Roy Trubshaw begins MUD1 development. In the fall, he and Richard Bartle complete the first version, which runs on a PDP-10. The name , "multi- user dungeon ," refers to a variant of ADVENT known as DUNGEON .
Alan Klietz writes Sceptre of Goth , also a MUD system. These two developments were completely independent. Lauren Burka puts this date at 1979. Sceptre of Goth was also known as Empire for a while, but is not generally referred to that way because of the numerous other games with the same name.
AD&D Player Handbook is published.
Interestingly, according to Lauren Burka, early MUD developers never played the game. Richard Bartle clarifies: "In my case, that's only true because AD&D wasn't out yet; I had played D&D quite a bit in 1976 “1978. The only real impact it made on MUD1 was the "levels" system, though, which I thought was a neat way to give players short-to-medium- term goals. Roy Trubshaw knew about D&D and may have tried it once or twice, but I don't think he ever dived in deeply; he certainly never designed his own dungeons."
Walter Bright's version of Empire makes it to the DEC-10.
Somewhere in here, Oubliette on PLATO.
" Oubliette , the first group -oriented dungeon on PLATO, was the model the early Wizardry series ripped off, and also predates Avatar . Spells were cast by typing their names (i.e., alito, fieminamor), and you had to type them as fast as possible to beat the monster. 1977?"
