[MUD-Dev] MUD timeline

[Travis Casey]

On Friday, March 03, 2000, Koster, Raph wrote:

> In response to Amy's request, here's my best assembled timeline. Apologies
> for namedropping towards the end, but I was trying to figure out where
> things went and tracking people was the easiest way to do it.

Some questions/additions/notes:

1966            Lord of the Rings first published in the US  (? -- I
                came across this while searching for some other
                things; don't know if it's correct.)

> 1967            Advent: single-player text adventure, aka "Colossal Cave"
                                     b b
Where did you get this date from?  A couple of years back, I said on
here that I thought Advent had pre-dated D&D, but was quickly shot
down by people pointing me to references which stated that D&D was the
inspiration for Advent.  I'd be really happy if you're right -- it
would support my own ideas about 'adventure games' being a separate
line of development from 'roleplaying games.'

1970?           Dave Arneson starts Blackmoor, the first RPG
                campaign.  (Arneson states that he's unsure about
                whether this was in '70 or '71.)

1972            Second edition of Chainmail published, with the
                "Fantasy Supplement" -- the predecessor of D&D.
                
1973            D&D first sold (as typewritten rule sets) by Gygax
                and Arneson.

1974            first professional publication of D&D -- released in
                January

1975            Tunnels & Trolls by Ken St. Andre, second published RPG.

1977            First known use of the term "role-playing game".  (In
                the "blue book" version of Basic D&D.)
                  
> 1978            MUD1
>                 Alan Klietz' writes Sceptre of Goth
>                 AD&D Rules published

Hmm... that depends on what you consider to be the rules.  The Monster
Manual was released in '77, the Player's Handbook was put out in '78
and the Dungeon Master's Guide in '79.  Unlike the situation with 2nd
edition, though, in 1st edition the majority of the rules were in the
DMG -- the PH was basically just character creation and the spell
lists.

> 1994            WOO and then ChibaMOO
>                 Dragonspires is opened by ex-Originite Dr Cat
>                 News Corp buys Kesmai
>                 Netscape makes the graphical browser accessible.

That rings of marketing hype to me... Mosaic was not hard to use and
existed for at least Unix and Windows before Netscape came out -- I
think there was a Mac version pre-Netscape as well.  Further, there
were other web browsers that came out between Mosaic and Netscape that
were graphical, easy to use, and easy to set up (at least, as easy as
Netscape was when it first came out).  Maybe "Netscape released" or
"Netscape helps popularize the web"?


I could add a ton of paper RPG dates, if you'd like them... the dates
for Vampire and the other Storyteller games might be of some interest,
considering the number of Vampire-based games out there.  If there's
any other paper RPG dates you'd like, just let me know.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)





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