Larn

Larn was an old roguelike game. Larn took inspiration from Rogue and Hack. In the past, Larn and NetHack had contemporary development, and some Larn references entered NetHack.

But NetHack continued development and became a popular game with a large community, while Larn stalled. Larn is now an obscure game with few players.

The Larn Revenue Service or LRS is the tax agency that seeks to collect from wealthy Larn players.

Larn references in NetHack

Two messages in NetHack reference Larn.

This seems to be junk mail addressed to the finder of the Eye of Larn.

This message appears when you read a scroll of mail from a bones level or a wish. A comment explains, "the game Larn actually sends you junk mail if you win!"

The LRS would be very interested to know you have that much.

This message appears when you attempt to drop or throw a negative amount of gold. You cannot directly input a negative number, but older versions of NetHack were vulnerable to integer overflow. Try the key sequence 'd4294967286$' to trigger this message. Newer versions of NetHack are no longer vulnerable, but the message is still in the source code.

Links

If you seek more information about Larn, then try these links.

• Larn 12.4
  • RogueTemple's review of Larn 12.4
• NetBSD's Larn 12.0
  • 'larn, and other games' thread of netbsd-tech-userlevel with some Larn history
• Ularn, a variant
• NLarn, a rewrite of Larn from scratch with color, improved UI and ranged weapons