PosChengband

The most popular variant by far during the 2010's and perhaps the best known since ZAngband, PosChengband takes its name from Posband and Chengband, the latter being a variant of Hengband by the same author. Chengband introduced new classes and made a huge number of code fixes and improvements to Hengband, and PosChengband was 'a reimplementation of RePosband', itself a remake of Posband over Chengband, which is to say that PosChengband introduced the large variety of playable monster races available in the game and its successors. Poschengband development continued to add new features and make great strides in the functionality and maintainability of the code. Beginning in version 7.0.0 of PosChengband a new direction emerged in development, and PosChengband 7.1.1 and later are quite different to previous versions, which have more in common with Composband, FrogComposband and Oposband. In a repeat of history, the latest version of PosChengband offers a randomly generated overworld without quests, much like the latter versions of ZAngband.

The huge variety of monsters and classes, inherited from Hengband and expanded upon, with a large static overworld full of towns, dungeons and quests, and the overwhelming power creep involved in moving from Moria to Hengband and beyond made for varied and novel gameplay at a time when Vanilla was considered too dull and there was little development taking places on other variants made the game appealing to a wider audience.