A long time ago, on a computer system far, far, away, there was rogue.
Players wandered a dungeon, hacking and slashing at monsters, gaining
treasures, becoming more powerful, and living their D&D nightmares.

Rogue was a good game; people still play it.  It was even distributed
with many copies of Unix.  But rogue is a relatively simple and limited
game compared to most of the descendants it has spawned...

Although the common features of rogue and its many descendants are
'obvious' to many people, they are difficult to describe in simple
terms.  Generally, the games mentioned below are single-user, fantasy 
role-playing computer games, generally set in a dungeon, run with
a simple character-graphic interface.  In all of the games, the player 
controls a single character, who roams around getting more powerful, 
in order to fulfill a difficult quest.  Sword-and-sorcery rule the 
day.  Logistically, they're all free games; executables, and generally
sources, are available by FTP.

The similarities end there, though.  More information can be found 
in the 6 UseNet newsgroups dedicated to rogue and its descendants - 
rec.games.roguelike.nethack, rec.games.roguelike.moria, 
rec.games.roguelike.rogue, rec.games.roguelike.angband, 
rec.games.roguelike.misc, and rec.games.roguelike.announce 
(alt.games.omega belongs in this list, but is a poorly propagated 
group, which many readers cannot access.)

Below are listed basic information about all roguelike games known to
me, in alphabetical order.  I've listed the main ftp site(s) for each 
game; however, it's polite to use mirror sites, if closer to you, 
especially if you're not in the same continent.

Some parts © 2009 Advameg, Inc.