Re: What was the first RPG?

[dat@thinkage.on.ca (David Adrien Tanguay)]

Fredrik Ekman (ekman@lysator.liu.se) wrote:
> I am wondering what the very first computer RPG was. I used to believe
> that it was Rogue (released in 1983, I think), but the other day I
> happened to take a look at my old Temple of Apshai box and found that it
> was copyrighted in 1983, so I suppose neither of these games were
> influenced by the other, in spite of many similarities.
>
> Were there other, even earlier, games that the above two were inspired
> by, or did they just happen upon the same concept at the same time?

I ported Rogue to a Wicat in 1982, and I'm pretty sure it was on the Unix
distribution that we (then U. of Waterloo) got with the Vax in 1981. It was
already up to version 3 by then. The 1983 date is probably when it was
released commercially.

There was a game on GCOS in 1979 (and probably earlier, but that's the 
save-file date) called dung or dungeon, a half-duplex, text-only RPG. It may
have been local to UW. There were probably many other similar games flying
about: putting the Dungeons and Dragons dice character attributes back into
Adventure.

What's the distinction between "adventure game" and RPG? I think it's a bit
fuzzy. You'll probably find that RPGs evolved out of adventures. The missing
links might be hard to classify as one or the other.
-- 
David Tanguay       dat@Thinkage.on.ca       http://www.thinkage.on.ca/~dat/
Thinkage, Ltd.           Kitchener, Ontario, Canada          [43.24N 80.29W]