Wrapping Up the Early Ages (1975-1983)

With the final post on Moria completed, I have now played and blogged about every RPG released in the western world (at least, that we've been able to collectively identify) through 1983, including console games. I have won all of the winnable ones except Moria. Damn that game.

When I originally started playing and blogging in 2010, I absolutely blasted through this era without any true care or consideration. By Game #9, I was in 1985. It was only a later rescinding of my "DOS-only" rule that got me back to the early days of RPGs. In my actual playing chronology, Ultima III was my 8th game. If I'd not adopted the DOS-only rule in the first place, it would have been 47th. That's really the way it should have been. The game is such a stand-out that I should have taken longer to build to it.

As I wrapped up 1988 (the first time through), I offered a turn-of-the-year post, reflecting on the themes of 1988 and what I was looking forward to in 1989. I also started selecting a "Game of the Year." It's time to do that retroactively for the earlier years, overriding my DOS-only selections with new choices that reflect the other platforms I've now experienced. I'm going to cover a huge swath of time with this post and then do annual posts as I complete 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1987.

The lineage of some early RPGs. Ultima III is notably the first game with multiple parents in its lineage.

Rather than covering individual years, I'm going to use this post to talk about general themes throughout this era, but for those readers who haven't read the entirety of my blog over the last five years, it's important to remember some of the games that we've discussed. The major categories are:

1. The PLATO games, developed by students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign between 1975 and 1979. The first ones appeared within a year after the release of the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons and include The Dungeon (aka "pedit5," 1975), The Game of Dungeons (aka "dnd," 1975), Moria (1975), Orthanc (1975), Oubliette (1977), and Avatar (1979). As these games appeared before the first commercial RPGs, they relied only on each other and tabletop RPGs for their sources.

Oubliette (1978) offered a first-person perspective and multiplayer exploration, with better graphics and RPG mechanics than anything we'd see on the commercial market for several years.

2. The first independent commercial RPGs, generally developed by programmers with some tabletop RPG experience but without experience with the PLATO games. These pioneering authors were feeling their way into an era in which nothing was standardized. Many of these titles launched short-lived series, but they're all somewhat insular, showing little awareness of other titles being released around the same time. For this reason, they are also occasionally innovative, offering features that didn't make it into the later genre. They include:
            

• The Robert Clardy Campaign series, including Dungeon Campaign (1978), Wilderness Campaign (1979), Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure (1980), and Apventure to Atlantis (1981).

• Edu-ware's bizarre science fiction games, at first based on the Traveller RPG. These are Space (1978), Space II (1979), Empire I: World Builders (1981), Empire II: Interstellar Sharks (1982), and Empire III: Armageddon (1984).

• The Dunjonquest series, including Temple of Apshai (1979) and Hellfire Warrior (1980).

• The Maces & Magic series, including Balrog (1979), The Stone of Sisyphus (1980), and Morton's Fork (1981).

• The Stuart Smith series: Fracas (1980), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1981), and The Return of Heracles (1983).

• Eamon (1980) and SwordThrust (1981).

• A handful of games published as source code in magazines: The Wizard's Castle (1980), Quest I (1981), The Valley (1982), and Super Quest (1983).

• The Warrior of Ras series: Dunzhin (1982), Kaiv (1982), Wylde (1983), and Ziggurat (1983).

• A fairly large number of independent one-offs, usually by developers who never made any other RPGs. Most of them have limited RPG elements. Representative titles include Beneath Apple Manor (1978), Dungeon (1979), Dungeons and Dragons (1980), Dragon Fire (1981), Caverns of Freitag (1982), Dungeons of Daggorath (1982), Sword of Fargoal (1982), Tunnels of Doom (1982), and Expedition Amazon (1983).  

The Dragon's Eye is one of many Apple II games that had some interesting ideas but never went anywhere.

