Geo,
to be honest, nethack and other rougelike games are not for everyone. The graphics pretty much suck, and the story usually takes a back seat. The point of the game is the joy of slaughtering monsters and trying to stay alive as long as possible. Or finding new ways to die, like the time in ADOM when my 11th level Paladin died from eating a Gorgon corpse. Just a note, if you eat a Gorgon, you WILL turn to stone...
Most Rougelike games take a while to get used to as they have a ton of commands, and you will generally die a lot while trying to learn the game. To make Nethack a bit more fun, try Nethack Falcon's Eye (
www.the-underdogs.org) as it has much better graphics. Or for another dungeon crawl, try this game:
http://www.valinor.freeserve.co.uk/k...harnemain.html