Western RPG | Code Like It's 198x

Michael Cranford, who wrote The Bard’s Tale, remembered what excited him about his first computer, an Apple II: “the idea that there was a box that could function as an automated ‘gamemaster’”. That is where the Western role-playing game comes from. In the mid-1970s players of the new pen-and-paper game Dungeons & Dragons began asking a computer to do the referee’s job: roll the dice, keep the numbers and build the dungeon. The games that followed on American computers, Wizardry and Ultima first among them, let players make their own characters, gave them large maps to wander and came with manuals full of rules. They were also the games that Japanese designers took apart and rebuilt in the 1980s as the JRPG, and the name “Western RPG” came into use to tell the two traditions apart.

Fast facts

Roots: Dungeons & Dragons, published by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974.
First known computer RPG: pedit5, on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois, 1975.
First home computer wave: Beneath Apple Manor (1978), Temple of Apshai (1979), Akalabeth (1979), Ultima and Wizardry (1981).
Key studios of the period: Sir-Tech, Origin Systems, SSI, Interplay, Sierra, BioWare, Black Isle, Blizzard, Bethesda.
Relations: the JRPG, which grew out of Wizardry and Ultima; the roguelike, action RPG and immersive sim.

From the tabletop to the terminal

Dungeons & Dragons grew out of wargames played with miniature soldiers. COMPUTE! told the story in 1990: Gary Gygax’s rulebook sold its first 1,000 copies in a year, then spread “like wildfire among college campuses and even some high schools”, and by 1976 players who spent their evenings in computer science labs had realised “that most of the Dungeon Master’s chores could be automated”. A computer could make the dungeon and roll the dice.

At the University of Illinois one of them already had, on PLATO, a computer system built for teaching. In the autumn of 1975 Reginald “Rusty” Rutherford took two unused files on the system, called pedit4 and pedit5, and in pedit5 wrote a game based loosely on D&D: a hero with a sword, one dungeon level, monsters and treasure. When it grew stale he let the computer place the monsters and treasure at random. Edge calls pedit5 “the earliest known roleplaying game on a computer”. Others on PLATO built on it, and one of the people who ran a PLATO installation, at Cornell University, was Andrew Greenberg, who would go on to design Wizardry.

The first wave, 1978–1982

The games reached home computers at the end of the 1970s. In 1991 Computer Gaming World’s role-playing columnist, Scorpia, surveyed the computer role-playing games she had played, and found “a small cluster of CRPGs at the dawn of the micro age (roughly 1978-82)”. She dated Beneath Apple Manor, for the Apple II, to 1978; each game made a new random dungeon (see the roguelike entry). Epyx, then called Automated Simulations, released Temple of Apshai, which, she wrote, “caused a sensation when it first appeared, being one of the earliest graphic CRPGs”. Because the Apple’s graphics were so basic, it described each room in a numbered paragraph in the manual, a trick later used by SSI’s Gold Box games and Wasteland.

Richard Garriott told Computer Gaming World in 1986 how he started. He learned Dungeons & Dragons in 1977 and wrote 28 small fantasy role-playing games at school on a Teletype that ran on paper tape. After leaving school he worked in a ComputerLand store, met an Apple II (“Wow! Graphics!”) and wrote a game with “perspective-view dungeon graphics”, Akalabeth. The store owner talked him into publishing it himself. He spent $200 on zip-lock bags, had sold about five of his first 200 copies when the owner sent one to the publisher California Pacific, and a few days later “there were tickets waiting for me at the airport”. Scorpia judged Akalabeth “a pretty standard hack-em-up” except for one thing: it was “the first CRPG” to show its dungeons in first-person 3D, with monsters that grew more detailed as they came closer. California Pacific also published its successor, Ultima, in 1981.

Wizardry came from Cornell. Computer Gaming World described how Greenberg “had taken his satisfaction at playing in face-to-face role-playing romps and turned them into a fantasy role-playing game on the computer”. Robert Woodhead, a fellow Cornell student who did most of the programming, brought it to Sir-Tech, a small company run by the Sirotek family, and the two polished it as Dungeons of Despair. Released as Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, it came in a plastic bag with a photocopied manual. Computer Gaming World counted 24,000 copies sold by the end of June 1982, nine months after release; Sir-Tech later put its first year at 100,000. It sent a party of up to six characters, all made by the player, down through a maze of corridors drawn in outline.

Boom years, 1986–1990

After those first games Scorpia saw “a long dry spell” broken only by new Wizardry and Ultima games, until 1986, which she called “the turning point in the CRPG market, as suddenly publishers were rushing to get such games out the door”. By 1990 there were more new role-playing games than in any year before.

The series grew more ambitious. The Bard’s Tale (1985), written by Cranford at Interplay and sold by Electronic Arts, tied the Apple’s simple background music to a character class, the bard, whose songs were spells. Garriott’s Ultima IV asked the player a series of moral questions before the game began and built a character from the answers. It was, he said, “a game about the player’s personal virtues”, and he took its central idea from a television programme about the Avatar of Eastern religions, “a perfect being”. In his words, “It is intended that it be you, the player, traveling in the lands of Britannia.” Its world was 256 by 256 tiles, 16 times the size of the earlier games’.

