Three reasons I didn't just apt-get it:
1) That's a pansy's way of doing it!
Real men compile it from sources!
2)I wanted to use some patches I'd heard about on rec.games.roguelike.nethack, and it's mighty difficult to apply patches to a binary, dontcherknow?
3) Due to blatant and morbid stupidity, I am unable to access the internet while I run Linux, due to the fact I have a winmodem. This will be remedied ASAP.
Before you ask your next question, I
can download a package on a different computer, transfer it to mine, dpkg -i et voilá! No dependencies, but it works well enough most of the time.
I have an idea I'll try. p.u.c lists the dependencies for each package, so if I install the dependencies for nethack as listed there, it should work A-OK. Maybe.