Talk:Dnd (1975 video game)

Boss invention claims

The claim that the game introduced a boss enemy seems monumental! To us über-geeks, anyway. Can it be confirmed or denied? -- Kizor 08:41, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

What proof do you want? I was one of the authors of the game. As you wandered the dungeon in search of the orb, you were attacked randomly by "regular monsters." When you reached the "orb" in the dungeon, you were attacked by a lot of "regular monsters". If you killed all of those, then you faced "The Golden Dragon," a super monster. Once you killed it, you got the orb.-- Ratwod

Ratwod, you helped create that game??? Thank you! That is among my all time favorite games, in even the days of 128-bit 3d photorealistic games and whatnot! →mathx314^{(talk)(email)} 21:44, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliments. No one was more surprised than Gary and I when people loved the game. For the record, pedit5 was on PLATO before dnd. -- Ratwod

The claim that dnd invented bosses is just plain silly. Looks like other people have said the same thing and then didn't follow through to avoid hurt feelings. Paper D&D campaigns routinely had big dragons and other monsters guarding the biggest treasure in a final battle. dnd imitated this. That's not inventing bosses, it's porting a paper game to computer. As someone else said below, bosses were invented in Japanese arcade games, unless someone wants to try to say that paper D&D influenced Japanese coinop games. That makes no sense. If Wikipedia works like a graduate school then peer review should resolve this, so I followed the instructions for a peer review. -- Austin -- Part of Texas? 05:58, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

What about the Wumpus? I dunno if that counts as a boss, but I'm pretty sure its older thn dnd. As for Japanese arcade games, I'm sure they're an independent development; the term "boss" in a RPG context undoubtedly originated with Zelda, Dragon Quest, and the like. -- Ben Standeven 15:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

All you have to do is name a video game prior to 1974-75 that had a boss. There were only a handful of video games in 1974-76. If you find one, I'll gladly withdraw the claim. But, you won't find one. The Atari 2600 wasn't released unitl 1977--2 years *after* dnd was written. Space Invaders was released in 1978. The Apple I was released in 1976. So, who was even writing video games in 1975? Only people on PLATO, and there were some great games on PLATO other than dnd. People from all over the world, including Japan, had access to PLATO. Atari had logins to Plato in the 1970s, so it is very conceivable that people took a look at dnd and used some of the ideas in their video games. As to paper D&D--during 1974-75, paper D&D did not have an end. It was simply a never-ending fantasy game. Campaign D&D did not start until much later. -- Ratwod

I just read this and then looked at this discussion and whoever says this is where bosses come from is making stuff up. The stuff on this page is like saying that since the Aztec calendar was round and the Romans had wheels, that means the Romans invented the Aztec calendar. Who ever heard of a D&D dragon being called a boss? If the Japanese arcade designers who invented bosses read this they would laugh out loud at someone saying this. The whole word boss came about from being translated from Japanese. The Japanese designers never saw dnd and wouldn't have cared about it if they did because it was not the kind of game they played. Since wikipedia can be edited to say whatever you want I guess you can erase what I say and say what you want, but anyone who spent time in Japan and played the games or played the English language versions would see this is ridiculous. I guess someone else complained and there was no follow up or it was erased or whitewashed or something. - 12.198.160.251 19 October 2006.

Came across this by accident looking for old arcade games. Looks like quite an interesting game from back in the day, but it had a long patch about how these Americans invented bosses. Simply not true. Bosses came from Japanese arcade games and Dungeons & Dragons "grand finale monsters" had absolutely no influence on them at all. I see from text above here that the authors of dnd asserted this, but the Japanese game evolution is richly documented (Google Nintendo history) and there is no reference anywhere of them being influenced by paper Dungeons and Dragons, let alone an American text game. -- 57.66.10.36 14:22, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