Dungeons & Dragons itself came to computers through SSI, a publisher of wargames. In 1987 TSR, which owned D&D, offered a licence, and SSI won a five-year exclusive deal by promising a whole series of games, not just one or two. Its president, Joel Billings, told Retro Gamer that he had played D&D only twice before the pitch, once the night before. Pool of Radiance (1988) was the first of the Gold Box series, named after the gold border SSI’s box designer, Louis Saekow, put round its cover without knowing it would become the series’ mark; it sold more than 264,000 copies across seven formats. Other games moved into real time. FTL’s Dungeon Master was, its designer Doug Bell said, the first “real-time 3D dungeon game” with its level of graphics and sound, and SSI’s Eye of the Beholder (1991), made by Westwood, “became Dungeon Master on the PC”, as SSI’s producer Chuck Kroegel put it. Some games crossed with the adventure game: Sierra’s Quest for Glory was, for Scorpia, a “cute hybrid of adventure and role-playing”.

Most of these games ended the same way. Scorpia called the villain behind them all “Foozle”, an evil wizard or demon whom the party must fight in a big battle at the end, and noted that only a few, Mindcraft’s The Magic Candle and New World Computing’s Might & Magic among them, ended without one.

Two traditions

By the early 1990s console magazines were explaining the difference to their readers. In 1993 Super Play, a British Super Nintendo magazine, ran a feature on “role playing the Japanese way”. It said that Western fans preferred first-person games such as Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld, which put the player inside the hero’s body, where Japanese players liked to watch their characters as little figures on the screen. It also argued that Japanese games, for all their apparent freedom, were more tightly guided than Western ones, which let the player wander and get lost.

The Western games looked different too. Reviewing the PC version of Final Fantasy VII in 1998, PC Zone mocked Western role-playing games for “the same old tired devices. An Olde Worlde Gothic typeface; menu screens apparently written on ancient parchments; a cursor in the shape of a sword”. In 2000 Edge warned readers new to BioWare’s games that they “bear little relation to Japanese console titles of the same genre. There are no cute sprites”. Hideo Baba, producer of Namco’s Tales series, put the difference in terms of mood in 2012. Japanese games, he said, showed “a bit of darkness in this vast world of light”, while in the Western ones “you have this very dark and despairing world and then you have a speck of light, which is usually the hero”.

Decline and return

By the late 1990s, as Computer Gaming World later put it, “everyone said that RPGs are dead”. SSI’s Gold Box series had ended after five years, and when Baldur’s Gate was announced the same magazine called it the first AD&D computer game in years with a chance of being any good. Three games changed the mood. Blizzard’s Diablo cut the genre down to fast real-time fighting, a style Computer Gaming World called a “clickfest”, and became, in the same magazine’s words, “one of the biggest gaming blockbusters of the decade”. Interplay’s Fallout (1997) was set in 2161, among the descendants of people who sheltered in underground vaults from a nuclear war in 2077. GamePro praised its flexibility: players could build any kind of character, and the quest could be solved by finding help, stealing what was needed, or ignoring it altogether: “Just be ready for the consequences.”

The third was Baldur’s Gate, made by BioWare, published by Interplay on five CDs at the end of 1998, and set in D&D’s Forgotten Realms. Its fights ran in real time, but, as Computer Gaming World put it, “a strict adherence to AD&D rules ensures that it’s more than a click-fest”. It sold more than a million copies. “Remember when everyone said that RPGs are dead?” Computer Gaming World asked in 1999. “Now, following the massive success of Baldur’s Gate, the genre is hotter than ever.” BioWare’s Infinity Engine also ran Black Isle’s Planescape: Torment (1999), and role-playing systems spread into other genres: Ion Storm’s Deus Ex (2000) used a skill system “à la Fallout”, so that a character with a poor rifle skill could not hold the crosshair steady.

Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002) went the other way from the party-based games: one character, seen in first person, set loose in a huge world. “Morrowind is all about freedom,” Computer Gaming World wrote. “Your role is whatever you choose it to be.” It shipped with an editor, and players were already making changes to it by the time of the review, the start of the modding culture that grew around the series. BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), published by LucasArts, took the party-based game to the Xbox.

Later history

Some of the best-known games of the new century came from Europe. CD Projekt’s The Witcher (2007), based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels about the monster hunter Geralt, was, in Edge’s words, “Poland’s biggest ever game project”. Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) became a platform for its players: by 2013 one fan website, Nexus, hosted more than 28,000 modifications for it.

In 2012 players paid for the old style directly. After Double Fine raised more than $3.3 million on Kickstarter for an adventure game, Brian Fargo asked for $900,000 for a sequel to his 1988 role-playing game Wasteland and raised $2,933,252. Retro Gamer saw it as proof of “plenty of interest in genres that have long since been thought dead by current publishers”. Other crowdfunded role-playing games followed, among them Harebrained Schemes’ Shadowrun Returns, which reached its $400,000 target in 28 hours (see CRPG renaissance). In 2023 the Belgian studio Larian released Baldur’s Gate 3, which won the Game of the Year award at The Game Awards that year.

