already (advancing them in character level up to a 
  maximum of level 5).  High elves are no longer the easy option, at least at
  first.  You can move your house to a different town, but only once you have
  walked there.

- There are multiple dungeons (five, to be precise).  At the bottom of each is
  a guardian, who can only appear there or in special circumstances (which you 
  may be able to guess...) be summoned.  The first specialist ability (and 
  second as well for warriors) is still learned at the beginning, but the two
  others each become available on killing a dungeon guardian.  It is possible
  to ignore the other dungeons and head straight for Angband, but there's a 
  heavy price to pay.

- Word of Recall works differently.  Read away from your home town, it still 
  takes you back there.  Read in your home town, you are given a list of up to 
  four points to recall to.  When you recall back to town, you get the choice 
  of which of your recall points you wish to update.

- Anything from later than the First Age has been removed.  No more Rings of
  Power, Grishnakh, Anduril, Saruman, Witch-King, etc.  There are some new 
  uniques, artifacts and ego-items (and some just renamed).  There are also new
  item sets, and some reworked artifacts.

- There is no savefile compatibility with Oangband or Angband.  Savefiles had 
  to change at least to accommodate changes to data structures (particularly
  the player data), and the big changes to races meant that any translation
  would be rather artificial.  Anyone with an Oangband savefile should keep
  playing it in Oangband; anyone with an Oangband compatible Angband savefile
  (version 2.9.1 or older) should be congratulated and, well, upgrade.

Thanks to everyone who posts to rec.games.roguelike.angband and/or 
angband.oook.cz, and particularly to Leon Marrick and Bahman Rabii for
Oangband.

Nick McConnell



=== FAangband Copyright Information ===
=== See also oangdesc.txt for OAngband Copyright Information ===
=== See also angdesc.txt for Angband Copyright Information ===

FAangband Version 0.3.2:  Nick McConnell

Copyright (c) 2005-2008 Nick McConnell, Bahman Rabii, Leon Marrick, 
                        Robert Ruehlmann, Ben Harrison, James E. Wilson, 
                        Robert A. Koeneke

This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research,
and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement
are included in all such copies.  Other copyrights may also apply.

All changes made by Nick McConnell are also available under the GNU
GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.  Note that this doesn't influence the current
distribution, since parts of the source are still only available under
the old Moria/Angband/Oangband/FAangband license.  Until all parts of Angband
are distributed under the GPL the only valid license remains the
original Moria/Angband license.

Note, though, that current efforts to release Angband and its variants under
the GPL are close to complete, so future versions of FAangband may be GPLd.