Hi there!
I must say I have recently become a Brogue fan, despite its multiple shortcomings. I think one of its issues is that it takes too much time to get a character going properly. I think it is unlikely to have a proper character build before the 5th floor and a lot of people waits until depth 8 to 10 in order to commit to a given strategy. This would not be much of a problem if I didn't envision Brogue as a short roguelike (for reference, I am comparing to Angbands and DCSS in my head). If I play "not-long" roguelike, I want to start kicking ass right away instead of spending 25% of the game time building for a particular strategy that may not be viable in a given run.
Therefore, I have started looking into "shortened" Brogue versions, which are versions that condense the game so you can start bashing monsters sooner (and die yourself sooner too). The ones I have tried:
* Rapid Brogue: The most solid so far. It reduces the dungeon size from 26 floors to 6 and maps their corresponding threat level. It gives the player more treasure per level to compensate the fact you are facing nasties quite early. The first floor is no longer a cakewalk and you may expect to face goblin conjurers with your starting equipment unless you upgrade soon. It is easy to get a character build going by level 2 or 3.
* Coffee Brogue: This is a stupid variant, but it is the good sort of stupid variant XD. The idea is that equipment scattered around the dungeon is overpowered, but each time you descend through the stairs, it takes you down to a random level bellow your current one. The idea is that you can get your overpowered gear in level 1, build your character there, and then descend and find yourself at level 18 or 24, fighting the bad guys right away. The ID game is also simplified so you don't have to wait for your war axe to be identified in order to hit people with it.
If you know of more short variants, I'd like to know about them.
For the record, I have heard there is a Brogue variant in which you can declare upfront which sort of character you want to play, and the dungeon treasure will be adapted to fit your specified character. For example, if you start your game as a Wizard, the game will generate more staffs and wands as treasure. This probably also mitigates the situation of finding yourself in dungeon level 6, with a bunch of unidentified items, not knowing which strategy to commit to yet.