Sources

Computer Gaming World issue 162, January 1998, p. 254: Fallout review (set in 2161, generations after the war of 2077).
Retro Gamer issue 107, October 2012, pp. 42–43, Apple II feature: Michael Cranford’s “automated ‘gamemaster’” and the bard’s songs; Akalabeth (1979), made for Garriott’s own amusement and sold through California Pacific.
COMPUTE! issue 123, November 1990, pp. 64–72, history of fantasy role-playing: Gygax, the first 1,000 copies of Dungeons & Dragons and the spread through campuses; automating the Dungeon Master by 1976; Garriott’s school games; Greenberg as manager of the PLATO facility at Cornell and Woodhead doing most of the coding on Wizardry; SSI and TSR.
Computer Gaming World issue 200, March 2001, p. 64, timeline: Gygax and Arneson publish Dungeons & Dragons, 1974.
Edge issue 255, July 2013, pp. 81–82, feature on randomness: Rutherford, pedit4 and pedit5 on PLATO in the autumn of 1975; the random monsters and treasure; “the earliest known roleplaying game on a computer”.
Computer Gaming World issue 87, October 1991, pp. 16–20 and 108–109, Scorpia, “Computer Role-Playing Game Survey”: the 1978–82 cluster, the dry spell and 1986 as the turning point, 1990’s releases; “Foozle”; Beneath Apple Manor (1978); Temple of Apshai and its paragraphs; Akalabeth as the first first-person dungeon; The Magic Candle and Might & Magic without a final battle; The Bard’s Tale (1985) and Eye of the Beholder (1991) reviews; Quest for Glory as a hybrid.
Computer Gaming World issue 88, November 1991, p. 19, industry history: Temple of Apshai as “a role-playing game in the tradition of the Dungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper game”; Akalabeth sold in zip-lock bags in 1979, and Garriott starting Ultima that autumn.
Computer Gaming World issue 26, March 1986, pp. 18–19, interview with Richard Garriott: D&D in 1977, 28 school games, ComputerLand, Akalabeth, $200 of zip-lock bags, California Pacific; Ultima IV’s opening questions, the Avatar and the virtues, and its 256 by 256 world.
“List of Top Sellers (as of 30 June 1982)”, Computer Gaming World vol. 2 no. 5, September–October 1982: Wizardry, 24,000 copies.
Computer Gaming World issue 101, December 1992, pp. 192–194, Johnny L. Wilson, company report on Sir-Tech: Woodhead, Greenberg and the Siroteks; Dungeons of Despair; plastic bags, photocopied manuals, and Sir-Tech’s figure of 100,000 copies in the first year.
Retro Gamer issue 43, 2007, pp. 82–85, Craig Ritchie, developer lookback on Strategic Simulations Inc: the TSR licence in 1987 and Billings’s pitch; the five-year exclusive licence; Louis Saekow’s gold border; Pool of Radiance selling more than 264,000 copies on seven platforms; Westwood’s Eye of the Beholder and Kroegel’s comparison with Dungeon Master.
Super Play issue 7, May 1993, pp. 44–45, “Role playing the Japanese way”: first-person Western games and the differences from Japanese ones.
PC Zone issue 66, August 1998, p. 95: Final Fantasy VII review and the “same old tired devices” of Western RPGs.
Edge issue 89, October 2000, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn preview: Baldur’s Gate sold “more than one million copies worldwide”; “no cute sprites”.
Edge issue 236, January 2012, p. 115, interview with Hideo Baba: eastern and western RPGs.
Computer Gaming World issue 173, December 1998, p. 131, “The Holiday Hot 100”: Baldur’s Gate by BioWare for Interplay, five CDs, the Forgotten Realms, “more than a click-fest”, and “the first AD&D computer game in years” with a chance.
Retro Gamer issue 34, 2007, p. 32: Doug Bell on Dungeon Master as the first “real-time 3D dungeon game” of its kind.
Retro Gamer issue 113, April 2013, pp. 34–37, the making of Planescape: Torment: Black Isle’s use of BioWare’s Infinity Engine.
Family Computing vol. 4 no. 4, April 1986, p. 39: Wizardry’s party of six characters.
Computer Gaming World issue 182, September 1999, previews: “Remember when everyone said that RPGs are dead?”; Diablo as a blockbuster of the decade and the “clickfest”; Deus Ex’s skills “à la Fallout”.
GamePro issue 110, November 1997, p. 109: Fallout review.
Computer Gaming World issue 217, August 2002, pp. 68–69, Ron Dulin, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind review.
Edge issue 129, November 2003, p. 15: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, published by LucasArts, developed by BioWare.
Edge issue 174, April 2007, p. 27: The Witcher preview, CD Projekt, Poland.
Edge issue 253, May 2013, p. 16: the Nexus network and its 28,000 Skyrim mods.
Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012, p. 8: Kickstarter, Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2’s $2,933,252 and Shadowrun Returns.
Wikipedia, “Baldur’s Gate 3” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Larian Studios, release in August 2023 and Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate_3