[MUD-Dev] Re:)

[Dan Shiovitz]

On Mon, 1 Sep 1997, Travis Casey wrote:
[..]
> If I remember right, "Colossal Cave Adventure" was the first Adventure-
> style game.  The "early 70's" reference I found was regarding it.
> 
> I say we call it a draw... I can't tell if D&D inspired the Adventure
> games or not, but the early ones definitely didn't have too much in
> common with D&D other than a fantasy setting.  As for profitability, it's

ftp.gmd.de is more or less the definitive site for information about
Adventure-style games. Here's an extract from
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/info/Colossal-Cave.origin:
(not like this is relevant or anything .. well, only vaguely.
rec.[arts|games].int-fiction talk about virtual worlds quite a bit, though
they tend to be the opposite end of the spectrum from randomly-generated
expansive but artificial areas) 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, Will Crowther made the game up after we had been playing D&D
for a few months.  A new arrival on the ARPANET project was also a
housemaster at Harvard at the time and D&D had pretty much just
appeared.  He dungeounmastered up a dungeon and a bunch of us from
the project team got sucked into playing.

Due to our inclinations, we were almost zero interested in the 'battle and
monster' aspect of the game, but rather a lot more interested in the
cooperation/innovation/puzzlesolving aspect.  And so quite against the
tide of the D&D world at the time, our dungeon turned into more of
a group problem-solving expedition than an every man for himself
hack-em-up.  Anyhow, it was great fun but VERY difficult for folk
who had any sort of a life: getting the eight of us together at the
same time and in the same place with nothing else to do for four
hours or so was a nontrivial problem.

So Will had the astounding idea that he could cobble up a
computer-mediated version of the game.  We mostly thought he was
nuts [but had long-since learned not to underestimate what Will
could innovate].  Given our predilections in the real game, in
ADVENT puzzles and cleverness were more of a premium than quick
reflexes and keeping track of hit-points.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

>        |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
--
Dan Shiovitz :: scythe at u.washington.edu :: shiov at cs.washington.edu
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