         
3. The Ultima line, which technically belongs with the games listed above, but are so important that they deserve their own category. Like the other independent commercial RPGs, they were written by someone with no experience playing other computer RPGs. Titles are Akalabeth: World of Doom (1979), Ultima (1981), Ultima II (1982), and Exodus: Ultima III (1983), as well as the first Ultima clone: The Ring of Darkness (1982).

3. The DND line, directly descended from the PLATO Game of Dungeons via Daniel Lawrence's adaptations. In this era, they include only Dungeon of Death (1979) and Telengard (1982) as well as Lawrence's lost versions. We'll see more in 1984 and 1985. They feature top-down gameplay, rapid random encounters, limited mechanics, and permadeath.

Telengard is difficult and random.

4. Roguelikes, starting of course with Rogue (1980) and continuing with Moria (1983). Rogue is starkly original, shows no dependence on earlier games, and offers a complexity in mechanics that is way ahead of its time.

5. The Wizardry line, adapted from the PLATO Oubliette, and consisting of Wizardry (1981), Scenario #2 (1982), Scenario #3 (1983), plus one clone: Maze Master (1983).

There are many "first" games in this era, but Exodus: Ultima III serves well as a "last" game (even if it wasn't technically released last), as it's the first game with an identifiable linage that references more than one prior game. While obviously a child of Ultima II, it was also heavily influenced by Wizardry in its multi-character approach (Richard Garriott has said as much) and any one of several games in its use of a separate tactical combat screen.

Themes of the Early Era

Among the first eight years of RPGs, we can identify several common themes:

1. Single-player was the second choice. To those of us who grew up with single-player commercial RPGs and saw the advent of MMORPGs as an unwelcome offshoot, it may be surprising to learn that the first RPGs were, fundamentally, multi-player. In the context of the time, it makes sense: Tabletop RPGs were a group experience, and the PLATO system was meant to facilitate communication and collaboration. Even the top-down, single-character games had a chat function and allowed various PCs to interact with each other, and the first-person games (Moria, Oubliette, and Avatar) were explicitly meant to be played with a party--to the extent that I found them mostly unsurvivable as a single character. It's amazing to me how fast this functionality appeared.

Jockeying for position in the "Hall of Fame" was a key motivating factor in the PLATO series.

In an era of limited network connectivity, multiplayer games couldn't hope to survive outside the educational environment, and the first commercial RPGs were naturally single-player. But even in this transition, many games were curiously reluctant to give up the idea that RPG playing should be a shared experience. A remarkable number of titles from this era have "leaderboards" that track high scores, even though it was unlikely that people would share copies. Wizardry had password locks on characters, expecting that a single disk might store several players' characters. Space allowed multiple players to engage their characters in duels. Eamon assumed that eager players would trade scenarios. A few titles (e.g., Crown of Arthain, Fracas, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves) offered the ability for more than one player to control different characters, and a lot of the era's manuals offered examples and scenarios that assumed friends would be playing side-by-side.

Many games took it for granted that you'd have friends to play along with.

Only as this era drags on do developers seem to realize that CRPG playing is going to be a lonesome, solitary experience. In my opinion, games start to improve in quality as developers include more NPCs, quests, and story rewards to make up for the lack of real-life friends giving high-fives over top scores.

2. Hardware limitations forced considerable compromises. The PLATO games were built on a powerful system whose capacity probably exceeded the time and effort the students were willing to spend programming. As a result, the very first RPGs are anything but primitive. We didn't see commercial games with the complexity and size of Oubliette and Moria for almost a decade.

But on the microcomputer, the story was different. Recollections of developers are rife with stories about cutting material and functionality to fit in the memory and storage media of the era. Offering a splash screen at the beginning of the game might mean the sacrifice of three dungeon levels. A few bloops of sound meant having to cut out combat mechanics.

The result is that there isn't a single game from 1975 to 1982 that has both decent graphics and decent gameplay. The games with the most primitive graphics and sound are those with the best mechanics, as we see in Wizardry, Rogue, Moria, and SwordThrust.

In Eamon (1980) and Swordthrust (1981), a complex set of factors determined accuracy and damage in combat.

