The November NetHack Tournament

The November NetHack Tournament, abbreviated as TNNT, is a NetHack tournament that takes place during the month of November. It has been run every November since 2018. Its main page can be found at https://tnnt.org/.

Unlike Junethack, which takes a broader focus on multiple NetHack variants, TNNT focuses primarily on the vanilla game, while still being open and accommodating to all skill levels.

Like Junethack, TNNT is played on public servers, allowing players on those servers to reuse their existing accounts. Currently the three Hardfought servers are the only ones on which TNNT is available to be played. The servers quietly exchange bones with each other, so a character on one server may encounter the bones of a character who died on a different server.

Also like Junethack, TNNT supports clans, allowing a group of players to coordinate and pool their accomplishments in competition with other clans.

Chatting about the tournament happens in the #tnnt channel on the Libera IRC network. A bot in the channel announces player deaths and game events during the tournament.

TNNT (the game) is the version of NetHack used to play the tournament. As of November 2023, TNNT (the game) is based on NetHack 3.6.7, but with additional gameplay features, not unlike a variant.

This article is about the tournament; it deliberately does not document the gameplay features, so that you can read about the tournament without getting spoiled for the game.

Clans

Clan membership is optional for playing in TNNT and competing for awards. A clan may have up to 12 players. Any player may create a new clan and invite other players to join. Each player may belong to only one clan (or none).

All awards (leaderboards, trophies, achievements, and conducts) have one category for individual performance and one category for clan performance.

Clan sign-up usually begins 24 hours before the start of the tournament and ends 9 days (9*24 hours, or 216 hours) after the start of the tournament. After the end of clan sign-up, clans may still drop players, and players may still leave clans, but no one can create a new clan or join any existing clan.

Awards

TNNT recognizes four kinds of awards: leaderboards, trophies, achievements, and conducts.

The TNNT website shows awards. After a player earns an award for themselves or for their clan, the website does not update immediately. The player must earn the award, and then save their game or finish their game, and after that the website needs several more minutes to update the award pages.

Leaderboards

As of November 2023, there are 16 leaderboards. Each leaderboard has individual leaders and clan leaders, and are listed as follows.

• Most Ascensions, Earliest Ascension, Lowest Turncount, Fastest Realtime
• Most Conducts in One Ascension
• Most Achievements in One Game, Most Achievements Overall
• Lowest Scoring Ascension, Highest Scoring Ascension
• Longest Streak
• Most Unique Deaths
• Most Unique Ascension Combos
• Highest Z-Score
• Most Post-Amulet Splats
• Most Successful Swap Chest Donations
• Most Games over 1000 Turns

Trophies

You can win a trophy for ascending an entire set of games, or for satisfying an individual challenge in one game, or (in one case) by refraining from certain play behavior in every game. Your clan may also work together jointly to win a trophy. As of November 2023, there are 44 trophies:

• Great Dwarf, Great Orc, Great Elf, Great Gnome, Great Human -- ascend each role playable with that race.
• Great Archeologist, Great Barbarian, Great Caveperson, Great Healer, Great Monk, Great Priest, Great Ranger, Great Rogue, Great Valkyrie, Great Wizard -- ascend each race/alignment combo playable with that role.
• Lesser Dwarf, Lesser Orc, Lesser Elf, Lesser Gnome, Lesser Human -- complete gnomish mines and sokoban with each role playable with that race.
• Lesser Archeologist, Lesser Barbarian, Lesser Caveperson, Lesser Healer, Lesser Monk, Lesser Priest, Lesser Ranger, Lesser Rogue, Lesser Valkyrie, Lesser Wizard -- complete gnomish mines and sokoban with each race/alignment combo playable with that role.
• Both Genders -- ascend each playable starting gender.
• All Alignments -- ascend each playable starting alignment.
• All Roles -- ascend each playable role.
• All Races -- ascend each playable race.
• All Conducts -- ascend a set of games covering all conducts.
• All Achievements -- ascend a set of games covering all achievements.
• Nethack Master -- ascend each role/race/alignment/gender combo.
• Nethack Dominator -- earn both Nethack Master and All Conducts.
• Never Scum a Game -- never finish a game by quitting or escaping in less than 100 turns.
• Keep Your Nemesis Alive, Keep Vlad Alive, Keep Rodney Alive, Keep the High Priest of Moloch Alive, Keep the Riders Alive -- ascend a game with that monster(s) not ever dying.

