dnd

dnd, or The Game of Dungeons, is a terminal-access CRPG originally hosted on the PLATO network, and as of 2004 has been hosted on the Cyber1 network in an emulated form. Like pedit5, developed either before it or concurrently with, it is a pure dungeon crawler, heavily inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game published only a year before it.

You generate a character with randomly chosen stats including Strength, IQ, Wisdom, Dexterity, and HP, which are initially each set between 3 and 18, but can increase or decrease based on events in the game. Your goal is to explore a 20-level dungeon, find gold (which increases your HP and spell points), gain XP to gain more character levels, find magic equipment, and eventually become strong enough to kill a dragon on the lower floors of the dungeon, take its magical orb, and survive the trip back to the surface as the orb gathers the attention of extremely strong monsters.

Encounters with monsters may be resolved by fighting, escaping, or casting spells. Your spell stock is limited, but is often the best way to kill monsters without suffering damage in a straight fight. Gold is found everywhere, lying in piles around the dungeon, and the deeper you venture, the bigger the piles, but the more gold you carry, the stronger the monsters that you will attract. Even bigger piles of gold may be found in randomly found treasure chests, but chests are sometimes trapped, and opportunities to detect or disarm traps are limited.

Beware, for the death of your character is final, and there is no way to recover except by starting from the beginning again.

The original 1975 version by Ray Wood and Gary Whisenhunt no longer exists, but the Cyber1 network hosts v5.4 and v8.0 versions of the game, both featuring enhancements made by Dirk and Flint Pellett. The v8.0 version is much bigger and much more complex, featuring three dungeons instead of one, and an online instruction manual with more than twice as many pages.