I did what you suggested. The Nintendo "color game 6" was introduced in 1977, two years after dnd was written. So, even if it had a "boss", it would have been later than dnd. The first Nintendo game was the "Color game 6". The game played 6 different variations of "Light Tennis" (in other words, Pong). Two small dial controllers allowed two players to play the game at the same time. Thus, it did not have a boss. dnd was written on Plato. Plato was one of the first world wide computer networks. It had video games. The games on Plato were more sophisticated than anything at the arcade in 1975. E.g., Microsoft's first Flight Simulator was a port from Plato. -- Ratwod

The entire argument over this concept of a "boss" is ludicrous. Having a single "boss" enemy to contend with at the conclusion of a struggle is simply an age-old logical storytelling extension, used millions of times (probably literally) since the dawn of man. You can look at any number of literary, film, mythological and other kinds of narratives and find this "idea," from Sauron to The Epic of Gilgamesh to Satan (ever read The Divine Comedy)?

No harm to the creators of this dnd game or to anyone designing video games, but to say that someone in the computer world "invented" this concept of a "boss" is like saying they invented anger, death, and the alphabet. Fighting a "boss" is just the logical endgame of a high percentage of fictional and non-fictional story structure (and narrative), and nothing more. Assign it a name like "boss" if you will but let's not lay laurels where they're undeserved.

Whether the dnd people were the first to use the "boss" concept in a game is probably true, but again I say there's no magic nor genius in following the logical grapevine that's been part of human history since the cave drawing, no more than having a monster to fight is some kind of original and groundbreaking idea that shattered the global culture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Forgottenpasswd (talk • contribs) 22:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Still available?

Is this game still available in any form (freeware, purchase, whatever) to this day? Or was it never widely available to the general public? --69.234.208.76 02:34, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

RPG status

"dnd would today be considered an adventure game rather than an RPG, since it had only one character." - I'm no expert, but as far as I know wether there is only one character or more is irrelevant. Else all roguelikes, CRPGs like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls Saga as well as well Single-player P&P "books" would be considered adventures, not RPGs. Unless its an IF-specific rule that I haven't been able to find so far. -- 84.191.238.76 17:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I would consider dnd to be an RPG rather than an adventure game, although I ***'t have a perfect definition explaining why. What I consider a "real" adventure game on PLATO was Zork, in which the character could go from room to room or place to place, getting unique descriptions and always finding the same objects in the same place each time the game was restarted, with a goal of solving the puzzle rather than building up more power. In dnd you wanted to find a sword+3 because it would make it easier to kill more powerful monsters, and it was completely unpredictable where, when, or even whether you would ever find one. In zork, you went to the 3rd room to the left in the twisty maze, to get the tin cup, so you could carry the oil from the spill, so you could oil the door hinges, so you could get it open, so you could get to the top of the dam, so you could find the rope you needed to.... Somewhere in all that rambling is the definition of what makes a game an RPG like D&D, and what makes it an adventure game like zork. -- Aumakua 18:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Illicit Content

"The second game, m199h, was created in a lesson space for foreign language instruction, and it was similarly deleted as soon as its illicit purpose was discovered" - This line says that the first two games writen for PLATO, wich preceded dnd, if i'm not mistaken, were deleted because of "illicit content". I'm no expert at all in this subject, but i was very intrigued with this phrase, and found no further discussion on the article. Could anyony please elaborate a little? as it is now, the article shows an assumption that the reader knows beofre hand that this games were illicit. -- Gorgonzola, December 24, 2005.