Achievements

A player earns an achievement by doing some specific task during a game. Some achievements commemorate regular milestones in game progression, while others require going a little bit out of the way to accomplish, and still others require significant setup to produce a contrived scenario.

Whenever the player earns an achievement, the game shows a message. OPTIONS=tnnt_notify controls these messages.

As of November 2023, there are 325 achievements available.

Each player page shows all the achievements earned. A green check mark means that the player has earned the achievement and finished their game. A yellow diamond means that the player has earned the achievement in a game that is still in progress, and has then saved their game, but has not finished their game yet. (In other words, game save generates the information needed for yellow diamonds.) A red X means that the player has not earned the achievement, or possibly that the player has earned the achievement but has not finished their game or saved their game since earning the achievement.

For clans, if any player in the clan has earned a green check mark, then the clan gets a green check mark. Otherwise, if any player in the clan has earned a yellow diamond, then the clan gets a yellow diamond. Otherwise the clan gets a red X.

Conducts

As of November 2023, TNNT has 12 custom conducts in two groups.

The first group of conducts is:

• Survivor: never having your life saved using an amulet of life saving.
• Swap-chestless: never removing an object from a swap chest. Placing objects in is not restricted.
• Artifactless: never touching an artifact.
• Elberethless: never engraving Elbereth.
• Permanent deafness, activated by setting OPTIONS=deaf before starting the game.
• Permanent hallucination, activated by setting OPTIONS=hallucinating before starting the game.
• Bonesless: never load a bones file, guaranteed by setting OPTIONS=!bones before starting the game.

The second group of conducts is:

• Never allowed the quest nemesis to die
• Never allowed Vlad to die
• Never allowed the Wizard to die
• Never allowed a high priest to die
• Never allowed a Rider to die

If you receive the quest with a conduct from the first group intact, you earn an achievement. If you ascend the game with a conduct from the second group intact, you earn a trophy.

History

In 2020 and earlier years, TNNT offered very in-depth scoring. At the core, ascensions were worth 50 points each, which could be boosted by conducts, speedrunning, and streaks. Individual and clan trophies earned also contributed points to scoring.

Beta Testing

TNNT offers an open beta test period during the month of October. Players are encouraged to try out new features and report bugs. During the beta test, the game is available, but the back-end services are not available, so there are no clans, no leaderboards, no achievements tracking, and no trophies.

During the beta test period, the TNNT devteam may introduce changes that break saved games.

At the end of the beta test period, savegames, bones, and ongoing games are deleted.

History

TNNT statistics

	Players	Ascending Players	Achievements	Notable Features
2018	165	60	196	trophies, achievements, swap chest, devteam
2019	206	83	250	deathmatch, new conducts
2020	272	115	250	-
2021	281	88	287	leaderboards
2022	335	102	323	-
2023	318	108	325	robotfindskitten
2024	335	112	327	-

In 2016 and prior years going all the way back to the early 2000s, the /dev/null/nethack tournament was run each November. However, in 2017, after the release of NetHack 3.6.0, the devnull organizer krystal announced that the tournament would be shutting down permanently. Several players coordinated with the hardfought server admins to quickly put together a one-off tribute tournament, which was held in November 2017; but the expectation was that in subsequent years some new tournament would be developed to take its place, which ended up becoming TNNT.

TNNT is not trying to reproduce the system or unique challenges offered by devnull, and has instead been designed from the ground up.