ABSTRACT
When most people ponder the origins and inspirations of CRPGs, they quite naturally turn to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D for short, was published in 1974, quickly swept across the country, and is still actively played by many tens of thousands. Th ere really is no doubt that D&D played a vital role in the development of the fi rst CRPG. Richard Garriott , creator of Akalabeth and Ultima , was himself a dedicated fan of the game, and many of the most successful CRPGs are licensed by TSR and later Wizards of the Coast , publishers of the popular tabletop role-playing game. However, if we look a bit further into the issue, we can identify three other infl uences that were at least as important as D&D, if not more: sports simulation games, tabletop wargames, the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and Will Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure , the fi rst true computer adventure game. Each of these sources made a unique and signifi cant contribution to the genre.
