[Puke]

I think the first one was Wumpus Hunter, if you want to get picky. but rogue was the first that had all of the different monsters and inventory management and magic and potions and traps and stuff. all the following games kept the basic rogue format, and by and large use the same characters to represent the same things.

Thus, a player of Rogue could play Angband or Nethack and basically understand everything that he is looking at.