The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [71]
Alan E. Klietz produced Milieu in 1978. High school students across Minnesota were given access to the mainframe for educational purposes. Klietz transitioned the game to an IBM XT in 1983, which supported up to 16 players simultaneously over the modem, and renamed it Scepter of Goth. It was the first commercial MUD, run by GamBit. GamBit’s assets were in turn sold to InterPlay, which eventually went bankrupt.
In 1980, Rogue added simple characters and later graphics to the typical dungeon crawl. Rogue revolutionized the “instanced dungeon,” randomly generating a dungeon and opponents (Montfort 2003:224).
In 1981, The Lord of the Rings made the official transition to interactive fiction through Lord, created by Olli J. Paavola at the University of Helsinki. Two years later, Phillip Mitchell’s The Hobbit game was purchased by Melbourne House. One of the earliest commercial works based on a book, it was inspired by Tolkien’s novel of the same name. The puzzles relied heavily on the book and had color graphics. The parser, called “Inglish,” ensured that the player interacted with the game in a genre-appropriate fashion (2003:171).
In 1984, Mark Peterson produced The Realm of Angmar, a clone of Scepter of Goth. It was adapted in 1994 to MS-DOS under the name Swords of Chaos. That same year, Mark Jacobs unveiled Gamers World, a commercial gaming site that hosted two games: Aradath and Galaxy. Both games were ported to AOL’s Genie network, with Aradath renamed to Dragon’s Gate. At its peak, Aradath had 100 monthly subscribers. Islands of Kesmai, by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor, was a rogue-like game featuring turn-based play.
Zyll, by Scott Edwards and Marshal Linder, was released in 1984 for IBM’s PCjr. It was a two-player text-based multi-user dungeon on a single, non-networked computer (Barton 2008:91).
Also in 1984, King’s Quest was released by Roberta King on the IBM PCjr. Like the interactive fiction before it, King’s Quest featured the ability to experience a universe through exploration, controlling an animated avatar with a computer mouse (Montfort 2003:170).
In 1985, Mirrorworld was released by Pip Cordrev, Tim Rogers, Lorenzo Wood, and Nathaniel Billington. It was the first game to feature rolling resets. A commercial MUD, Shades by Neil Newell, was released in the U.K. via British Telecom’s Prestel and Micronet networks.
In 1987, Beyond Zork was released by Brian Moriarty. It incorporated elements of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically the ability to assign ability points to the player character, along with combat and magic items (2003:141).
The popularity of Bartle’s MUD1 soared, leading to the creation of MUD II. By 1989, MUD II had thousands of players (Darlington 1999).
Also in 1989, James Aspnes created TinyMUD. TinyMUD featured more than just combat. It allowed players to create worlds and encouraged socialization (Taylor 2006:23).
In 1990, MOOs (MUD, Object-Oriented) further refined the social- and world-building focus, making it easier than ever before for participants to create worlds that weren’t exclusively dedicated to the tabletop RPG paradigm.
In 1992, the first commercial MUD was Legends of Future Past, designed by Jon Radoff and Angela Bull. It featured professional staff that organized online events. It ran until 2000.
RetroMUD, the MUD on which I’m an administrator, was established in 1994 and is still active to this day. RetroMUD consists of six different worlds, over sixty races, and a dizzying variety of skills and spells. Each world has its own theme, ranging from the steaming jungles of Sosel to the creepy undead caverns of Crypt, from the whimsical Raji to the traditional fantasy of Welstar, from the chaos of Perdow to the churning seas of Wysoom. RetroMUD predates Ultima Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft. I’ve been an administrator on RetroMUD for over 15 years.
Fellowship
Players who come to a