Dungeon

Unofficial adaptation of the tabletop RPG game Dungeons & Dragons for the PDP-10.

The game is played mostly in text, but features a top-down view of the action in which only the areas that the player's party of characters can see (using line of sight, and individual abilities such as infravision to determine what should be visible). In encounters within the dungeon the player can determine what each character does. Aside from having a base class, race and statistics, characters earn experience points and grow in level.

Becoro # 2024-01-14 22:03:28 - source

Actually for DEC PDP-10 mainframes. Also for the HP3000 microcomputer.
Not to be confused with a PDP-10 game called Dungeon (DUNGEN) that became the game zork Zork
This was an unofficial implementation of the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset in a computer game and one of the first CRPGs ever.
This game had many innovations and advancements that would influence RPGs to this day.
All the basic D&D rules were implemented. Players could choose race, explore dungeons, earn skills and experience points, and so on.
Mostly text based, the game could also show a top down graphical map. The map used line of site, fog of war, light sources and variable brightness. It also considered the viewing character's infravision abilities, which varied by race. The map was used optionally, as the text description were antiquate and faster.
A teletype machine or a line printer could be used to 'save' games and characters for later use. The game was meant for use on a CRT display and game status could be shown and noted. By reentering the status of games and characters, one could 'load' them again later. A printout was a convenient way to save, but the game could also be played by printouts alone for players who did not have a CRT screen.
At the time, it was the largest game ever created, requiring 36K. Its massive size was one of the reasons for its lack of popularity. It competed with Don Daglow's earlier game Star Trek (at 32K) for space on mainframes to which the DECUS group had access. As all geeks know, Star Trek trumps D&D :) Some administrators had also set limits on how much space could be used for games. 32K was a common limit. As games became more popular, many reduced their limit to 16K. But probably of more concern was the time it took to play, especially if there was no monitor. Computer time had to be reserved. Science and education was given priority over games (so much for old fashion values :) Dungeon was turn based, each and every move for all characters had to be described and entered, no shortcuts. Star Trek was a much faster play.

Zerothis - # 2006

hardware: PDP-10 platform,

display: _ (mixed), text, raster