
Early role-playing games (RPGs) drew heavy inspiration from the popular tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons. In 1975, Rusty Rutherford created one of the first RPGs, pedit5 (also known as The Dungeon), on his school computer – the name came from the game’s filename. Though it only featured a single level, pedit5 is considered the first “dungeon crawler” and included randomly generated monsters and treasure. Players could use spells or weapons and save their progress. Another early game, dnd, was similar, but it’s notable for featuring the first boss character in an RPG and a simple quest. These games, with their limited graphics, laid the groundwork for the RPG genre.