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In Richard Garriott's DND1, written in 1977, he is using ascending AC.

The monster attack against the character is as follows.

Use the following number for the character's armor.
None = 6
Leather = 12
Chain = 16
Plate = 20

Add that to the character's dexterity score (which will be between 3-18)

The monster then rolls a 1d40

The monster needs to get above the characters armor + dexterity.

#dnd#crpg#rpg

Was reading Richard Garriott talking about writing code and porting it to different systems and how porting to the PC was harder than other systems, because most computers in the early 80s used the same cpu, the MOS Technology 6501 and 6502.

It is not too far fetched to imagine a world where Intel did not become the dominate cpu.

As I work through the DND1 source code, it is obviously derived from playing D&D. Just look at the name of the program for one, DND1.

But did you know Richard Garriott was very aggressive (pressuring, threatening lawsuits) of any game that mirrored the Ultima games?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron

He dumped EA as a distributor after they released Deathlord

crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/0

It reminds me of Gary Gygax in a way. Gary would copy things like the Thief from player submissions, or Fireball from Len Patt, but would be critical of anyone else using ideas from D&D.

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

Also similar to Kevin Siembieda and the Palladium RPG. Is that not derived from D&D? But when WotC released the Envoy system that referenced Palladium, he brought a lawsuit against them. (note this was all before Magic the Gathering). And Palladium was known for being aggressive against fan websites.

rpgpub.com/threads/palladium-l

en.wikipedia.orgQuestron (video game) - Wikipedia

In Richard Garriott's DND1 written in BASIC in 1977, I thought this bit of code was interesting.

It would be Death Saves for HP in more modern discourse.

If the characters's HP are 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above.

If the characters' HP are below 0, the character survives if their CONSTITUTION is 9 or above, but they lose 2 points of CONSTITUTION and gain 1 hit point.

This was only 3 or 4 years after D&D had been introduced to the world.

#dnd#crpg#rpg

Surrounded by old games, writing about them, and studying their evolution for nearly 20 years, I simply had to prepare the 'History of Video Games: a tale of tech and design' course for d6learning.com.

Join me in the course presentation on March 11: eventbrite.com/e/history-of-vi

ROMChip game studies journal is doing a twitch telethon today to raise money to keep their #OpenAccess journal running. Lots of guests on stream today showing off obscure games, speedruns and more:
buff.ly/4hgQtAg - twitch stream (redirect link)
donate.romchip.org/ - more info and full schedule

TwitchROMchipJournal - TwitchTinahacks Runs Super Mario World All Castles! | ROMchip Journal Fundraiser 2025 | !donate !schedule !raffle

The Video Game History Foundation opened up digital access to a large portion of its massive archives today, offering access to information from the past 50 years.

"Today's launch of the VGHF Library comprises more than 30,000 indexed and curated files, including high-quality artwork, promotional material, and searchable full-text archives - over 1,500 video game magazine issues. This initial dump of digital materials also contains never-before-seen game development and production archival material stored by the VGHF, such as over 100 hours of raw production files from the creation of the Myst series or Sonic the Hedgehog concept art and design files contributed by artist Tom Payne."

library.gamehistory.org

More about it here at Ars Technica: arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01