by Ikaros Marks

Created on: May 20, 2009   Last Updated: May 23, 2009

Everyone who considers themselves a gamer has at some point in their gaming career indulged in playing a Role-Playing game, even if it was simply to see the style of game play and decide if they liked it. In its earliest vestiges, Role-playing games (RPG's) were based on pen, paper and dice. The most famous of these early rulesets is the acclaimed (and controversial)

Dungeons and Dragons D20 ruleset. The D&D rule set was adapted from a fantasy epic war game rule set called Chain mail. From there creator Gary Gygax (1938-2008) set about developing a system that allowed the player to control one single character and not an entire battalion.

The D&D Ruleset is one of the most recognisable products of the tabletop RPG age, followed closely by Sci-Fi RPG's like Battletech D20 and the Star Wars D20. As time progressed and computers became available to the general public, the tide of gaming turned from the traditional tabletop RPG to the computer-based RPG. These single-player RPG's had the benefit of not needing a gathering of people (some of which couldn't make it on a particular night or the other). It allowed for flexibility of the player's schedule, didn't require the memorization of large rulesets and had little or no setup time. The earliest of these games was Dungeon released in 1975 as a text-based RPG for UNIX and PDP10 based computers. The age of Computer RPG's (CRPG's) was born.

As technology progressed, people playing CRPG's wanted a little more out of their chosen genre, and so multiplayer support was added to a few of the RPG's. The very first of these was another text-based RPG called Mazewars. The Multiplayer area of RPG's grew, culminating with titles such as Neverwinter Nights and Diablo. These allowed for up to 8 players to be linked and enjoy a single campaign together. Text-based massively multiplayer games such as Multi User Dungeons (MUD's) and Multi User Shared Hallucinations (MUSH's) dominated the multiplayer scene for a while. When the gaming scene changed from text-based to a graphics based system, their connection-friendly and dedicated user-base allowed them to survive the changeover. Many MUD's and MUSH's still survive today.

In 1995 when NSFNET restriction lifted and allowed developers access to the internet, they took advantage of it. The first true Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) was launched in December 1995. Meridian 59 boasted first person 3D graphics and a monthly subscription fee. Another one

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