Well, that was "illicit purpose" not "illicit content" so it doesn't imply there was anything inherently 'illegal' or anything like that about the contents, just that it wasn't a lesson on a foreign language like it was supposed to be - and hence got deleted. dnd was the first one created for the express purpose of being a game. Admittedly, you do have to know something about the way PLATO worked both as a computer and how it was used, to completely understand the problem, but that is beyond the scope of this article. -- Aumakua 10:53, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Daniel Lawrence claims

Who is Daniel Lawrence? See this reference: Daniel Lawrence's DND Page. According to this very extensive resource (which has been on the net for awhile, now) it seems HE originally created dnd, not the people named on this page--one of whom is the author of this wikipedia entry. Any clarifications should be posted to this page asap, because wikipedia's information is being mirror worldwide repeatedly on a daily basis. His versions of the game were out by 1972. If Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood plagrized from some source it should be cleared up immediately. -- Asdfff 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, this should certainly be cleared up, by deleting the trash out there that claims Daniel Lawrence created dnd. Points of fact, which are not relevant to the article about dnd, and have therefore been left out of it:

• Note: Dungeons_&_Dragons "first published in January 1974". So, then, did Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax play Dan Lawrence's ever-so-creative computer game of dnd and decide to publish their paper game based on it, even deciding to name it "Dungeons & Dragons" based on the clever name Lawrence came up with. Eh?? Any claim that Dan Lawrence wrote dnd before the publication of the paper D&D is clearly ludicrous.
• Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood, however, played D&D, liked it, and created a game based on it, on PLATO, which had reached version 2.8 and nearly 100,000 users by October 30th, 1976.
• Dan Lawrence attended Purdue University, at which he had access to PLATO, first arriving when dnd already existed on PLATO, whereupon he played it, liked it, and made an unauthorized copy on another computer which Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood did not have access to.
• PLATO keyboards have arrow symbols on the keys X, A, W, and D. dnd on PLATO was written (By Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood) to use these "arrow keys" (as everyone on PLATO described them when they looked at their keyboards), for movement within the dungeon. In the "help lesson" (all programs on PLATO were known as "lessons"), dndhelp, the player is directed to press the "arrow keys" to move around in the dungeon. Dan Lawrence's copy of dnd had a "help lesson" (no such terminology existed on the computer he used) which directed players to press the "arrow keys" to move around in the dungeon, and those keys were assigned to X, A, W, and D despite there being no arrow symbols on those keys on his computer. The source of his *ahem* 'inspiration' is blatantly obvious. - Aumakua 16:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
• Additional note: see Standard keyboard for a PLATO IV terminal, circa 1976.

-- Aumakua 17:02, 23 April 2006 (UTC))

There's no need to use sarcastic arguments--for instance, your timeline argument doesn't really bring up any good points of debate and is logically useless.

• It may have been that he wrote it after playing it, in late 1974 or early 1975. I doubt Gygax/Arneson ever gave authorization for any of the early rpg ish games just as much as I doubt they based their game off dnd.
• WAXD, however, is an _extremely_ good point.
• For his Purdue attendence, it should be noted that admins banned HIS disemminations and modifications of the game, whether he wrote it originally or not. He also coded the wildly popular telengard for various systems, and two more commercial ports were stolen off ["] his ["] code. Even if he stole the game originally, the vehemence of sys admins across the land against him is historically significant, as are the at least 2 or perhaps 3 (possibly illegal) commercial ventures.

I'm asking this as an actual matter of curiosity, and I'm not disputing anything committed to either website until I get accounts and facts. This account of history is COMPLETELY different from existing accounts. I just want to get the story straight. Not only that, but why are you so passionately shaken by this? No one has yet DISPUTED any of the claims on either page. So far it has been two completely different accounts on two websites that thus far have seen no interaction between either one's adherents. -- Asdfff 16:41, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for seeming defensive. We (the original authors of dnd) have had run-ins before with people claiming that we were plagiarists of DL's game, rather than the reverse, and it is rather a sore point with me as a result. I didn't mean to take it out on someone who was merely curious, but your question sounded remarkably like others I have heard. I hope no offense was given. -- Aumakua 17:02, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

For the record, Gary Whisenhunt and I played pedit5 (another game on PLATO). We thought we could improve on the game. We did write the game after D&D (paper) was published--obviously, since the idea for the "Golden Dragon" came from the cover for the D&D rules. Gary, as far as I know, never played D&D. I played D&D (paper version), but I didn't like it. The idea that someone wrote a game like DND for a computer prior to 1974 is silly. Computers of 1974, other than PLATO, did not allow interactive sessions. - Ray

Dungeons and Dragons was first distributed on a small scale as a supplement to Chainmail in 1972, and was published separately in 1974. I'm not sure about your other arguments, but it's entirely possible that he could have been inspired by D&D game in 1972. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.148.92.56 (talk) 21:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC).

