You've got my self proclaimed non-gamer friend addicted to Dungeons of Dredmor. After hearing me ramble on and on about DoD, she was eventually intrigued to the point where I offered to gift her a copy. Mario Kart being her only previous taste of gaming, I was somewhat unsure about introducing her to a difficult rogue-like. Turns out she's better than my other "gamer" friends. My other friends try and blitz through as though it were Diablo, she takes her time, reads everything, and plots on only after thinking about the next move. To say I'm impressed would be an understatement. After giving a few pointers, I returned to hear she had made it to level 4 and was giggling at the HitchHiker's guide reference (Pan-Galactic gargle blaster). Just another one of us now, eh?
Soon, we will control the world! Indoctrinate more! Resistance is futile! Btw: Is she on the forums, too? Sounds li,e a natural talent to me, getting to DL 4 so fast.
I see Dredmor as a very glorified, complex game of chess. So I suspect that people with leanings towards board games and logic puzzles would really like it. Your friend sounds like that type of person.
I managed to do this to my mother. She's going through her first playthrough on easy and she's on dungeon level 9.
My 9-year-old daughter played her first game DMPD, and made it to dungeon level 4. I think it took me 15-20 games to do that.
I started with chess myself and moved on to other board games (PCs didn't even exist until I was midway through college). Most turn-based computer games are a natural progression from chess and other physical board games, imho, just as rpgs were a natural progression from miniatures (a special class of board game that typically lacked a physical board). Computers essentially act as a record-keeper, rules master, randomizer, and so on, which enables the playing of games that may be difficult, or impossible, or impractical to play on a physical board. There were board games that were similar to rogue way back when, but out of practicality, they lacked the depth of rogue, but unlike rogue, could often accomodate multiple players, cooperatively, or otherwise. Sometimes they had fixed maps, sometimes the maps were randomized using tiles or cards, and sometimes the maps were virtual (using adventure books). But all of these existed prior to Rogue.
Update: My mother beat dreadmor on EE with permadeath on her FIRST TRY! I'll get a screenshot to prove it. Watching her play was excruciating, because she played so slowly. but she managed to do it.
Congratulate your mother for me on completing a task that according to Steam's achievement stats is even harder than beating Dred on GRPD.
Okay she's died twice since then. She was slightly upset about dying, but i told her that it was normal. She wasn't used to it.
This is how it worked for me, but in reverse. I grew up playing Baldur's Gate and similar games when I was very young, and then in middle school I started playing D&D 3.5 with some friends. I immediately noticed how much longer it took to do everything that a computer had done for me automatically. But for some reason I enjoyed both the computer and the in-person versions equally. The digital version has efficiency, but often at the cost of choice and imagination. The analog version takes many times longer, but you have a lot more satisfying personal/social interaction. Now imagine what would happen if Dredmor's system was used for a completely separate RPG experience...
