[MUD-Dev] Re:)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Mon, 1 Sep 1997 18:04:42 PST8PDT, Jeff Kesselman
<jeffk at tenetwork.com> wrote:

>>> MUDs are directly descended 9though distantly at thei point) form the
>>> original single user adventure games whichw ere, belive it or not, an
>>> attenmpt to capture the feelingof D&D games on a computer.
>>
>>Well, actually, no.  The first single-user computer adventure games were
>>created in the 1960's, before D&D even existed.  They have spiritual roots,
>
>First oen I knwo of was Adventrue on the main frame which was well after
>the 1977 publishign of D&D (early 80s I believe in fact.)

I'd like to note that to my recollection D&D was originally published in
1973, not 1977, although there was a very limited distribution and
market at the time. Which further raises the bar for those claiming
computer games predate it.

There may very well have been non-RPG computer games before that, but
probably very few of them. My own first real efforts at 'useful'
computer programs (other than the usual fruitless attempts to improve on
general algorithms or draw line printer pictures or... um, make the disk
drives walk *giggle*) were to make D&D character generation programs in
BASIC, and I graduated from BASIC to C in 1978... but that was some time
after I completed several D&D character generators in BASIC, and I'm
*pretty* sure I had been doing such things for more than a year. I was
quite young at the time, so my memory is rather hazy on the subject, but
I'm pretty convinced that I was doing D&D character generators in late
1976.

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 You see me now, a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I've been 
 living on the edge so long, where the winds of limbo roar. And 
 I'm young enough to get involved, too old to see, all the scars 
 are on the inside; I'm not sure that there's anything left of me
               -- Blue Oyster Cult, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars"
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