Developers are never really freed from these shackles completely, but we start seeing a lot more advanced games as storage media and memory specs improve. By the mid-1980s, we've clearly hit the "good enough" point. We're not there yet, but we almost are with Ultima III.

3. Cross-platform games are still rare. Temple of Apshai was the leader in this regard, with ports to the Apple II, Commodore PET, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, TRS-80, and DOS within the first few years of the decade. Most other games were only released for one or two platforms; the exceptions, like Wizardry and Ultima were only because they became wildly popular later.

In comparing games to each other, we always have to keep in mind that some platforms were woefully starved. If you had a TRS-80, you could play the Dunjonquest series, The Wizard's Castle,  the all-text Dungeons and Dragons, and that's about it. PET owners were even more limited and probably cherished Dungeon of Death and DUNGEON for that reason. Even a DOS user was mostly out of luck prior to 1984; most of the games eventually released for it were released years after their originals.

The Ring of Darkness (1982) was probably the best game of the era for the ZX Spectrum or Dragon 32.

4. The era is characterized by innovative dead-ends (at least temporarily). The large number of independent developers, working without any kind of template, came up with remarkably innovative mechanics, many of which didn't make it. Consider Stuart Smith's games, in which every enemy is a named NPC and can actually collect treasure and level up; or Robert Clardy's games, with soldiers in place of hit points. The otherwise-mediocre Crown of Arthain (1981) is notable for using hexes instead of squares. The Dragon's Eye (1981) had action-based side-view combat. Dungeons and Dragons (1980), which I ranked low, is notable for reflecting character speed in the speed of its text-based combat. How long will it be before we see another game with an audible heartbeat, like Dungeons of Daggorath (1982), or a lockpicking minigame, like Tunnels of Doom (1982)? Almost every game of the era, good or bad, at least does something different.

I didn't really like Empire II (1982), but there wasn't any other game of the early 1980s in which I was gambling, doing drugs, and hiring prostitutes.

5. Content takes a back seat to mechanics. Looking over the list of 1975-1983 games, you're hard-pressed to find one with a good story or memorable NPCs. At best, the manual has a framing story, usually goofy, that offers the most banal explanation for why your character is on-screen. The only outliers are Ultima, Eamon, and Temple of Apshai, all of which excel to some degree in story-telling rather than just battle. Starting over the next couple of years, a regular in-game narrative becomes the norm.

It's particularly interesting to reflect on how the text adventure was developing during this period, with games like the Zork series, the Savage Island series, and the Scott Adams Graphic Adventure series offering loads of content and puzzle-solving without any combat mechanics. The two types of games spring from a common source, and it's good to see the approaches re-unified (unified for the first time in computer RPGs, of course) later in the 1980s.

What do you think? Any other major themes that I'm missing?

Games of the Year

When I finished 1988, I retroactively chose "Games of the Year" for 1981-1983, but of course those were based only on the DOS versions. Let's take a look at these choices and see how well they hold up. Since there were less than three games per year prior to 1979, I'm going to start with that year. Keep in mind that in "Game of the Year," I look not only for quality and enjoyability but also for its enduring influence on the genre.

1979. I'm tempted to give it to Akalabeth, but as innovative as Richard Garriott was, I don't think his lasting influence is solidified until Ultima in 1981. Dunjonquest: The Temple of Apshai is the better choice. The developers tried hard to model a classic tabletop RPG experience with the limitations of the times, including a full set of character attributes, a complex inventory system, and detailed descriptions of rooms and treasures in an accompanying game manual. More than any game until perhaps the Gold Box series started in 1988, you really feel like you're playing Dungeons & Dragons on your computer.

1980. Eamon and Fracas are both worthy candidates, offering very different experiences. Eamon is the first RPG/text-adventure hybrid, and it still offers good combat mechanics, inventory, and spellcasting. Fracas is a wonderfully fun game from Stuart Smith with plenty of features we no longer see. But in the end, if I'm talking about excellent mechanics and enduring influence, I can't not give the award to Rogue.

