''Moria'' is a dungeon crawl style role-playing video game developed for the

PLATO system Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

beginning around 1975 by Kevet Duncombe and Jim Battin. In the game, up to ten players can simultaneously journey through a dynamically-generated dungeon, presented to the players in first-person wireframe 3D.

Gameplay

''Moria'' allows parties of up to ten players to travel as a group and message each other, dynamically generating dungeons (instead of pre-computing them), and featuring a wireframe first-person perspective display.

Development

''Moria'' was developed by Kevet Duncombe and Jim Battin beginning in either 1975 or 1976. The game was later given a copyright date of 1978. It was initially begun as a top-down two-dimensional dungeon crawl game, inspired by contemporary PLATO game '' Dnd'', which was developed beginning in 1975, and others such as ''Orthanc'' (1978). ''Moria'' was one of several ''

Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TS ...

''-inspired games on the PLATO network developed in the late 1970s. Although both developers had played other games based on works by

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...

or ''Dungeons & Dragons'', Duncombe had never read or played either. During development, Battin suggested converting the game into a 3D game, inspired by other early 3D PLATO games such as ''

Panther Panther may refer to: Large cats *Pantherinae, the cat subfamily that contains the genera ''Panthera'' and ''Neofelis'' **'' Panthera'', the cat genus that contains tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards. *** Jaguar (''Panthera onca''), found in So ...

'', ''

Spasim ''Spasim'' is a 32-player 3D networked space flight simulation game and first-person space shooter developed by Jim Bowery for the PLATO computer network and released in March 1974. The game features four teams of eight players, each controll ...

'', and ''

Airfight __NOTOC__ ''Airfight'' is an early 3D graphics-based multi-user flight simulator, created on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Control Data Corporation (CDC) PLATO system in the early 1970s. The software was the first ever 3D fli ...

''. The name ''Moria'' was suggested by ''Dnd'' developer Dirk Pellett. An update was made to the game in 1984, with the copyright date changed to match. ''Moria'', like all other PLATO programs, was originally monochrome. In an effort to "modernize" the lessons, color was added by an intern in 1994 at University Online after the CYBIS system and its content was sold to them. CYBIS (short for CYber-Based Instruction System) was the new name for PLATO after

CDC The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgi ...

sold the trademark to The Roach Organization in 1989.

Notes

Sources

{{Reflist, refs= {{cite book , title=Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games , edition=2nd , first1=Matt , last1=Barton , first2=Shane , last2=Stacks , publisher= CRC Press , date=2019 , isbn=978-1-138-57464-9 , pages=44–45 {{cite web , url=https://spillhistorie.no/kevet-duncombe-on-moria/ , title=Kevet Duncombe on Moria , website=Spillhistorie.no , date=December 30, 2016 , access-date=December 4, 2022 {{cite book , title=The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the Rise of Cyberculture , last=Dear , first=Brian , date=2018 , publisher=

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

, isbn=978-1-101-97363-9 , pages=288–291 {{cite book , title=Before the Crash: Early Video Game History , last=Wolf , first=Mark J. P. , date=2012 , publisher=

Wayne State University Press Wayne State University Press (or WSU Press) is a university press that is part of Wayne State University. It publishes under its own name and also the imprints Imprint or imprinting may refer to: Entertainment * ''Imprint'' (TV series), ...

, isbn=978-0-8143-3722-6 , page=212 {{cite web , last1=Schuller , first1=Dan , title=Moria , url=https://howtomakeanrpg.com/r/l/g/moria.html
''Moria''
at cyber1.org, where the game can be played
Fun with PLATO
at Armchair Arcade Role-playing video games 1975 video games Cooperative video games PLATO (computer system) games Video games developed in the United States

Gameplay

Development

See also

Notes

Sources