With They Create Worlds having tackled the early influence of D&D on video games, what better time than to air out some thoughts on the first CRPGs?
The information on the internet is extremely confused but I think we can get quite close to answering this difficult question. #videogamehistory #rpg
One large issue in creating a chronology of these programs is that there is very little evidence that exists outside of PLATO for when these games emerged.
https://thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/2020/10/29/the-problems-with-plato/
What little we do have, combined with oral history, can help us create a chronology.
Practically our only dated source from outside PLATO on its CRPGs comes from a fanzine snippet reprinted in the first edition of Playing at the World, dated August 23, 1975.
This game is almost certainly a description of The Dungeon (pedit5). However, not in the form it exists today on cyber1.
The Dungeon was infamously purged at some point after its release, due to occupying an unauthorized lesson space.
The game was rebuilt at some point, but lacking the features that were described in that newsletter snippet, and possibly incorporating features from later games based on pedit5.
Many PLATO authors - upset with its removal - created derivatives on The Dungeon to carry on and evolve its spirit.
The creators of the games Orthanc and The Game of Dungeons (dnd) both admit this as their impetus, meaning both of them emerged sometime after late 1975.
So is that it? Is The Dungeon the first CRPG?
Not so fast.
pedit5 designer Rusty Rutherford has stated that he decided to make a D&D game after one was already being worked on for the system that was not completed.
He called this game “DND” but it cannot be The Game of Dungeons that exists on PLATO now. Those creators were inspired by The Dungeon and recent document finds definitively date that game to 1976.
https://web.archive.org/web/20131027034539/http://www.rpgfanatic.net/advanced_game_wiki_database.html?p=news&nrid=5049&game=dnd
What was this game then? Well, it may have inspired another PLATO RPG
Moria is perhaps the most important of the PLATO RPGs.
It was one of the first MMOs, allowing people to group in parties to take down monsters.
It showed the dungeon in first-person 3D, taking the innovation of PLATO flight games into the turn-based world.
Its offspring inspired Wizardry.
The authors of Moria were particularly inspired by Orthanc, one of The Dungeon derivatives.
Originally the game was 2D like Orthanc, but eventually took on its important 3D perspective.
While it’s logical they may have come to this on their own, there may have been another influence.
At Iowa State University, the Moria authors programmed alongside two other of the most important PLATO authors: Gary Fritz and John Daleske.
Daleske most prominently created the pioneering online classic Empire - I did a video covering it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKeoiT9Z7yc