1975 · Dungeon crawl · Role-playing

Moria (PLATO)

Moria is a dungeon crawl style role-playing video game first developed for the PLATO system around 1975, with copyright dates listed as 1978 and 1984. It was a pioneering game, allowing 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. One of its authors, Kevet Duncombe, claims not to have read the works of J. R.

Released: 1975
Platforms: PLATO
Genres: Dungeon crawl Role-playing
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: First person
Themes: Fantasy
Country: United States

About

Moria is a dungeon crawl style role-playing video game developed for the PLATO system 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.

Some Moria players preferred to "role-play" as their fantasy personas instead of merely playing the game.

Keywords

vector graphics

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

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-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 or Dungeons & Dragons, Duncombe had never read or played either.