As far as I know, Dan Lawrence never claimed to have written DND in 1972. He said that he wrote it in 1976 and 1977, which was well after the creation of dnd. Strawberry4Ever (talk) 14:52, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Golden Dragon basis

The article says that the Golden Dragon was inspired by the D&D box cover; but according to the Acaeum, the old white box cover didn't have a dragon on it. The dragon with treasure picture seems to be the original Basic set which they date from 1977. So was the Dragon added then, or was it based on something else? (I noticed a dragon on the white box "monster manual", but without any treasure.) Ben Standeven 20:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

From comments elsewhere on this page, I'm guessing the former. I'll add it to the article then, if noone has any objections. -- Ben Standeven 20:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

If this date is correct, Colossal Cave Adventure had a "beginning, middle, and end" before dnd, since the "standard" version dates to 1976. But I'll leave that claim for now. -- Ben Standeven 20:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

First, Colossal Cave Adventure is not a video game. It is a text adventure game. DND is a video game. The Golden Dragon was in the game at least as early as 1975. How do I know? Gary & I wrote the game in 1974-75. "dnd" had the Golden Dragon and an "end" to the game by August, 1975. In late 1975, Dirk and Flint Pellett took over most of the administration of the game. Perhaps the reference to the D&D manual is incorrect. -- Ray

Dudes, look at the pictures in the article. That's a text game that tries to make pictures with letters and punctuation marks. That is not avideo game. I read all the way down here and every time someone points out the authors didn't invent something they seem to come back and erase the text and then say they did. Collossal Cave was the first game with a beginning and a middle and an end. There are people all over the world reading this and when it's not true that's just wrong, people. - 12.198.160.251 19 October 2006.

Definition and description ignores chronology.

The article seems to have a major "stylistic" flaw. Under "gameplay" it reads "The game presents players with an overhead view of the dungeon and plays much like NetHack, but also implements many basic concepts of Dungeons & Dragons." - it seems improper that the article defines the subject via reference to a derivative work. That is, NetHack is a game published a decade following 'dnd' so how does it make sense that a historically minded description defines the gameplay of 'dnd' via reference to the gmaeplay of NetHack. It's akin to using the word 'cookie' to define 'cake', only to find out that the word 'cake' is used to define 'cookie'. 99.230.243.1 (talk) 14:28, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

It was an unsourced comparison anyway, so I just removed it. 68.57.233.34 (talk) 22:34, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Not a video game?

I am bothered by the reference to any games developed on the PLATO IV system as video games. These were computer games, and they used a graphical display, but the flat panel plasma display technology used on the Magnavox PLATO IV terminal did not use a video signal to present an image on the screen. The screen was literally a dot-addressable RAM technology where the glowing dot on the screen was in itself one bit of memory, and this bit could be set or cleared by the electronics outside the screen. We seem stuck with the category "video games" to refer to such games, but careless use of the term video confuses things. (Note that later, when CDC went commercial with the PLATO system, they developed a video terminal to replace the flat-panel plasma displays. Thus, PLATO games could be played on video displays, even if they weren't developed for them.) Douglas W. Jones (talk) 03:53, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

• The term “video game” has long ago shed its purely technical roots to refer to a broad spectrum of interactive entertainment. Though I certainly understand where you are coming from in terms of technical definition, there is absolutely nothing wrong with labeling a PLATO program a video game. No one who does so is attempting to convey the use of a video signal. Indrian (talk) 04:43, 31 December 2017 (UTC)