When a game lends its name to an entire sub-genre, it gets "Game of the Year."

1981. Nothing I've played since my "new plan" took effect has come close to challenging Wizardry and Ultima for the title. It's a difficult decision between the two, but I think Wizardry is the clear winner, for enjoyability (it's one of only three or four games from this entire era that I've happily played multiple times), innovation (it's the first multi-character game), and endurance: we owe Might & Magic, The Bard's Tale, and Dungeon Master to it, and it even had an influence on Ultima III.

1982. I gave it to Telengard when my only choices were Telengard, Ultima II, and Wizardry II. My reasoning was that Telengard was the best representative of its particular line (the DND games, which we'll be talking more about soon). Now I have 14 games to choose from, and it's a bit tougher. Since I first panned it in a scathing post back when I was just getting started, I've come to feel better about Ultima II. For all its idiocies, it has some decent game mechanics, and it's one of the only games of the era to even recognize the concept of NPCs.

Sword of Fargoal is a fun action RPG from the same year. Tunnels of Doom offered the first tactical combat screen that I know about, as well as the fun lockpicking minigame. The two Warrior of Ras titles had very innovative approaches to combat and exploration.

I'm going to reluctantly switch my choice to Dungeons of Daggorath, which stands out as the most innovative game of the year, if not the most influential. It has features we won't see again for several years: real-time action in a first-person environment (but with text inputs!), a critical importance of sound, and a consideration of fatigue as well as health. I say "reluctantly" because I don't think these features influenced later RPGs so much as anticipated them; I'm not sure that the developers of Dungeon Master, for instance, even heard of Daggorath, let alone played it. But it's hard to see lasting influence from any of the 1982 titles, and Daggorath, if nothing else, is the game I'll remember the longest. Telengard might be the best representative of its line, but its line isn't very good.

The screenshot doesn't do it justice. Daggorath is the most sensory game of the entire era.

1983. I gave it to Ultima III, and there it remains. There are some decent games in 1983, including some starkly original ones--Expedition Amazon, Galactic Adventures, Moria, and The Return of Heracles all have their charm--but Ultima III truly feels like it's pushing us into the next era, with a well-structured plot, a complex spell system, character choices that really matter, NPCs that offer lore and clues, and the best tactical combat screen to date. It's a clear standout in my GIMLET scale: I gave it a 51, 14 points higher than the highest game before it (Wizardry), and it remains the champion until Ultima IV, Might & Magic, and Starflight come along in 1985.

Ultima III isn't just game of the year; it's game of the era.

Looking Ahead

While this post was in its draft form, I already started 1984. I've yet to offer a "Game of the Year" for the year, since the only games I had to pick from, before my backtracking began, were Caverns of Zoarre, DND, and Zyll, none of which I completed.

In many ways, 1984 is an odd year. We might call it the "lost year" of RPGs. None of the major franchises--Ultima and Wizardry, primarily--had 1984 offerings. The "Golden Age" marked by Ultima IV, Phantasie, Might & Magic, The Bard's Tale, and Wizard's Crown wouldn't start until 1985. The year encapsulates the rise and fall of computer gamebooks, the last gasps of the inadequate DND lineage, and a series of one-offs that would have been more at home in 1982.

There are a few titles I'm looking forward to. Questron was my first RPG, and it's a crime that I haven't yet played it as part of the blog. (It was supposed to inaugurate my fifth anniversary, but I didn't get to it in time.) I want to go back and finish Zyll, an innovative text RPG, and give another chance to Rivers of Light now that I've played Stuart Smith's other offerings. I've heard good things about SunDog: Frozen Legacy. I'm anxious to try Hack to see how it bridges Rogue and NetHack.

I expected to have more time into Tunnels & Trolls by now, but I still haven't caught up to where I was almost a year ago, so rather than re-hash old territory, I'm going to continue into 1984 with DND. Happy reading!