Mayhap a best known Angband variant, ZAngband was as well at in one case a virtually all popular. Numbers of of the newly Angband variants owe their origins directly (e.g. ToME, Hengband) or indirectly (both OAngband and EyAngband were partly inspired by ZAngband's profits & excesses) to ZAngband.

A title "ZAngband" stands for Zelazny Angband, because ZAngband was primarily according to Roger Zelazny's "Amber" books, rather than a works of J.R.R. Tolkien. (A few use suggested that it should could have for "Zany Angband" instead.)

ZAngband was originally authored by Topi Ylinen, was then maintained for the instance by Robert Rühlmann, and is presently maintained by the development team led by Steven Fuerst.

ZAngb& was and is high-pressure adding newly features; numbers of Angband players say that a endure "fun" version was either Deuce.Ii.Eighter from decatur or even Deuce.Quatern.Zero, based in their dislike of the OAngband combat system that was introduced around Two.Tetrad.Zero. Fallowing Ii.Four.Cypher, a fresh woods rules was introduced that was widely considered to become very much less interesting than the 1 obtained inside Two.Two.8/2.Iv.Zero. Two ToME and Hengband (a most popular ZAngband outgrowth) have the sooner, Deuce.Two.8/2.Foursome.Zero woods patterns. Two or three hang on to that Ii.Single.1c wwhen a Survive True Version, as that was a version prior to a woods & certain more features were added. A todays development version is Deuce.Septet.4c, although development has slowed recently. The preview of version Deuce.Sevener.Cinque has recently been processed available for download from either ZAngband's SourceForge page.

When a above implies, ZAngband's development was somewhat chaotic (the far-famed sarcastic quip just about an early version was that it "seems like every game-balance or structural problem in vanilla [Angband] has been lovingly nutured [sic] to full hideous perfection here" [http://groups.google.ca/groups?selm=36F3C8B9.35B06EDD%40spark.ul.edu&output=gplain]).