Previous comments are on the mark.
One thing to add: When I first opened crawl and saw... what? 28 classes? And almost as many races? My first impression was bad. What kind of game needs to give so many options, when the good stuff should happen in gameplay? (My old-time RL favorite is Omega, where there were no races or classes but plenty of path to take.) As it turns out, a Crawl is very good and all the good stuff does happen in gameplay.
I'd love to see the backgrounds selected in two steps: First select warrior (fighter, gladiator, monk, assasin, hunter, artificer, wanderer), hybrid (crusader, reaver, warper, enchanter, transmuter, stalker, arcane marksman), zealot (Berzerker of Trog, Paladin of TSO, Priest of Zin/Yred/Beogh, CK of Xom/Makhleb/Lugonu), or mage(...); second select the background and spellbook. It would also make several background/spellbook combos look duplicitous, which I think does confuse newbies (like me). For example, after selecting "mage":
- Code:
Select your mage's specialization:
a - fire wizard
b - fire conjurer
c - fire elementalist
d - ice wizard
d - ice conjurer
f - ice elementalist
g - summoning wizard
h - summoner
i - air elementalist
j - earth elementalist
k - venom mage
l - necromancer
The tutorial is now really good, so that should help with newbies being bewildered by the myriad backgrounds.