Sil in particular is a real breath of fresh air in how it builds a magic system that feels very faithful to Tolkien (it's all built around songs, and morale and light/darkness are the most important elements it can influence) and entirely different from any other CRPG magic system I've ever played. I dunno, I thought Chet had said he was sick of Tolkien references in games, and that he found his prose hard to get through, but I seem to recall him liking the worldbuilding of the Interplay LOTR games? While the prose question is neither here nor there, Angband definitely runs afoul of the 'superficial Tolkien references' trap, but some of the variants lean into the source material in ways that aren't just about slapping his names on tired CRPG tropes. First Age Angband is probably my favorite, though, for maintaining the Angband gameplay while incorporating a more diverse world and leaning more fully into the Tolkein angle. Re variants, yeah, I don't think it's worth anyone's while to force Chet to play additional ones, and there aren't significant ones coming up anytime soon - ToME/Troubles of Middle Earth and Sil are the two that are influential and/or different enough to maybe be worth dipping into. As a result, I've won Angband completely legitimately like 7 or 8 times and had a lot of fun doing it, whereas I've can't say I can consistently even get to the midgame in any other roguelike (nor do I find the learning process sufficiently fun to motivate me to get better). Despite its shorter length, Nethack has a much, much steeper learning curve and ADOM is similarly big but also harder and has a lot of hidden systems you'll need many long play-throughs to begin understanding.

Eh, I dunno, the dungeon is a bit big but at least in modern versions of Angband, I've found it way quicker to make progress in Angband as compared to the other major old-school roguelikes.

Angband lotr